HELP! WHERE DID 2008 GO?!?!

What a change that a year can make. Seriously..

If I would have known what going to school, finishing school and surviving my Student Loan payments would have gotten me, would I have gone through all the trouble? Yes and no.
Sallie Mae-that bitch, charges me $477.50 a mo to reap the benefits of the money they borrowed me to find my passion at Le Cordon Bleu. And for that, I am grateful for what I learned, but wish that I could win the damn lottery of refinance somewhere else for a better rate..which is kind of like asking for someone to pull the moon down a little closer for me to examine. Hopeless.

Tables have turned for me on many other levels since that amazing day in May when I graduated from a School that I never thought I would go. I am thankful in many ways for the opportunities it has given me on strictly a culinary basis. On every other level, I feel betrayed. See, the great people in the Financial Aid Department at the school told me that I wouldn't have to pay during the time I was going to school. What they left out was that the 12 mos I was active in the classes, my loan was in defferrment. Unbeknownst to me, that was my only year that my loan gave me for emergencies (a.k.a. percious defferrment).. So now, I pay my 477.50, along with all sorts of other things, my rent and daycare..knowing that I can never for any reason stop paying with permission, until it's done.
The Cafe on the bottom floor at work employs a woman who went to Le Cordon Bleu back in 2003 I believe. I asked her what she does to stay sane, she says she pays as much as she can, when she can: using her tax money to help her loan come down faster, even though at the time that she went to school, her price was not even half of what they quoted me.

Still, she suffers right along with all of us, with her own financial problems, paying and paying until our eyes bug out of our heads..but we can't dare miss a payment, or it's coming right out of our payroll. I feel like I'm paying for a Cadillac Escalade that I will NEVER SEE! Which is kind of ironic because what I do at work everyday is to remind people of the bills that they don't "have" to really pay-cars that were repossesed, that they don't have anymore, are on their credit, that were picked up from their driveways or at work, and resold within a month.

So here I am, stuck in this seat due to my financial jail cell, making exactly what I need to make to survive, to pay my loan and to have a bit of money left over for gas to get to work.

What will this new year bring? Sigh..