My Favorite Secret From This Week

This is how simple everything should be.

Another Procrastination Blog!

These are my favorites!

11:17 pm--> Watching Friends and eating ice cream while Wikipedia searching Algeria. Still need to finish reading the play, but Monica is wearing a sweater with a question mark on it that I really like! I wonder where I could find one...

11:42 pm--> Just saw a commercial where a sock monkey gets a tattoo, and the tattoo gets stitched on, because he's stuffed. Scene ideas will come of this...but it's not helping me with the paper...

12:24 am--> I could really use some chips or something right now. Or maybe some chicken lo mein? It's not too late to order... No, I want chips...

1:21 am--> Made popcorn and finished reading the play. Progress is being made! So glad this paper is only 750 words; I still have an exam to study for...

1:59 am--> Wrote a (very loose) thesis! Mind is wandering to how people are strange creatures. Why do we do the things we do? To what extent can I infer things about other people, and to what extent am I just making it up? It's just like making an argument about this play--sure, I can infer lots of things and make it sound credible, but does it mean anything at all? Probably not, especially when I have no basic cultural context about life in Algeria in the late 80's. It's just a stab in the dark.

2:58 am--> Am suddenly freezing and really sleepy. I did like half a practice exam for sex class tomorrow. Have a little advantage since I took women's health a couple years ago, but sadly they didn't teach us anything about men. I think a sex exam should be a lot more exciting than this...

3:34 am--> Just reread my entire blog. Most of my posts were made under circumstances just like this one. No surprise. Also, the four phases of the menstrual cycle are follicular, ovulation, luteal, and menstruation. During the follicular phase, FSH stimulates the follicles, and during the luteal phase, the corpus luteum deteriorates. And to gender balance it a little, in males, FSH controls sperm production and LH controls testosterone production. Just in case you were wondering. Wouldn't you think I'm in a science class instead of a psych class?

3:48 am--> Will chicken noodle sleep wake me up or put me to sleep? I used up my entire argument in the thesis. I am too concise. This play is uninspiring.

4:43 am--> Fuck this, I'm going to bed. Another 200 words and some more studying to do when I wake up in 3 hours... One more fun fact: the hypothalmus is the brain's center for sexual behavior.

Calming Down

Well, like an hour ago I was full on hulking out. This night did not go as planned. Computers are a bitch. My new laptop arrived today, which is awesome. It's so little and light! And so fast! I can't wait to take it everywhere with me and be able to work on writing projects all the time.

But part of getting a new computer, obviously, is transferring stuff over to it from the old computer. And that is making me want to tear all my hairs out one by one. First, I take dear old Otto von Dell (my trusty-ish old machine) to rehearsal to use some sound clips. It won't start for a half hour once I get there. As if this didn't piss me off enough, all the moving around of files in order to transfer them caused the ENTIRE hard drive to fill up so much that I couldn't even see most of the icons on the desktop. So that was a couple hours of confusion, til I finally went into safe mode and deleted some stuff. Now it's freezing up again, and driving me CRAZY. So I'm annoyed and frustrated and apparently determined not to sleep at all tonight. Typical.

Also tonight, I got some interesting news that might be further cause for stress (but maybe in a good way). I'm being cryptic, I know. Trying not to jinx myself. Hopefully will know more soon, but it's definitely consumed my night.

Thinking of reviving the blog. Or maybe officially "starting it?" I don't know. What does one blog about?

Doubt

A major theme for me this year has been uncertainty, since...well...nothing in my life is very certain right now. So I thought that for my own peace of mind I'd collect some "great wisdom" in the form of quotations about doubt and uncertainty. I'm sure copy-pasting them will at least validate them in some way, and hey, we're all graduating soon--maybe someone else will relate to them too...

"There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking." --Alfred Korzybski

"Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it." --Andre Gide

"We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything." --Blaise Pascal

"When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken." --David Hume

"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties." --Erich Fromm

"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough." --Frank Crane

"One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything." --Georg C. Lichtenberg

"To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man." --Oliver Wendell Holmes

"The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt." --Rollo May

"If you're not confused, you're not paying attention." --Tom Peters

Hello out there?

I should not be awake right now, and I should definitely not be writing a blog. But I've been thinking lately how people should blog more (or ever) because I don't see you all or have any idea what's going on in your lives--and even though we don't all talk all the time, I still get curious. And I suppose most of you (if anybody is even reading this) have no idea what's going on in my life either.

I've been thinking lately about how my life can be simultaneously so busy and so boring. It's time to change that. If I only had...time to change that. But Halloween is this weekend and that's exciting--even though I still have some costume completion/construction to do. I have all these ideas about wanting to create exciting things and plan exciting events, but when I look for a time to do it, I come up with nothing.

I need to finish my 50 hours of costume lab--23 down, 27 to go--preferably in the next 3 weeks. It is not likely to happen, at all. Time seems to be the most important thing lately, overriding everything else. There is never enough time. My weekend was 23 hours long, and it went from 7:30 Sunday to 6:30 Monday. It was self designated, but well spent.

I'm an assistant director for one of the department shows right now. It's tiring but exciting. Mostly I observe. I'm learning a lot. I can't wait til I can stop taking classes and just pursue stuff like this, though. Well, and that whole "life" thing that's apparently happening in 8 months.

Today, I was thinking about that passage from The Bell Jar where there's a fig tree (I think) and each fig is an option and if you pick one, the others disappear. It is very topical. I'm starting to see the linear paths that each decision creates. Cause and effect. Action and reaction. I like it more in art than in life, I think. It's weird how all of this makes me want to be very proactive and to shut down completely, both at the same time.

Now's the part where I feel like no one wants to read any of this and I contemplate deleting it. But I won't, and if you got bored, you probably stopped reading by now anyway.

So...how have you been?

Everyone has to retire sometime...

It's not even 1 am and I'm crapping out on this paper. I'm debating actually starting to work on it right now so that I can finish it and go to bed. That's not the usual procrastinator's spirit... Usually I gear myself up for a long night with pointless internet games and procrastinating buddies and some good snacks. But I just want to sleep. Where's my sense of adventure? All nighters have such possibility. And sure, I've been feeling under the weather lately. Yeah, I am a little tired of this whole school thing. But really? 1 am??

Back to School??

Each first day of school gets a little less new and shiny. This year, I can't even be bothered to get notebooks out of my desk drawer and bring them to class--just a legal pad and a clump of looseleaf. My classes so far are strange, and my professors are stranger. And I am not content with only having 3 classes. I'm trying to pick up a 4th, against my better judgment. I cannot tell exactly how much work my independent study will be, but I went to a production meeting today and was the only undergrad there. It was quite the contrast from the 100 and 200 level classes I'd been in earlier in the day. I think this is going to be a different sort of semester--less structured--but maybe it will still be alright. If my class tomorrow is good, anyway.