Pretend I wrote something witty here

Grah grah grah

The internet was invented to distract me from 15-page papers that are less than half finished and due in less than 12 hours.

After this I have two days of crazy studying and a day of finals and then I am done done done.

Whatevs, sophomore year. Whatevs. That's sort of how I feel about you. You were pretty good, I guess. Except I realized I have an active desire to do nothing important or challenging with my life. But in Our Society, people of my socioeconomic status and upbringing are pressured to find their passion and save the world, etc. All I want to do is have babies and play with yarn. Maybe it's a phase.

Look, I'm updating my livejournal. The only real thing to say is that I'm going to be on campus this summer, so woo. So much sitting around and hanging out. Three months of it. Many friendly people are staying as well. It will be wonderful.

See you guys on the flip side.

Last Thursday, instead of doing either of my paying jobs or any of my homework, I entirely conceived and created a new knitting blog. You can read it! It's pretty!

Hello, my long-neglected livejournal. What are the haps?

In my case, they are as follows:

- Over winter break I started knitting and became obsessed with yarn and now that's all I ever think about. I post pictures and things I knit on my previously useless blogger account.
- This summer I will either stay at Wesleyan again or do science at Miami University in Ohio.
- I declared my major. It's biology! With a certificate in environmental studies.
- Since winter break most of life has been lackluster is a mild and difficult-to-define way. I'm not sure why. But it makes me want to drink more.
- Possible solution to above: have crushes on boys. I have none of significance at the moment.
- Classes are okay.
- Things are okay.
- Maybe I want to be a midwife?
- I am knitting a beautiful sock.

Done with finals! Done done done! I have no idea how I did, right now my grades could be anything from 4 A's to a mixture of B's and B+'s. It's kind of disconcerting. It would be lame to do pretty well all semester and then have finals bring my grades down.

Back to MA on Thursday. For a month. That's a little too long.

I think that the character and content of these pictures decently represent my life lately.

( Read more... )

My problem is that I have no real ambition, but I'm living the life of someone who does.

It's not like, "I don't know what I want to do with my life!" It's just that it doesn't take much to make me happy. I don't need anything big.

Also, I'm a fundamentally terrified person. I think that's the real problem.

Basically, I'm uncomfortable with academics once they move beyond memorization and interpretation and into Real Stuff, and have no desire to find a summer internship. Why can't I just accomplish a lot of straight-forward, simple tasks, then hang out with my friends?

I really can't bring myself to sift through any more scientific literature. I need to make some tea and watch something therapeutic.

So life has been pretty great lately. I think I had the best weekend I've had so far this year, I had a nice birthday (I am two decades old), I discovered that Sufjan Stevens is AMAZING (not least because he sings stunningly beautiful songs with names like "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us!"), I have a fun and healthy crush*, my friends are both ridiculous (oh man, you guys) and fantastic, and the weather is gorgeous. My window is SO open. I wish I could sleep on Foss Hill instead of doing an econ problem set. Actually, no, I feel too good to sleep.

Dear universe: please carry on.

* One of the best feelings in the world is moving from a twisted, unhealthy crush that makes you unhappy to a fun and healthy one that could conceivably be returned. Everything seems a little brighter.

Number of pairs of earrings I have acquired since Saturday morning: 4-10, depending on how many ebay auctions I win. I started wearing earrings again, and then started browsing the handmade jewelry on ebay, and it's just so tempting when the starting bid is $.01 and shipping is only $2.00... Also I got a pair for my birthday (thus the decision to begin wearing them again) and bought a couple pairs in Boston yesterday.

Also from ebay I bought two dresses and a hair clip. I am no longer allowed to buy things. Ever.

Back to school tomorrow. School > home.

I just got home from the longest day I've had so far this year (class, class, lunch, study, work, dinner, TA session, test, EON meeting) and, in the space of ten minutes, was given three different units of leftovers by four different people. Mmm, food. And it was all especially good food.

I just rocked a supposedly hard econ test, so I feel good. Now I need to spend the next two days studying for an evolution test - but it's the good kind of studying, with a well-defined, finite amount of information that I need to read over and memorize. It's a very satisfying thing to do.

A bad econ joke:

What do a marginal cost curve and Voldemort have in common?

No matter how low they fall, they'll always rise again!



Also, Dr. McNinja. He's a doctor! AND a ninja!

If you can get me the season premiere of The Office (s03e01), I will love you forever. Seriously. It aired last night, and I missed it because I thought I would be able to download it from iTunes. But no. And I can't figure out how to get my bittorrent client encrypted so that Wesleyan doesn't know it's a torrent and slow it down to 4 kb/s. Anyone know Azureus for OSX? Where the hell is the Tools menu?

Nevermind. I got it. It was amazing.

I just deleted my facebook account. Enough is enough. I was going to wait until October 1st, but it was too far away.

Life is going well. All my classes are interesting, though econ is a little too easy right now. I just feel great about things in general. Already this year has a different feel than last year. Last year was great, but it was mostly about socializing. Strangely, I feel like living with a bunch of my friends is making me less social. It's like, they're right outside my door if I want to talk to them, so I can go out and do work or something and they'll be there when I get back. I don't have to spend time going out of my way to see them. There are other people I should be going out of my way to see, but I've never been good at that. Also, no MoCon means no seeing bunches of people every meal.

I've been spending a lot of time working, so I feel very on top of academics and, consequently, life in general. I've done every page of reading assigned so far, with the exception of stuff in my econ book, which will arrive tomorrow.

Today I went to the first meeting of a habitat restoration group. I'm also going to Monday's EON meeting and am going to start working on Long Lane Farm soon. Basically, I'm doing all the stuff I've always wanted to do.

I wrote before about feeling like socialization was my first priority, but that problem seems to be solved. I still love my friends, obviously, but I'm not pathetically clinging to them. I feel very independent and competent and mature and capable. I feel like I'm finally turning into the person I want to be.

I do well on my own. Really. I get regular exercise, I eat well, I read up on things that interest me and get really excited about the world and what I can do to make it better. I make all sorts of plans. But as soon as I'm with people again, all my energy gets sucked up in socializing. That becomes my first priority. I have this irrational fear that if I'm not with my friends as much as possible, they'll all bond without me and I'll be left out.

It's actually kind of strange. If I accept that I am alone in a given time period, I can be very happy and productive. But if I haven't convinced myself that it's a mandatory "alone" time, and instead believe that I am by myself when I could be with my friends, I get insecure and unhappy.

The upshot is that I'm going to have a hard time doing what I want to do this year. I need to find a way to exist among my friends while retaining the motivation and ambition I have while I'm alone. People are distracting. My ideas still feel powerful, but I'm much more apathetic. It sucks.

Basically, I need to have the self-confidence to do what I want to do, and make random socializing a secondary thing. I don't know how that's so easy for other people.

Have you ever noticed that when someone never wears jeans, and then they do, the jeans always make them look more attractive than usual? I've noticed that happening to several people in my life.

Have attended two of my four classes. Am going to collect bugs in Ecology on Thursday. Tomorrow morning: orgo. Ouch. I hope it will be fun.

My hall is amazing. It's going to be so hard to get work done. Wonderful people are hanging out all the time. It's really, really great. I wasn't friends with that many people on my hall last year, so I didn't feel super-comfortable there, but this year I feel like the whole place is my house.

Orientation as a returning sophomore is, perhaps, even more fun than orientation as a freshman. None of the stress. So many wonderful transfers! Including the two living across the hall. Their two room double and Danzig's and my two room double? Totally going to be a five-room suite complete with patio.

I feel like a lot of the people I know are here already for one reason or another, but there are lots more coming tomorrow. I've gotten used to this building the way it is now, so it will be weird to have it full of people. But they are wonderful people, so it's okay.

I have beautiful curtains that may or may not conceal my nakedness from all the freshmen wandering in and out of MoCon. I'll have to see tomorrow when I put them up.

Sleep now. Hewitt 9 pancake brunch in the morning! It will be my O'Rourke memorial brunch. I've been busy and haven't been keeping up with the internet, so I didn't find out until tonight that it burned down. Wow. That place was an institution. I have a lot of fond memories of the random samples of breads and the too-quiet jukeboxes and the tiny unstable booths. I pity all the freshman who will never get to go at 5 AM because they stayed up until it opened. Now there's nowhere to get food at all any time after 1:30, unless you have a car.

(+) I am in my new room!
(-) My desk is not in here with me. It is being delivered on Tuesday. Silly Reslife.
(-) I left the mirror at home. I like having a mirror, but I
will probably be without one until October.
(+) Saw Snakes on a Plane with Mad! It was as expected. The last scene may be the most ridiculous part.
(+) I just took an excellent shower.
(-) I still haven't gotten the hang of showing here. There's no shelf for my stuff.
(-) I am very tired.
(+) It is the good kind of tired.

So everything evens out.

I've never had an emotional reaction to a video game. Until now.

OH MY GOD

There are no words. Except these: YES SCIENCE EVOLUTION FORM FUNCTION CIVILIZATION ALIENS YES

Watch the video.

Do you want a largish orange chair for your room next year? It's in your room now but will be out on Sunday if you don't want it. I'm also sending an email to the summer-at-adp listserv telling them that anyone who can show up on Sunday afternoon and carry it away can have it.

Nevermind, Zac claimed it for the Grotto.

( It looks like this. )

Sometimes (like tonight) I get restless and feel the need to rearrange my life and my surroundings in small ways. I think it's the mood that causes other people to get drastic haircuts. Tonight I put all my hair in little braids and made a pair of my jeans into cutoffs. I need to move into my new room, start classes. I've had enough of summer. I want to move forward, and I feel like I'm standing still (despite the fact that I just spent an hour walking around campus). Who decided that college students would have three-month summers? Bad show.

I have been listening to this CD for a while. It's excellent, for the most part.

It turns out I'll probably be able to move into my new room right away after moving out of alpha delt instead of moving into an intermediate room for an unspecified period of time. Yessss. Maria Pia, this means that I will most likely not need to use your room for storage. I should be out of here by the end of Sunday the 20th. I'm really excited about moving into Hewitt and setting up my new room. I never get excited about decorating things, but I am excited about decorating this. There's much more pride of ownership when you have your own room- or, at least, a walled-off part of a shared room. I have my own room now, but I'm only here for a couple months and never really even unpacked properly. I will be in Hewitt 901A (come visit!) for much longer.

I know I'm getting on this bandwagon very late, but I started watching West Wing recently. It's fantastic. I care much more about the personal lives of the characters than the politics, but what else is new? I'm up to the sixteenth episode of season one, but may not get farther than that for a bit.