aerope

11:05 am: boooo life
I am so emo, it is pathetic. This week I've turned in 49 pages of writing and have another 12-15 to go, so I'm working on less sleep than usual (plus being woken up by construction, and still having a sinus headache this morning). It's making me very emotional and sad and I'm spewing anxiety on everyone everywhere, about everything. I can't wait for finals to be over so I can sleep and stop spoiling everyone's fun.

On the agenda for when I become freeeee:
1. Sleep
2. Clean biohazard room
3. Hike! Run! Bike! Enjoy beautiful spring as much as possible for two days before driving south to sticky summer!
4. Drink!
5. Return research paper books, and get fun books from library!

10:37 pm: I am sitting in a friend's common room, waiting for her to finish getting ready to go out. We have to go! The liquor store closes in 20 minutes and it's a 10 minute walk, what if we don't there? There will be NO RUM then!!

I dyed strawberry red streaks into my hair this week, it is cool.

There are 2 weeks left of the semester. I have 63 pages of writing left to do. Yikes!

12:04 am: General update
Whoa! Life is overfull right now! In good and bad ways, mostly good though.

So much work for my terribly interesting classes that I'm finally learning not to do it all, but it distresses me, and I still end up pulling all-nighters. I have no idea how I'm going to write sixty pages of final papers.

I no longer feel guilty prioritizing lengthy meals or coffee with friends and professors, either, since it's going to be so long without seeing them, so I'm definitely enjoying more of a social life than I would if I cared about efficiency or my food budget. I really, truly do not know how ceciliaj does it, she has an incredibly fun life with lots of beer with friends AND is doing well in grad school, but she is a shining example of the good life.

Christianity is slowly becoming more and more a part of my life, in behavior and vocabulary, and I notice when I compare to a year or two ago; I think living with Christians who just assume it should be integrated with everyday life quite actively has really influenced me. I still do think of myself as an independent entity alone in the universe, though, and that intimate feeling of singularity does not mesh with faith too well.

Finally I'm really fantasizing about and looking forward to what happens after graduation. GREECE! GREECE!!! I cannot believe I am REALLY going to do archaeology! I cannot believe I am going to have a totally free and self-determined schedule! I am going to have such an exciting and yet well-rested life! (Greenland is even becoming more interesting and less scary the more I get used to the idea and think of the skills for living alone and meeting new people I will develop before I get there.)

I know it will be lonely, but today and yesterday I discovered iChat and Skype, so I can talk to lots of people for free on the internet, video or voice! I think that will help a lot, if I can get internet access while abroad, to actually see and hear dear people's voices sometimes. I hope my family gets it, and if any of you have it we can totally talk!

I am also working a lot lately with research assistant stuff for two different professors, both projects involving basically digitizing pictures and newspapers. Not very interesting, and awfully inconvenient since it has to be done 9-5 and I have classes all afternoon, but I am paid quite well so can't complain.

The only things I really do not have room for in my life are getting ahead on studying Greek and Danish, running, and sleeping. So I am pretty unhealthy. Oh well, another thing to look forward to for graduation.

12:25 am: It's an I-hate-everything evening because I got a bad grade and a funding rejection today and had one of those annoying conversations that made me feel like if I don't have a boyfriend I'm not really part of adult society. Great, you sleep over in your boyfriend's dorm room, you're a real grown up now, hope you enjoy letting other people know how childlike they are.

This does remind me that I forgot about my New Year's resolution, though, which was to take a social risk every day. I haven't taken one today, so I think I will e-mail a vague acquaintance I'd like to know better and ask about meeting for lunch.

Okay done! I feel like a risk taker. But if I'm going to go to foreign countries by myself I need to be assertive!

11:44 am: It is spring break and I am in Washington! I'm hanging out at a friend's apartment right now (she's at work), pretending I'm going to do some research soon because my whole excuse for being here is to do research, but I don't really want to. It's like spring here, I want to do something outdoors! I've already gone on a run, it was lovely. Maybe I'll do enough research to not feel guilty, and then walk to the National Mall or the Library of Congress or something. Yes.

11:05 am: I do not know what to do tonight for dinner! My options:

-House dinner
-Russian lecture on letters from the Gulag
-Classics lecture on Odysseus and iambic song
-Dinner discussion with chaplain on liberation theology

What should I do, anyone who reads this journal? Probably classics or liberation theology, right?

Oh sigh. My computer is dead, but I am behind on everything anyway, including stuff I really shouldn't be behind on. The function of this semester is apparently to burn me out enough that I'll be really happy to graduate. Right now I am in a computer lab and two girls are talking quietly. That's okay, what's really getting me is how one of them has a really annoying panty laugh. Stop being happy!

07:49 pm: Sadly, my computer is either in a coma or clinically dead, but the tech people haven't bothered to tell me yet. (I hope they've at least LOOKED at it by now.) So updates will be rare. I'm in a lab now.

12:01 am: It's a Friday night and I'm writing a paper in the computer lab because my computer broke, and my friend who said she'd visit and bring wine has failed to show up, so that is pretty unfortunate. But I just found out that David Bowie did a cover of "Waiting for the Man," and that rocks my world.

And in 10 minutes, I give up, go home, and spend tomorrow morning on this uzhasniy fucking paper.

09:58 am: I've decided what to give up for Lent: excessive negativity and unnecessary comparisons of myself to others. These are unpleasant things but I engage in them, and sometimes enjoy their unpleasantness, more than is healthy or even, in a sense, morally acceptable.

Also I went to a 7 AM Ash Wednesday service and now really want to take a nap. Too early! It reminded me of Easter, though, as that's the only other time I've gotten up so early for church, which is nice because I love Easter.

And I have a date today! I've never had a date with someone I wasn't already friends with, so it is odd. I hope it's fun but don't really want it to lead to anything...perhaps it's too early to be having or rejecting such hopes anyway.

Hmm...what to do right now...exercise, take a nap, or do homework?

OOhhh! Thoughts of excessive negativity, there you are! I REJECT you! Mwahaha!

04:24 pm: This morning in church I thought about how it will soon be Lent and I feel called to give something up for it. A horrible thought entered my mind...coffee? Can I survive midterm month without coffee, given that I usually sleep 6-7 hours a night and that decreases by an hour or two during midterms? I hate the idea, but perhaps that means it's a good one.

At lunch, a friend suggested booze as something I would still miss that wouldn't interfere in my daily life as much. That's a good idea. I'm just not sure to what extent it should interfere with my daily life - should it be something I just miss on weekend evenings or when there's wine at dinner, or should I be thinking about it all the time so I think about God all the time?

Or maybe I should look up really traditional Lenten fasts. That sounds interesting, actually, I should do that anyway, out of curiosity. [Brother, if you are reading this, do not even THINK of giving up ANY item of nutritional value for ANY reason. You are plenty undernourished already. If you feel moved to, I suggest refraining from booze or pot instead.]

Today I am spending my afternoon and early evening reading about Central Asian nomads. It is awesome! Oh also I got into a great field school in GREECE! It is unfortunately terribly expensive but I will probably be able to work that out somehow. Wish me luck!

09:57 am: I am sitting in a coffee shop, with a tall cup compensating for my lack of sleep. Outside the windows I see cars driving by and week-old snow sitting on the ground. In front of me, I am working with a play satirizing nineteenth century Russian provincial bureaucracy and my laptop with a transliteration site and online Russian dictionary open. Checking my e-mail, I start dreaming about field schools, imagining strolling through rolling Turkish hills in summer (does Turkey have rolling hills?) looking for subtle signs of Roman habitation...mmm, winter daydreams. Back to the Russian.

04:44 pm: I just received $100 worth of course books from Amazon. How many books is that, you ask? Six paperbacks.

Tonight is going to progress in 3s, but unfortunately I can only think of two 3s. I have to watch 3 movies (one I organized for a student organization, 2 for my Central Asia class following) and then translate 3 acts of a Gogol play. Perhaps the third will be 3 hours of sleep? At any rate, it's time to go take a look at this play before dinner.

11:08 pm: Oh my, a semester!

The bad: Too much work! The research papers start in a month, but already I'm following a well known cliche, which is that in this college you cannot have friends, grades, and sleep, so you have to pick two. I pick friends and grades. Also, I am getting really sick of activism for various reasons.

The good: My classes are awesome, and they are already starting to interact. Now I am thinking about the best ways to handle minority populations in empires, historically, in three of my classes (actually, only directly in one class, but it connects with the other two). I love it when that happens and I forget what class I did readings or wrote essays for. I get to do four research papers this semester, three of which I am actually interested in, so that's going to be a lot of work but very interesting.

Okay, back to the Central Asian history. Oh geez you guys I am taking a course on Central Asia! My life is so great!

11:50 pm: I've decided to quit Russian Theater. There are too many other things I want to do in my last semester, and all of the people I've enjoyed working with for the last three years are no longer on campus, so the only people left are the people who joined last semester.

Will I go through with this decision?
I don't know.

Will the club survive without me?
If there's motivation, absolutely! However, it worries me that everyone else involved has only been in one show and never directed (I've done four, directed one). No wait, there's one guy who's been in a couple, that's good. This sounds egotistical, but the cast pool is small enough as it is, every person counts...I hope the club is fine without me, it's got to be next year anyway!

In other news, I danced around my room so much today that I made myself nauseous. Wow, I'm good.

11:48 pm: Today I had two excellent food-related experiences. One was wandering around the grocery store, picking up the ingredients I needed for house dinner and then standing in aisles, looking at things I could pick up for personal groceries, and realizing that I would be fine without buying anything extra. Personal grocery bill this week: $0! (House grocery bill: TBA, but probably under $20.) The other was accurately and deliciously recreating my mother's spanakopita.

Tomorrow I really, really have to get up at 8 AM to run. I dread that. But if I don't, I won't run at all before Friday (my life may not be full of class, but it is SO ridiculously full of work and meetings that I feel like I'm already employed in some bureaucratic job, although a more interesting one than average). Now that it's written in livejournal, I must run, or else I have lied on the internet!

A few days ago I finished Karen Armstrong's History of God. It makes me wonder if maybe I should do a little less theology reading and a little more meditation and poetry reading (although there is that quote that good theology is poetry). The mystical traditions have such a completely different approach, perhaps it would bring some understanding. Or mind-blowing. Or something.

Conversations around here have been good. Too good to write about on the internet. I wish I had more than one semester left to live with my roommates, I am uncovering more of their amazingness every day. Also, activists are my new favorite people, I wish I had gotten more involved with it earlier in college. I was really uninterested when I came, though, it's totally snuck up on me. Also, it's taken me awhile to learn that going to meetings does not equal commitment.

01:40 am: I hate everyone! Except my tall roommates, because when they found out I hated everyone and was restless and sad, they made me dance around instead of going to bed. It sounds silly, but that is so sweet it really touches me. Little things.

My friend with whom I was fantasizing about moving to Boston got into a better law school in another state. She's not sure whether to go, and I can't give her an objective opinion - I want her to do what's best for her career, but I also very much want to live with her next year.

People are screaming outside at the top of their lungs, just for the sake of drunken screaming. It's going to be an earplug night.

01:27 am: What is it about parties that leaves me sad more often than not?
I know what Augustine would say.
But I don't think that's quite relevant.
It's just that they're stupid.

I don't know if it's good or bad that I tend to preface my answer to every question with "Well, I know what Augustine would say...." On complex matters, like free will, I really don't. It's just clear that he rejects worldly pleasures.

11:47 pm: Lately I've been feeling awkward, stunted, self-hating, bored, fearful, and stuck in a rut. So Tuesday I made a belated New Year's resolution that I would address this little by little by taking one social risk every day. Yesterday I didn't get around to it, but today I took two: cooking and eating a joint dinner with my house and a neighboring one, in which I cooked tasty food and met and conversed with new people, and a really exciting one: Polar Bear swim!

What this means is that at 10 PM, on a night when it was seven degrees Fahrenheit, we walked down to the river, someone cut a path through the ice with an axe, and we all stripped, screamed, and jumped in. I consider getting naked with a bunch of strangers a social risk! And it was great fun! Also, fortunately, the feeling in my toes came back after just about five minutes. I'll definitely go back again sometime. (I am way too full of energy now to sleep, though. WHOO COLLEGE!)

(Honestly, these are things I wouldn't normally avoid doing, but it makes me feel better to point them out to myself as times I wasn't weird and awkward. And feeling weird and awkward is a self-fulfilling prophecy, so that matters.)

In terms of Augustine, I am feeling faithless and doubtful. I should really talk to my roommates about that, they are smart people who might have some useful insight to offer.

In terms of saving the world, I am skipping all the related meetings, but possibly getting involved in setting up queer pride week events for April (at least a film, hopefully more), so that is exciting!

08:23 pm: Sometimes I am so hopeful about life, and how connections between people are what make it worthwhile, and how many possibilities there are and how interesting and fascinating all the people I know or am acquainted with but don't really know or still want to know are.

And then something reminds me that I am so horrifyingly awkward, and I stay in my room all day with a book, feeling like a failure for not, you know, connecting with people. It's really sad. I am having a self-hating period and it makes life less pleasant.

Also I am having a crisis of, or absence of, faith. Thanks, Augustine. You were supposed to give me answers, not make me wonder if the entire intellectual edifice of Christianity is too ridiculous to stand.

12:52 am: This weekend was amazing. I'll write at length in my other journal so some of the people involved can read it, but here I'll just say I'm happy.

A huge number of my friends who graduated while I was in Russia came back this weekend - most of my friends in college have been my year and the year above me. I was shocked by how comfortable and home-like it felt, in a way I haven't been able to feel in those buildings since they left, and I miss them intensely suddenly. Not just them, though, but the entire time: their presence on a daily basis and our shared spaces and jokes and memories. I am comforted because friendship gives so much more than it takes away, though, and because I live in a lovely house with another group of people and a completely different routine. It's strange to think how much I will miss this year next year, even though now I miss last year. Every situation and every group is like a whole different life, and I don't want any of them to end.

However, this weekend there was a little too much of the drinking and skipping church and spending money and hitting on a guy who is leaving the country in a matter of days (I thought I was being subtle, but in the light of sobriety...). Oh well, two days is enough to teach me that a safe and dull life isn't so bad!

Also, tonight a few of us made chicken tikka masala and jello pudding, and then planned our trip to Quebec two weekends from now. We made reservations in Quebec City and Tadoussac to see the winter festival, northern lights, and Saguenay fjord, respectively. YAY A ROAD TRIP!