. . . . . entries for 30.9.10 . . . . .
I think I am probably about as vain as the average college girl - maybe even moreso - but for whatever reason I don't fuss about my appearance anywhere near as much as most. I wonder why.
I don't know
1. if I want a class ring
2. exactly how I am going to make my thesis experiment work, or work timely
3. if I am sick, and if so, what with and why
4. whom to talk to re. grad school or whatever else, but I figure I'll go to senior walk-ins at the career center today and see if they have any thoughts
5. how to focus
6. what to name my stupid guardian dragon which may possibly mark the beginning of a healthily long period of not playing with pixel dragons at all
7. many many other things
. . . . . entries for 28.9.10 . . . . .
Dear Mr. Jones: you have been a terrible distraction to me this afternoon and evening, because you fired up my brain and renewed my faith when my professors and classes and mullings-over of independent work and The Future could not. Thank you. Now I will try to get my reading done, and no thanks to you!
My APUSH final narrative must be on this blog somewhere. . .
Ah yes. I wonder if it might clear some things up, or if it is too long ago, and I was too full of my high school self. I mean, I was. But I wonder how different I am, really, and how. To know this moment of me is, at least, to know part of the larger history of me. It is to know what happened before Hamlet and T. S. Eliot and Plato and Dante and Walker and Cialdini and Thaler and what, in its way, led to them and ground the lens I read them through. It is to have some inkling of why, despite the fact that I once called history my religion, I now study neither history nor religion, nor English, nor old ghosts of psychology.
I can hardly tolerate that old self, but still, there she is, four and a half years ago. And here I am now.
. . . . . entries for 27.9.10 . . . . .
Where do you find a good charismatic to play right-hand woman to these days, anyway?
. . . . . entries for 24.9.10 . . . . .
Being a psych major is kind of funny because my thesis needs to stay more-or-less secret, in case any of my friends end up being in my experiment. :P
. . . . . entries for 23.9.10 . . . . .
Somehow we were talking about wealth, and whether you can have too much of it and need to "give back" somehow. Two of us said yes; one hedged a little, saying yes, a bit, but not so much; and the other said no. For one of us saying yes, it seemed to be about inequality. For the other - me - it was about inequality a bit, but mostly about what dollars represent: the resources we believe we have, but don't really. The resources we're taking away from our descendants and can never give back.
Of course, I admitted at some point that if one were a very careful consumer with one's thousands or millions or billions, it wouldn't be so bad. But there's still a point at which, however conscientiously you buy your organic food and recycled paper and secondhand (perhaps priceless antique) furniture, you're using too much; and however much you live through and buy experiences rather than material possessions, there's a good chance that the incidentals (gas to get to the concert, the bottle of wine to drink on the lawn) add up to something substantial. I really tend to think most Americans are at that point whether or not we're careful about what we buy.
So the one who said no, you never really have to give back, asked me (in a sort of smartass tone, I feel obliged to tell you): so if there were no really rich people, what would people aspire to? What would motivate people?
And I said to her: to be happy. People would aspire to be happy.
Blarg, calc homework.
Yesterday was a weird day, emotionally. In retrospect it might be a good thing that the internet here mysteriously ceased to function for a few hours so I couldn't blog about it/otherwise web-vent. I told my mother not to regard it ("it," in this case, being the desire not to apply for grad school yet) as a temporary insanity, bound to pass with time, but it may have been anyway. Now I am back to being merely confused and stressed out and displeased with my hormones.
But in any case, one conclusion from yesterday that seems not unreasonable: I'm definitely dropping the Freud class, not so much because of some highfalutin moral or emotional concern (or lack thereof), but because Jesus H. Christ my social psych seminar is going to be a lot of work - and the kind of class that will want to soak all of me up, like resilience theory did. It reminds me of that class a fair bit, although the professor intimidates me a great deal more. I'm sure she doesn't mean to, but she's way too competent, bejeweled-of-resume, and young not to; something about the instructor for the resilience class, though she seems to me just as worthy of respect, was much more accessible and friendly. Maybe it's because she's a post-doc, or because she's not actually in my field. I dunno. I do wonder if they know each other, though. I imagine they'd have Things to Talk About.
. . . . . entries for 21.9.10 . . . . .
To someone who will know who they are: you always looked so affected in pictures with him, but then again, you do have a way of putting on faces for pictures. We like your real face, you know. Yours.
A sure-fire sign that I'm getting old: I don't understand my own inside jokes anymore.
. . . . . entries for 20.9.10 . . . . .
unrelated ps: I am going to the gym today!
another unrelated ps: I have calc soon and just looked over some of the rules that I'd forgotten and oh god I need to review! but roomie's mom is sending the book for me to borrow and it will be here soon, so that is good, anyway.
yet another unrelated ps: there's this video that the class of 2010 sponsored for the frosh about how to do college correctly, i.e., follow your heart, hold yourself accountable to your aspirations, stop and question the direction you're taking, get sidetracked and meet the people who will change your life, everyone is your professor, etc. It made me feel very . . . boring? :P But I dunno. Sometimes the young appear boring when they're actually just uncharacteristically good at learning from the mistakes of others, or when they are outwardly quiet and still. Am I inwardly traveling, adventuring, and so on? Probably not as much as those who make most of their own mistakes, but I'm still walking my own line.
But then, I meant to put up my pseudo-curtains in my room, too, and that certainly didn't happen.
I think it might be time to change my blog layout, eh?
. . . . . entries for 19.9.10 . . . . .
What I will do is sigh, and rub my eyes, and try to sleep. And if that doesn't work, I might try to write a poem. I wonder what that would make of this.
. . . . . entries for 16.9.10 . . . . .
So here's an interesting problem: my Freud class is mostly full of English majors. One might imagine that I'd foresee such a thing, but I didn't really give it much thought until I was there, among a bunch of people who take Freud (and the discipline of English) kind of seriously - or at least act as though they do. They also seem a little down on psychologists for not taking Freud seriously anymore. Hm.
It's not that I have zero respect for English majors. It's just that I made a very deliberate choice in my life not to do things just because I like to do them and they have some academic interest for me, because I view that as a luxury that the world can't afford right now; the world needs everyone with a working brain to be sharply aware of its problems and working on understanding possible solutions. So I suppose I find English majors self-indulgent with their educations, which certainly does reduce my respect for them. But not zero respect. Just . . . well.
Walking away from seminar I said to myself, "self, maybe you should take something else. Like that second semester of calculus that would look good on your grad school applications." And I kind of miss math, in a way; I miss how it exercises a different corner of my brain. But maybe Freud would be good for my brain too, in a way, if I could get over my disdain and my early assumption that everyone else would feel the very same disdain that I do.
And I don't have total disdain for Freud, or at least concepts related to Freud. Maybe I can learn something there that would help me over here.
We'll see, I guess. But maybe I should write to my advisor about taking that calc class.
. . . . . entries for 14.9.10 . . . . .
Holy cow weird dream about (I guess) working on a movie script with a total sketchball who looked like my (admittedly somewhat sketchy) high school debate coach. o.O
I am back at school and gradually grinding away my motivation problems. :P I hope.
. . . . . entries for 8.9.10 . . . . .
Maybe this whole thing was only easier before because I hadn't had the hubris knocked out of me by my education yet, and was too enthusiastic about myself to be worried about us - or maybe I just didn't know what I would be missing, away for four years, because all I'd ever known was away and it didn't seem so bad. Well, now it does.
I was going to rant a lot more and I did, but look: I can't put off worrying about whether we're going to be together next year, but you can, and you do, as though you have something you're trying to hide from yourself - some doubt or certainty that you can't bear. And if you're so doubtful or so certain, I wish you'd tell me, and yourself.
That's all.
(actually it does make me cry to hear Dylan say "most likely you'll go your own way and I'll go mine")
. . . . . entries for 7.9.10 . . . . .
I would post on facebook, maybe, if I were different: [my name] is crying.
Well, facebook or no, there it is anyway, the night before my stupid big kid SAT, for plenty of reasons. Mostly I don't know where to send my scores because I don't know where I most want to apply to grad school because I don't know where my boyfriend will get in, or really where the people I'd be most interested in researching with are for that matter - I only have guesses. And I don't know if I want to go to grad school at all, and I know that I don't want my choice to be determined just by following or just by going out on my own. But I don't think I can count on anyone following me. I don't think Anyone thinks there's any room for that and maybe it doesn't even matter to him, or not enough.
More grim succinctness: "I wish you were not so far away."
. . . . . entries for 6.9.10 . . . . .
ps. I spent basically all day by-now-yesterday playing FFX and was floored when I came to Big Partial But Still Big Reveal by Auron. I was like "really? you give stuff away this early in the game? how can that BE?" and thought maybe I'd caused some weird glitch to activate for a minute because it seemed so implausible that they'd write it that way. Truly boggles the mind.
But I totally dominated in Blitzball so whatever. :P
When do you read this, and when don't you, and when do you read but gently neglect to give any indication that you have?
. . . . . entries for 4.9.10 . . . . .
Things have this relentless, terrible habit of not working out. And when we realize that something is going to do that not working out thing, that doesn't always mean we stop trying. And so much effort and torment goes into it that we think we've invested something - and maybe we have, in a sense. But with money as with love, once the costs are sunk, they're sunk. We don't win anything new by sticking around to sink more, even though it hurts to tear away.
I had an eight-week-long reality check on a thing I thought maybe had the potential to do that not working out thing, and my worries were assuaged. But I chose that reality check and sometimes the reality check chooses you instead, and that is rarely pleasant.
You are not too old or too sequestered or too otherwise unavailable. If anyone ever tells you otherwise - that you'll never find another like him, or even if you tell yourself you're unlikely to find love or some shadow of it - kick whosoever is responsible in the shins. Things have this relentless, terrible habit of not working out, but when a thing is meant to work out, it assuredly will - through a will of yours, and his, and your two loves as one, or so alike that none can slacken and none can die.
This is for a few of you actually, though it began as to only one person. I am young and the type to refuse cynicism when offered to me, neatly severed, on silver platters, so I suppose it would be wise to take any platitudes from me with salt to taste. But still, here they are.
. . . . . entries for 2.9.10 . . . . .
They are cutting down trees and tearing up the yard and I guess taking down the windmill outside. It is noisy, and will make of this place a different place that I might not quite recognize, and that will be strange.
My hands smell like the pile of chipped up wood that was very recently my sister's favorite tree because I was rummaging around in it having received her request to "save a piece of it" - but it had already been put into the chipper, I thought, and all seemed lost, as all recognizable twigs were not that elm tree but other trees whose limbs were lopped off to leave room for it to fall. But I found a big wedge of it that escaped the chipper, covered in sawdust and leaf remnants and sticky in places with sap and still so damp, after all, from being alive just a few hours before. It is sitting outside drying now. The whole heap was warm and not unpleasantly fragrant with the beginning of decomposition.
The end is a start, I guess.
come home?
.:people:.
{ting}
she looks like the real thing
{mari}
out and about
[kelsey]
THIS IS AMERICA
{yianni}
stop being depressed
{alisa}
other
[shannon]
close and far
{frank}
islands where no islands should go
[cassie]
eating knowledge
{colin}
my dm
[emily]
shoulder to the wheel
[brian]
nostalgic for fantasy
[nicole]
industry insider
{elle}
angry enviro
[matt]
never heard of miyazaki
[pirate dan]
are you reading this?
[olga]
distracted
[messiah dan]
messiah/believer
{max}
approach focus
[natalie]
wait a minute
[susan]
solitude
{greg}
manbeargreg
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.:skin:.
turtles! turtles! by araglas
(heavily modified by yours truly)