Slothful entry
I feel off kilter.
I don't feel well when I can't express myself well. It's a sharp stone in my shoe, a nagging and jittery feeling. I've not felt well for a while now. I've been staving off discomfort and discontent by trying to write shorter entries (they've been here, if you haven't seen what I mean), but what I want now is something centralized.
It seems trivial for me to be thinking about this so much. I know. But I need to trick myself into writing, and I'm probably due for a change of pace in the web-page-making area. I dislike a lot of the early stuff I wrote on zoetrope. I don't write commentary that I like about webpages and news stories. I can find stuff online that I like, just don't ask me to write about it. I just don't know what I'm doing, even now.
I want a change. I want things centralized. This will take some time.
It really is important, though, becauset tricking myself to write is tricking myself to express. If I feel off kilter writing in my journal, I don't feel all that well. A lot of it is having to choose whether I'm going to write in my journal, zoetrope, a letter, or wherever. I dislike having to make that choice. I know some of it is inevitable, but I want to simplify my online life.
Er. Sorry. The detritus of my mind is spilling into the journal. This journal has never been a sketchbook for my ideas, and I want it to be sometimes. So it is going to be.
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I just wrote a letter to my former English Teacher and current Wonderful Confidant. And since I am far too tired to rewrite the same old stuff for the journal, I'm pasting it here. Sloth is my favorite deadly sin, and one I indulge in often. Hopefully, no one will mind. I feel remiss - I am not keeping the journal Up To Date on my life. I've changed this letter to make as much sense as possible, I've also edited myself because this is an Online Journal and I have to change stuff sometimes.
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Your letter made me feel much better, though, about the situation with my mother. It's tense now and then, but I try to just keep it in perspective as best as I can. Well, sometimes I lose perspective. But then I just find a way to get the hell out of the house for an evening or an afternoon or something.
My roommate has been playing phone tag with me. I finally got to talk to her tonight. She sounds excited about the college. If I let myself be, I'm thrilled with her and am ecstatic that I'm rooming with her. I love her handwriting (it's scripty and loose and pretty), and from what I can glean, she seems smart and genial. When I am being rational, I say "Reserve judgement! Remain neutral! Do not poise yourself for miserable disappointment!"
She talked at breakneck speed about who was bringing a mini fridge, and who was bringing the phone. I wanted to just say "Stop talking about that! Tell me who you are and what you're like and stuff like that!" But she was all business. I guess I just have to wait. I doubt she's gonna be a Just Add Water friend, like I thought she would be. I don't think friends are standard issue at the college. Prison-cot, bureau, desk chair, window blinds, but not an Instant Friend. Of course, that's what I want.
She may be a friend, but I just have to wait. Wait wait wait. I'm tired of waiting. I need a daily fix of getting-ready-for-college. I wanted to talk to her for hours, instead I got 20 minutes of rapid fire dorm arrangements. I want to pack, but there's nothing I can really do for a few more days. I want to go shopping for a rug, but I already have one. So I'm left, sort of twiddling my thumbs. 20 minutes was not enough! 20 minutes can't fend off the college-craving!
I've been reading this summer. It's the first summer in recent memory that I've read mass quantities of books. I read quite a bit of light, fluffy stuff, I finally read The Awakening, and some other fiction that I liked a lot. Everything I read had such a different flavor to it (and that feels like such a revelation). I felt like I've learned how to read all over again. I'm bringing a box of books with me for next year. I hope I have room for them. My father keeps saying "Colleges have grand libraries!" but I don't believe for an instant that they'll have books I'll really WANT to read. I really don't know what they'll have.
I saw my therapist for the last time. I told her that even though everything is so murky and undecided and unformed for next year, I have this sense that it will all work out. I'll cross bridges as they come, I'll figure out what courses I want to take when I meet with my dean, and things will untangle themselves and become more clear. She asked me where this faith came from. I thought it was funny she used that word, but I guess it is a kind of faith. I don't know where it comes from. But it's here. I feel like it's okay to wing it a little. It'll all work out.
I'm going to miss my therapist. I asked her if I should see a therapist in College, and she was so surprised that I was even considering it. I've really grown to like seeing her. I didn't much, at first. At all. It's sort of funny. I could appreciate therapy so much more when I was feeling better. She says I'm much more confident, which I think is true. I was startled at myself - it was so easy for me to send a note to my roommate and give her a call. It never used to be that easy for me to call people on telephones!
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I just have to stave off death for four more days.
2000-08-25, Slothful entry
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