late-breaking news:

So I figure, take two months off, come back, you gotta go all in (or was that 'all out'?). Anyway, the point is: my 21st birthday is tomorrow. And, while some of the lustre has been taken off by that semester in Europe, we definitely hung mostly around dive bars (and mostly for the csocso) in BP, so I'm looking forward to some classiness.

The most exciting thing for me right now is that the week has been so busy (mostly busy in a very bad way, I'll admit), I haven't had any time to think about it; it's just now sinking in, and I'm definitely the kind of person whose birthday makes him happy. So yay!

quick errata

So i'm not willing to go so far as to actually gut the last post (like i said i would want to), but i do want to say things have gone better. just when you think things are terrible, some stuff shines through the gaps. dinner with the family was nice, and really i'm just glad to have the chance to see them. class was marginal, but the prof was quick to push aside my one-month-behind literature review and awful last paper in favor of generally upbeat stuff. as well, i made a friend from class, the first time it's happened this semester (and i thought it just didn't happen anymore). needless to say, right now, i'm feeling better about life. this may well change very soon (like once i start work for tomorrow), and i still think the week was overall not so hot, but it's not all storms and tribulations, i guess, is the point. Nothing has been "solved" per se, but the thing i needed today was a touch of perspective. the other point? oops, i'm moody and sometimes emoting puts me in the mood to write.

it's been a long time, i admit

And i'm definitely not ready to get into everything right now, but let's just say that the semester has been tough, and I wanted someplace to just rail on things for a little while.
1. i'm feeling completely unready to deal with anything social/romantic, and it took me until basically last week to even come to terms with not being ready.
2. bad things keep happening to good people: my cousin's friend (who i knew pretty well) back home is in prison, and i just found out my uncle is in a probably-terminal coma just as he'd been getting past the stroke he had a year and a half ago
3. school, which i swear to god i had enjoyed at some point, maybe even been enjoying, has not been enjoyable. it's not unchallenging, and i like to think i enjoy a challenge, but that sentiment is being gradually invalidated. i just feel unengaged, like i'm not doing anything relevant or worthwhile or even significant to the rest of my life (with the law school plan still in place)... but i don't feel like i am or will be a good teacher, i just got rejected for the mentor program to which i had applied, and i feel fundamentally incapable of understanding the work i try to get through (this being spurred by the frustration with which i greet most of what i'm supposed to be doing).
4. my sister visited, and is leaving this evening, but all the hope i had of really bonding and stuff didn't pan out; it may have been wrong for me to have had high expectations, if for no other reason than because it feels really bad when they aren't met, but the fact remains that they weren't and i do feel really bad.
5. lingering frustration with the college has... lingered. although being a small school leads to a feeling of community, in a community, all rejections are personal.

6. thinking about thinking: so i've been whining a lot, and i feel like it's wrong, but i'm not doing well at stopping. the other day, ty suggested i just needed to quit being so self-involved, go out and volunteer for something... i can't help feeling like she's completely right, that the problem is all in me and this self-gazing, but i can't sleep soundly knowing that the thing that's making everything wrong is internal, is me.

i just feel like i'm on my bike, the one i had freshman year, the old one that i scrupulously tried to maintain but never upgrade or spend money on, and i'm coasting down a hill, a long hill, a hill the end of which is out of sight in the hazy LA air, and i feel like i'm on the edge of my ability to stay upright but i keep going faster and it starts to feel unsafe but i remember i didn't adjust the brakes, i had the hex wrench in my hand and i didn't adjust them and now it's coming back in the guilty way of obligations unmet and i have to decide if i should let go and ditch the whole thing now or if i should just keep picking up speed... the problem, i think, is i don't know what i want--i would just mail in the year-and-a-couple months here if i had something i was working towards for afterwards, but none of those sorts goals look particularly reachable or desirable right now. existentialism seems to be rather disempowering, and my negative momentum seems to feed on itself.

wow. hopefully that was cathartic, not whiny, but regardless, i know i want to delete all of it even right now. the internet, though, as we know, is dangerous, because just as one click could erase everything, with one click it's all going up.