apartment

I can't believe this is happening, and so quickly.

Out with incessant worrying about plans, worrying about disaster, worrying in general. Let's deal with the punches as they come! This is exciting.

Ok now it's really time for work.

I have dreams about doing things that in real life I'm anticipating, but the problem is the dreams are so real that I'm temporarily deluded into believing that everything has already been done.

To that end, once I begin to sleep I just can't stop.


Also, I've realized that I have a lot of changing to do, and you have a lot of changing to do, because we're growing up, and that's how the cookie crumbles.

egoism

The emergence of young, well-educated sex bloggers a la MIT's Christine Yu really frustrates me, not because I'm bothered by their frankness but because they know they're being overly honest about their private lives and act accordingly indulgent.

questions with no answer

The chances that I will get into a creative writing class next quarter are quite slim because spots are few and aspiring authors far exceed their numbers, but I looked up the professors teaching Beginning Fiction tonight to see if I could read samples of their writing.

I found their blogs. Written in all the experimental syntax, the forced simplicity. It's hard to describe the tone, but I think you are all probably quite familiar with it; the best way I can describe it is, their writing brings to mind the artistic but not unhappy teenager who wants to feel everything and celebrate the joys of life in alternating long-short sentences that convey the urgency of their feeling. Dave Eggers, for instance, except I feel that Dave Eggers started the whole movement so he is spared from my condescension.

Either:
1. The turn-of-the-mill contemporary author conforms to a particular voice that happens to be the dominant one in this day and age (this is the "writing for an audience" argument);
2. Career fiction writers are people who never managed to grow up (this is apropos to an earlier post of mine);
3. My point of view is tainted due to my specific level of exposure and my particular position in literary history, and therefore my criticisms are not entirely valid (this is quite possible, especially compounded with the fact that I like to find faults in everything).

Regardless of what all of this actually says about these authors and popular literature in general, I personally would still like to get in to one of those classes before I graduate because my writing has genuinely degenerated since I stopped reading fiction circa 2007.

Also writing too many theoretically-grounded papers has destroyed my ability to communicate outside of a certain set of vocabulary and argumentative structures. Again, this might be indicative of my own immaturity.

The Plan

This is the third incarnation of this blog address. I will continue to fill it with puerility (but such necessary puerility!) for two weeks (what the hell? only two more weeks?), until the second day of the second week of March, when I will hopefully embark upon something greater.

This struck a chord.

step three

The theme of this blog can be summarized as: I don't want to grow up!

Thus I feel kind of embarrassed to be publishing all my fears out in the public sphere. I should feel more nervous about how readily I am advertising all my flaws, but in any case, the ones who actually have the patience to follow me are probably the ones who can actually relate.

Still, I am nervous. If I could channel all my anxiety into a more productive format, it would be a better-appreciated alternative.

There are adults, who are where they are because they learned to get over themselves. There are certain artists, who are who they are because they never learned how but were able to turn their inability into something tangible. And then there is me. I could become an immature adult, an unproductive artist, or I could learn to become either one of the two.

Now taking bets.

Yeah, so I'm over it now.

C'est la vie.

too comfortable

Today I am angry.

I am angry at all those books I read when I was younger, the books that talked about people growing up and having rites of passages and falling in love and picking themselves back up when hearts break. I am angry because they led me to believe that I had Growing Up all figured out so that I could know what to expect with my own growing up. I knew everything and deceived myself into thinking I understood everything, but knowing and understanding are two different things. And now everything is finally happening to me and I feel like a baby roughly torn from its umbilical cord with no warning at all.

I am also angry at the concept of relying on experience, and measuring yourself against the progress of the status quo, of all those philosophies and manuals and articles that pat me on the back and tell me, "This is what you need to work on to be a better person. This is what other people have done to succeed. You are not alone." Because I recognize their truth but for some reason I can't bring myself to believe it just yet and it's bothering me that I still feel so alone and so flawed!

I am angry that I find so much to be angry about when there's nothing wrong with my life except for dissatisfaction because I've lived my twenty years in a bubble and now I feel like one of those children who were given too many antibiotics as infants and now can't touch anything without getting deathly ill. I hate that I've been so lucky because more and more I'm getting the feeling that my luck is going to run out.

I want also to stop being angry. I want people to tell me to pet me on the head and I want to curl up in bed and sleep these years off. And in a few months I will reread these words and feel sick to my stomach, and I will want to delete this blog. It always happens that way.

is this in the future?

背靠着背 坐在地毯上
听听音乐 聊聊愿望
你希望我越来越温柔
我希望你放我在心上
你说想送我个浪漫的梦想
谢谢我带你找到天堂
哪怕用一辈子才能完成
只要我讲你就记住不忘

我能想到最浪漫的事
就是和你一起慢慢变老
一路上收藏点点滴滴的欢笑
留到以后 坐着摇椅 慢慢聊
我能想到最浪漫的事
就是和你一起慢慢变老
直到我们老的哪儿也去不了
你还依然 把我当成 手心里的宝

perspective

So, sometimes I like to sit in my room and mope about how little free time I have because professors demand so much out of my day.

But then I think, well, I came to this 50k per year school so I could learn. And learning sure as hell doesn't encompass playing blockles until 3 in the morning.

things I hope I will grow out of, part 1

- being disorganized
- nostalgia

unhealthy habits

This is what happens when I start freaking out. I can't sleep. I have to get up in four hours. I can't sleep.

There are five more weeks to suffer through before the quarter is over. Courses for spring are posted. I can't sleep. I am nervous about statistics. I should have taken it in high school. My professor has squeezed a year's worth of material into ten weeks. I'm sinking as fast as we're moving.

predictions

Spring is when everything happens.

I'm getting a feelin' and this feelin' leads me to make two predictions about the coming year:

- I will find what I truly love to do.
- The chance to fall in love will pass me by.

Maybe it's the scent of the air that's getting to me. The faint perfume of a springtime's promise; I hope the first comes true, I accept the second if it does.


A lot of people look to blogging the way I do (that is, with no theme and shamelessly about myself) with cynicism; after all, the practice reeks of solipsism. I used to take this cynicism seriously. But this is what I think: I like to write and I'm very familiar with this medium by now. I have a very small and uncertain audience, so there's little fear of unnecessary self-aggrandizement. Finally, when I feel like I have something to say, I should say it. I should not be afraid to express my voice just because doing so appears indulgent to the cursory glance.

after a week of unexpected warmth, it's snowing again

Yesterday afternoon, I went downtown with Natalie to attend the new Munch exhibit at the Art Institute. I was eternally grateful that she came with me, not because company was imperative but I had a genuinely good time. The lecture I was so excited about turned out to be a bit of a flop, and there were so many people at the exhibition because it was a members-only preview two days before inaugural weekend. But the Art Institute is such a refreshing place, and afterwards, wandering around on State Street in disappointment because everywhere was closed but Starbucks, we finally settled down to drink tea for an hour until the final establishment in Chicago locked its doors for the night.

This is also approximately when Natalie said the exact thing that I've been looking for people to tell me (but didn't realize until that moment that it was exactly what I was looking for; such is the nature of such things), and the floodgates of thought opened. As a result, today I finally went out to seek closure; closure was what I found. It had nothing to do with the situation but rather my approach, and I think I've realized what I need to know at long last.

I've also decided that it's not worth it to be so dissatisfied all the time. I can't help it sometimes when I look at people like Emmy and Evan, who are just so passionate about what they do and can't get enough of the beauty they see. I feel this strong urgency to catch up to them. I want to believe in something beautiful!

about this week.

At first I was just extremely angry. All this shit just keeps happening to me. School, too many things to worry about, the reoccurring flooding and subsequent destruction of a great proportion of my books. Losing my temper one too many times.

Today though, the regret hits me for the first time. I spend the day alternating between reading and falling asleep, between thinking about my bad luck and wondering if this really is just karma biting me in the pretty little ass. But, ok, everyone has their bad days. Mine was just three days in a row of messing up, compounded by the uncontrollable event of the rain. As sorry as I feel for everything that's happened, there's not much to really complain about. After all,

1. Shit happens.
2. There are always worse things that could happen. For instance, I could be dead.
3. After distancing myself from the problem, I've realized what I could have and can do better.

And so, finally, I'm letting go of my anger.

omen

Tuesday morning, somebody stuck a wet booger on the doorknob of the entrance to Wiebolt, and as I unwittingly entered the building to go to class, IT STUCK TO MY HAND.

The event, I have decided, pretty much encapsulates what this week has been like for me.

when true simplicity is gained
to bow and to bend we will not be ashamed

point counterpoint

1. It's 55 degrees. FUCKING YEAH.

2. Two weeks of not doing any productive work has finally caught up with me and instead of having fun outside I'm trapped in the library writing a seven page paper due on Monday and studying for a midterm on Tuesday... neither of which I started on until this afternoon.

why this weight?

Happiness is something that comes naturally and not by relentless searching. Stop looking so damn hard, people. You're only emphasizing your own dissatisfaction!

!!!

One day I will quit tetris, start my homework, and stop listening to thisnickelbacksongomg this is so mortifying(ly bad).

so basically

I've discovered why I'm so boring.

I have no hobbies.

And people who aren't interested in anything are never interesting.

------------

Rewind to last February. I was still a first year in college trying to cultivate an identity, extremely frustrated with the status quo and itching to become someone new, so I decided to cut my hair short after almost ten years of having it past my shoulders. The act was committed in front of my closet mirror one year ago today with a pair of Fiskar paper scissors that I'd had since the second grade, and was not bad for a first time, self-inflicted attempt.

Since then, many things have happened on the unexpected side of change. There was winter quarter, probably the happiest quarter of my college experience based on a complete sense of contentment with my life at that time. Then in the spring there came a boy, and everything that comes with the entrance of such a person into one's consciousness, and there were all these emotions and fears and those moments of bliss. There was my first summer away from home, a job, an apartment, the coming of the second autumn which implies a greater sense of seniority. Doubt about who I wanted to become and what I wanted to spend the rest of my life learning. And heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak.

So here I am now. I don't know if this is what growing up is supposed to feel like, but while I've amassed a year's worth of experiences and gained more knowledge, there seems to me that girl who made the decision in front of that mirror was more alive than I am today. Alive, not because she was a better person, but alive because she actually believed in what she was doing.

I sound pessimistic. Laugh at me, dismiss me, but understand that I desperately want to know what I did wrong.

"Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Oh, but I always laugh at my own jokes.