i suppose i'd be concerned if my retinas really lit on fire

you want the truth?

the truth is that i've had a thing for you since i was about sixteen. it's the sort of thing i can get past, of course, because the little sparks behind my eyes went off some four years ago, but they're still there. it's the sort of thing i thought would disappear entirely, actually, because we're in different places now, but it...hasn't.

i wonder if it's obvious.

"never quite as simple as ordering from a restaurant menu"

I graduate in like ten months. so this is a list of career wants (and do-not-wants) based largely off the examples in Now What? by Nicholas Lore...since i have very little idea about what i want...

Positives:

i want to make a contribution that personally matters to me. i want to feel i am doing something that makes a difference.

i want to be successful. to me, being successful means...thinking creatively to be the "best" at solving problems. being very good at what i am doing. being an indispensable part of a team.

i want to feel satisfied and fulfilled in my career.

i want to be an expert in some specialty.

i want my work to be a natural expression of my talents and personality.

i want a balance between working very hard and potentially burning out, and not feeling that my job is important enough to try at.

i want to be self-employed or an entrepreneur...or run a non-profit.

i want a career where i am doing things that come easily to me and that i enjoy.

i want to be extremely successful, one of the top people in my chosen career./i want to be highly respected at work because i'm so good at what i do.

i want to work somewhere where people are friends, but not so close as family. it usually ends badly when things get very personal.

And the negatives:

i do not want to spend the majority of my time working for myself.

i don't need to make much money, i don't need to be wealthy. i need enough to live on and be independent from anyone else.

i'm not too entranced by adventure and danger at work.

i do really want to work. i'll get bored otherwise.

i want to work with people that are as motivated as i am.

this just happened...

I like the way I feel in restaurants. i can walk through and talk loudly and I probably walk a little funny but I feel good. proud of this skin and these clothes and this arrangement of silver on skin. I can order and they hear me and I smile and they smile back. I walk down the sidewalk and when I feel like everyone's staring I don't care, because I'm looking back at them. even if my nails never grow i'll wear dark purple or orange-pink and take their shape boldly. I like the way i feel in bowling alleys ungraceful and weak simply because these are my wrists and biceps and hips. I like the way I feel flying down the road suspended in my own voice singing and my body flowing with the wheel and the brake like I was never afraid of the oncoming traffic. and I like the way i feel at a table with a mug of coffee and a hundred pages before me, waiting to be combed and styled into something I can understand and something I can write about and tell you about.

goodbye, funk

my closet is clean, my mojo is back, and i'm reading andrea gibson to a crowd of freshmen on the 27th. i'm full of energy and excitement and power.

...and not feeling very verbose.

Go.

(something I wrote a few nights ago. I read Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues a couple weeks ago, and it inspired the last part. the rest is sort of an explanation for all the campus work I've been doing.)

I want an end to the tinge of fear in the hearts of my queer siblings (not just brothers and sisters), friends, and lovers. I want an end to the silence around questions that weigh in our stomachs--why? how? what next? am I the only one? I want no more bullying and no more closets.

I want a culture where you can pick your pronouns at sixteen and ten and forty-five. I want a place for anyone whose family doesn't understand to have Thanksgiving. I want zero homeless young people and a million rainbow pins. I want it easy for children that are not yet born--not because it is fair, not necessarily under the Constitution--because it is right. Because those who came before us fought--it is now time for us to fight. For me to fight.

things I was thinking about last night when I couldn't sleep

1. how it sometimes feels like you've wanted me out of your life since October, and how arbitrary and shitty that is, even if it's probably not true. Why I was on this train of thought again, I'm not sure. probably because I started thinking about the last time I couldn't sleep thinking about how you didn't want me. (I'm obnoxious sometimes, aren't I?)

2. why I have this romantic and sort of debilitating notion that I want to end up marrying someone from my past. someone it was "meant to be" with, even though I think the predestination thing is crap. And my past can be loosely defined.

3. how this guy from work fits into all of the emotionally distant male stereotypes, and how can his girlfriend possibly stand him?

4. OW. not the soreness, but the fact that I'm still sore from the other weekend.

5. the fact that driving scenes in movies always freak me out, because I expect a horrific accident scene the minute the driver gets happy or distracted.