Getting back on track
I'm back after some time pretty withdrawn from the internet. I've been thinking a lot about what to do with this blog, so we'll see how that goes.Surviving College Life recently posted a really cool idea – creating a “listography,” or a biography of yourself in list format. Since we all know I love lists, and also apparently read too many college-themed websites, I thought I’d give the idea a try. Read the post (by poster Jamie), it’s really cool. And it has a bunch of stuff that never would have crossed my mind. I would’ve come up with “favourite movies” and “favourite books.” Since reading her suggestions, I’ve come up with a couple – “things I found while cleaning my room” and “things I wanted to be as a kid.” I’ve already done “stupid things I’ve done” and when I gather a couple more (I actually fell over while standing still last week) I’ll post another installment.
So, as a brief intro, here’s a list on why I’m still awake at 6:45 AM on August 20, which is when I’m writing this, but will post-date (post-post?) since I already posted something today.
- I’m worried about stuff
- I keep getting caught in list rabbit holes (mostly on the awesome Listverse)
- I keep getting caught in college website rabbit holes
- I felt the need to start a bunch of posts for those days when I can’t think of anything to write
- I’ve ignored my RSS feeder for weeks and there are well over 2000 items in my queue
- once the sun comes up, staying up 30 minutes later doesn’t seem very important
- my ass is totally numb, and thus, not sore from sitting
Hope you got a better sleep than I did.
I keep starting posts and realising there’s just no good way to finish them. I’d rather not post anything for a week than post crap. I should get some extra posts lined up for situations like this, though.
I’ve been stressing a lot about the start of college lately. It’s scary. Like, really scary. Holy balls, I’m moving in less than two weeks. The only other time in my life I’ve moved was when I was 8 and my parents bought their first house. I wasn’t involved at all. I spent the summer with my grandparents.
I am, naturally, freaking out, losing sleep, and making about 17 individual lists. They’re as much lists as they are conversations to myself. Here’s a small example:
- I should bring flashlight to res
- also, over the door hooks for wet towels
- and a dust buster
- oh and some of those multi-tiered hangers would be good too
- and hangers in general
- also, shoe hangers for in the closet because they’re for more than just shoes
- and my fancy cardboard boxes for storage
- and a shower caddy maybe?
- I’ll def need an alarm clock
- should I bring my stereo? no, right? I’ll have my laptop.
That’s right, that’s me, asking myself questions. And that’s just the list to remind myself to add things to the list. I mentioned that move-in day is less than two weeks away. Well, lists are all I have down. I have almost all of my things – I want to pop in to Ikea (god I love Ikea, it’s like a field trip for me) to get things like those cheap closet organizers and a mirror since the bedrooms don’t have them.
Thank god the rooms are rooms. No sharing. You share a suite, which contains two bedrooms, a kitchen sans oven and a bathroom. Each bedroom has a double bed with drawers, a desk with drawers, and a reasonable closet. And a chair. By the way, is saying “oh my god” and “oh, jesus” swearing? My mother says it is. I think it’s not always appropriate language, but I don’t think it’s swearing really.
I’m not only worried about packing, because my room is such a mess that I need to clean before packing, but I’m worried about move-in day. I’ve never done it before, at all, much less a college move-in. I’m not totally sure where to go, or what happens when we get there, and I’m worried it’ll be hectic and painful and stressful. But, my parents and sister are coming to help out, so that’s great. I get the feeling you need to have one person stand with your stuff after you unload it because you have to park sort of away from where the residence is. Adding to that stress is that I have no idea where my room is. They don’t tell you your room, floor, theme of the floor, or roommate until you arrive. I requested my friend, and she requested me, but there are no guarantees.
So, in short, stuff to worry about. Stuff to make lists for. Stuff that I should’ve been doing all summer but did not at all.
Oh my god I’m moving in 10 days.
The problem with my break from blogging is that now I’m detached. I’ve gotten used to just watching things pass by, taking them in, letting them go. I’m out of the habit of paying as much attention as I did and thinking of things in my everyday life and/or travels through the interwebs to write about. Like I said in my last post, I feel like I need to come back with a serious plan, with something hard-hitting and meaningful. That said, the only thing I can really think of is bringing back Weekly WTF. That, and overhauling my tags, categories, links, and blog pages (you know, like the About page and stuff) to make the indexing (as well as my favourite links) really current and thorough. Speaking of Weekly WTF… looks like I only did it twice. Wow. Not really a “bring back” kind of thing then, is it? More of a “get it the hell started” thing.
I’m also going to try to be strict about blogging every day. It probably won’t happen, and I’d rather go for quality over quantity, but we’ll see. At the very least, I’d like to be on myself to journal every day, even if they’re not public posts. So, as for today, I went to the doctor. Yearly physical. She’s super nice. I always get nervous every time I’m going in to the doctor, because I’m always like “I really could have taken better care of myself… she’ll know I’m totally slacking.” Coincidentally I feel the same way when I go to the hairdresser and dental hygienist. The hairdresser is the worst. He’s really amazing with hair and I feel weird giving him straw to work with. My hygienist is really sweet, so even though I know my teeth aren’t sparkling white and perfect, she won’t be judgy about it, just tell me how I can improve and what I’m doing right.
Since I only see the doctor a couple times a year, I forget how really nice she is, and how freakin’ professional. I’ve had a few doctors over the years, and she’s really the best I’ve ever seen. She knows just about everything (as you’d want from a doctor, naturally), and I was surprised at how well versed she is in treatments for depression. So, really, the physical went well. She even reminded me on the way out of the room that even though I’m overweight, it’s not that big a deal, especially since I’m doing so well with other things, like my depression. Seriously, how many doctors say that?
So that was today. Oh, and in odd timing fun things, I came across an article yesterday that was weirdly relevant to me, called Disappearing and Other Stuff by Cath Lawson on her site. I really enjoyed reading it because it reminded me that I’m not the only person that kind of retracts once in a while. One of her great points is that yeah, you’ll lose some traffic if you take a hiatus, but that’s normal, and some people will come back. I never started with much traffic to begin with, so I didn’t lose much, but still a good reminder. =D
I know I’ve been gone a while. It’s a long story, not terribly exciting, just life stuff that got in the way. It’s still not totally done but I feel like I have to start writing again, partially because I know how annoyed I would get if I wanted this blog URL, couldn’t get it because it was taken, checked the blog, and saw it had been dormant for months. This has happened to me before. It’s really not a big deal but it’s kind of a let-down.
Having been away for so long, I feel like I need to write something epic. I don’t have anything epic. Like I said, just life stuff. Finishing up school, trying to figure out money stuff for post-secondary, all that stuff. Very stressful, and made more-so by the fact that some stuff went wrong months ago (I’ll admit, at my own fault) and has just snowballed. The impact could be that I’ll lose my place in residence. I hope that doesn’t happen, and I’m holding out hope, but I’m also bracing myself for that. Another reason I’ve been away for so long is because of my laptop. I’ve written about problems with it in the past, and the night before a big project was due, it died. I cried. Thankfully I’m a procrastinator and hadn’t gotten too far into it. The house desktop is a piece of crap – unbelievably slow, actually painful to use, but I managed to get everything done. The teacher understood that I couldn’t bring myself to re-do the parts I’d lost. Of course I didn’t get marks for the parts I didn’t do, but at least I finished. I finally used some of my meager savings to buy a new laptop, and I’m very happy with it so far. I’ve been learning the joys of Open Office and trying to get back into the internet again.
Part of the reason I’m writing this post is because I feel like I should do something with my writing. I feel like I need a project, like the Julie/Julia project. (Funnily enough a commercial for that movie is on right now.) If anything, it would give me a bit of direction. I’m trying to come up with something. Maybe get to know someone from every province and territory. Maybe learn to knit. Maybe learn to cook, like the Julie/Julia thing, though I doubt I’d have the patience. Anyway, I feel like I need to do something. I’m thinking that thing might be doing some serious blogging about starting college and all the trip-ups I’ve gone through so far. It’s an idea, right? I know personally I love reading about the post-secondary experience, and about what freshmen experience. We’ll see.
No, not a baby. Not literally, at least. Today marks nine months that I’ve been using this blog to the day. I posted my first post on July 16th, 2008, and it was a journey in agonizing over details and themes and harassing my friends about what header looks best where and what title is the most awesome. I really can’t believe it, and I’m not exaggerating. It just doesn’t seem real. Milestones like this, however small, are what remind me that life keeps going no matter how terrible the little bits seem. I can’t remember what was making me sick with stress that week in July, though I’m sure something was, and when it was it was just filling my vision. The next week, I’m sure it was something else entirely. That’s what gets me through tough times, uncomfortable confrontations and bad dreams – reminding myself, through things like this almost-anniversary, that eventually, none of it will cross my mind anymore.
I’ve updated my goals page and added a couple of new things. I know I could put this on the news page or in the alert box but who cares for all that streamlined stuff anyway? 
Though I may add it to the alert box as well. perhaps that’s what those are for…
P.S. The birds are up and chirping, as it’s 10 after 6 in the morning, and I fucking hate it.
P.P.S. I will never not swear. I used to avoid it as much as possible because I wanted this blog to be unoffensive linguistically to everyone, but I like swearing and it’s me and it’s how I get through the day so fuck that.
Bonus picture of some graffiti I found on the subway. I think it's very profound.
I really want to put up signs around the city that say Lost Fish, with a picture of Piggy (my goldfish) and some contact info (maybe this email address)
Lost Fish! Greatly missed. Answers to "Piggy." If found, please contact satisfiction@ymail.com.
What the fah.
My laptop fan is working again.
My friends are like “that’s good!” BUT IS IT REALLY? It was dead for several months and now here it is again fanning stuff. I don’t know how I feel about a zombie fan. How long will it live this time? Why is it making a sort of wheezing noise? What is the cost of this working again? Is it my soul? Or is the fan being powered by whatever entity made that sneezing noise that time? Is it working again because it knows that I’ve been shopping for a new one? If so, does that mean my laptop has become sentient and my threats are not falling on deaf ears?
This is all very confusing and requires some thought.
Hahaha! My sister just pointed out that it’s Easter and my laptop fan rose from the dead.
Seriously. Today on FML I saw the perfect example of why grammar matters. The entry says,
Today, I was flirting via text with a coworker. Things started getting heated, and I wanted to send her a sexy picture. I asked if she had any suggestions. She said, “Your nuts!” She meant, “YOU’RE nuts.” I sent her a photo of my junk. I offended a co-worker with incriminating evidence. FML
Wow. Right there. That’s why. Bad grammar and spelling can actually cause you to commit a crime. If you need any further proof, see the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves. (If you’ve never come across it, the joke in the title is that you can either eat, shoot people and leave, or eat shoots and leaves. “Eats [food], shoots [people], and leaves [the area]” versus “[it] eats shoots and leaves [the vegetation].”)
On a related note, FML is the best website ever. Visit it often. You will feel better about your own life.
Oh and it’s probably always a bad idea to send people pictures of your genitals.
Considering how Fail Blog and the internet in general regards women, including dismembered bits of women that exist for amusement of the men, I’m genuinely and pleasantly surprised to see that aforementioned Fail Blog calls the following picture a fail and not a win. In case it’s not clear, that’s because using women’s bodies for amusement is never a win.
see more pwn and owned pictures
Things are going fairly well, which scares the bejesus outta me because things never go well. Then again, I’m appreciating the tiny things in life, which could actually be safe.
My iPod was broken. In the middle of scrolling through a playlist, the buttons just stopped working. No warning. Thanks iPod. But, I gave it to my dad since he’s near the Apple store a lot and he gave it to them (it’s still under warranty) and they fixed it! Pretty pretty iPod is back. Bus stops will no longer suck! Except when my headphones quit on me, which will for sure be this week. I should have gotten new headphones when my iPod was in but I totally forgot.
And my discontinuation syndrome has pretty much discontinuated (<–not a word)! I actually left my house today for the first time since last Wednesday and I didn’t have to take Gravol or stop moving to keep from throwing up. Yaaay. Unfortunately, though, this means I’m going to have to go to class on Monday and hand in a ten page story I was supposed to write during these days of can’t-look-at-a-screen-or-my-eyeballs-will-spin-right-outta-my-head. Tomorrow’s gonna be a long day of writing.
And, there’s a wicked storm going on outside! Most people don’t like storms but I love them. It’s been pouring since last night and the wind is intense, all breaking trees and bending signs. I think I like storms because the weather is as chaotic and messed up as I feel most of the time.
So, except for finding the downside to those first two things, life’s ok right now. My deposits are in for college, I’m going to cash the bonds my grandparents set up for me (and buy some new damn headphones and a new laptop since I swear to god this one’s getting a hammer in the face if it crashes one more time), and I can leave the house and listen to music while I do so. Plus there’s rain to watch and an excuse to wear my brightly coloured rain boots.
P.S. It seems I’ve reversed my sleeping again. Not really sure how I pulled that off. So, it’s 6:30 in the morning and I have yet to sleep. Which means you all get to be treated to my weirdy 4 AM thoughts! And this is another good thing, I guess, as long as I can pull it off. I’m still getting more than enough sleep and for some reason I much prefer to be up at night than during the day. I get a lot more done (homework, file maintenance, writing, housework) in a couple hours in the middle of the night than I do getting up at 7 after a full night’s sleep and having the whole day.
P.P.S. It occurs to me suddenly that I’m on no medication at all right now, not even the pill since it’s my off week, and it’s kinda scary. I like the feeling, though.
