new plan

this happened at 4am

Shorty scared the hell out of me on my way to the bathroom, and now I can’t go back to sleep. I haven’t had this problem since high school, but it used to happen occasionally: I wake up sometime after three, and stay awake until bedtime the next night.

I was lying in bed thinking fairly clearly, but now a lot of it is gone. And I was starving.

• ·         My mom is probably so rude to me lately because she’s mad (sad?) that I didn’t come back to the nest.
• ·         Times. Times are good so I don’t feel like I’m waiting around the whole day for things to happen.
• ·         I really need to find an India House buddy, fast.
• ·         I wonder if Grammy had a spice rack that I can use.
• ·         I still didn’t call Uncle Jeff. Fail.
• ·         Thinking about whether I could get away with using someone’s ID to go to the gym and take pilates classes. Alternatively, how to rent Pilates DVDs for free.
• ·         How to make friends. Shit.
• ·         I need to finish my thesis so I don’t feel guilty reading about other things
• ·         Starting a book group (feminist, etc.)

Now I’m playing solitaire and watching the sun rise like it’s Christmas morning (except I used to read Redwall and Harry Potter and I certainly never used to eat) and hoping that somehow these things work out.

gray

I have not succeeded in running away from the feeling of sitting alone on a rainy day, desperate for social interaction and knowing that by tonight, I may not have left the house.

Sometimes I hate summer. I'm reading the internet instead of working and I'm looking out the window at cars waiting at the traffic light, thinking "is this all there is?" I know that in two hours things will have shifted again and there will be people here and someone will have cooked something at least semi-edible, but for now, I'm feeling a little down about my social life.

I have time. I'll meet people. The rain will pass.

observations

is it weird that I like watching you squeeze limes?

I don't know if it's the actual squeezing (hand and arm muscles at work) or the fact that you just know that it needs lime. Or maybe the look of concentration on your face as you measure just the right amount.

probably your (visible) sense of taste.

same old, same old

From your perspective, this seems like the stupidest fucking idea ever. But I didn't want my four years of things like community and support and progress and learning to be a hiatus--I want them to be my life. I'm too prone to depression and not enough of a morning person to bother with anything less than living my passions.

I need more than bars and Pier 1 stores to keep me going.

I have to figure out how to do better than living and dying by federal funding (of nonprofits and/or my future education and meals), but I guess that's where all the skills people have listed on my letters of recommendation come in.

teaser

I feel like I'm doing this right.  Not that "everything has changed" or that "suddenly things come together," but that I'm working things out a little better, and I've found a person to do them with.

it feels like sunrise. not the first day, but a new one.

Ani Difranco- Reprieve

This album took me through two summers ago, when I was commuting and sad and empowered all at once. Commuting because I had the CD (it was one of the last CDs I bought; it's from a record store that caters to all the punk kids in my hometown) in my car and listened to it over and over.

I would get halfway through A Spade by the time I got to the parking lot. I was usually late, so I wouldn't finish the song, and in the evenings I would return to my car, exhausted, and the first thing I'd hear would be the few lines she speaks, about the responsibilities of women.

I used to sit at the long light near the park, singing to Half-Assed. I thought it was funny because I had just driven between fields and was about five minutes from my windowless cubicle.

I loved that job, though. The CD just reminded me that I couldn't do it forever.