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| JJ Guitar: a little while, say, 30-45 minutes Hard Reading: maybe an hour? Work: nothing that pays, but I traded a lot of relevant emails today, about that and church stuff and M stuff French: None. I did stop by the library to pick up the next video, but it's out (most annoying. I'm surprised this is happening, and not thrilled about it). As for my CD ROM, yeah...just didn't do it Time in bed: 10 hours. id est too much. I was annoyed about this. I moved my clock away from my bed because yesterday I'd stayed extra time just because I was at 7 hours, and I do this instead. Was pretty irked about it this morning. Commentary: So yeah, did some good stuff today, pushed along some major things with those afternoon blitzes, which I was glad for, but I'm still annoyed about the no French and the 10 hours in bed part. I would've gotten the french in on the other end, but I ended up hanging out with L all night (seriously, for like 6 hours, until half an hour ago, until she couldn't keep her eyes open (though for her, that's more common than you might think :)). So I'm glad for that part, but annoyed about the extra 2 hours of sleep, and the time waste this afternoon. I 100% guarantee progress on French tomorrow though. Yep SDG | | |
| JJ Guitar: A lot. a couple hours, though there were definitely some computer-y interruptions in there Work: 0 French: 0 (little bummed about this one. Coulda squeezed it in) Heavy reading: 20 minutes worth? mostly while waiting for other things Light reading: none Time in bed: 8.75 hours. A shade too much, particularly given that I first woke at 7 hours. Other: a lotta talk with friends and gettnig out of the house today, which was good. Contra dance and Rise up (standard Wednesday), talked with a few friends substantively...so while I didn't hit a lot of my things that I planned to quantify, today, I'm generally ok with how I spent the day. There's still definitely a big amount of stupid youtube time, I suppose, but I do like the days when I go about, work up a sweat, spend time with people, etc. For tomorrow: Definitely gotta log some french, both getting the next videos from the library and trying out this CD-ROM I've got. We'll keep going on the guitar, we get pushy on Morocco and Work stuff starting Friday. SDG | | |
| So my life is free of much of a schedule, these days. I have super-flexible work (when I have work), very few standing commitments or even consistent events in a week, and, sadly, not a ton of friends in the area who gobble up my time (love you dearly though, when you do :). Now, My life's been (almost) this flexible a lot--most of last year, and for the past few months, but I've recently had the notion that keeping track of how i spend my days might be helpful as an accountability thing, encourage me to do better, knowing that I have to face the cold hard truth in black and white on my blog at the end of the day. Hopefully I'll be truthful :) Alex did this, a few years ago, and it helped him, so...yeah, worth a shot. I think I'll just commit to it for a week, at first; every day, towards the end, I'll come by, and tell how much time I've spent in the following pursuits Guitar: I find it pretty worthwhile, and I'm getting my barre chords ok, though guitar time isn't always pure guitar time, since I keep the songs on my comp and often get distracted. Still, we'll try and keep the time as pure as possible, or if not, record it accurately French: Simple enough. Maybe if I get good enough I'll be blogging in french by the time I go. What's french for blog? :) Work: This stat has been 0 of late, and will continue to be till my dear boss talks to her co-author and sends me new work (inshallah). She said she would this week. I tend to be a binge worker though. Maybe this blog will help me change that? Good reading: Books I've been given, feel I should read, etc. Though I gotta say, a lotta these books people give me would make a much stronger case as essays. I've gone from reading to skimming and skipping increasingly lightly over a few of them, as I realize the author only has one thing to say... Fun Reading: I've been burning through Dresden Files books, and I still have to finish the Fionavar tapestry series. This has probably gotten the lion's share of my time, past few days, which...I tend to believe that reading is a worthwhile pursuit, and it's certainly better than watching youtube videos all day, but I don't know if it quite falls into the "worthwhile pursuits" category. Sleep/time in Bed: I rarely get too little, these days. Shoot for maybe 7.5-8.5 hours? I don't mind waking up at noon, 'long as I went to bed at 4. Well, I do kinda miss the sunshine, sometimes... Other worthwhile/commentary on my day: varying degrees of wortwhile, of course. I always love friends and relationships and never consider time spent in person with a friend time asted. Tonight I IM'd for an hour with Lucy and Grace while watching youtube videos and playing hearts. Does that count? The conversations were pretty busy, and with Grace at the start particularly it was substantive. Hard to decide. Also falling into this category is my ultimate games my rise up singing and bible study (both tomorrow), maybe some writing if I ever do it (I quite like the idea, but I don't know when/if it'll be good to make it happen. Now might be a good time, but if I have work I sometimes find that writing and work consume the same fuel). Anything else? If I had readership, I'd ask them for comments, but what with the cobwebs aroudn this ol' blog, I'm pretty sure I don't. Well, it doesn't promise to get much more exciting, boys and girls, sorry :) I'm debating asking any readers who know me in person to reveal themselves. This is a classic problem with blogs, the dueling desires for anonymity and to be discovered and known and loved. I guess ignorance is bliss, for now, particularly since I'm not gabbing about my love life or anything, but I'm not abandoning the idea of kicking y'all out yet. Someday... Ok, one week commitment. See you tomorrow night then, Internet | | |
| I was just thinking on the parallels between my life in Kijabe and my life in P, and so I came back here to read what I wrote of sweet Wan back then, and, reading back over the blog, I'm sad that I haven't kept it up. I mean, I guess I never did so very faithfully (though you, gentle/non-existent reader, will be deceived if you look back, for I got paranoid and privatized it all), but it's interesting for me to go back and read and think "Oh, did I go to P in December of '05? I scarcely remember." So far I only have two parallels, but they're big ones: The changing of jobs partway through (here I was laid off and took back my old D job, there I handed over management of the motel), which opened up my schedule, and the coming of massive one-woman-improvements in my quality of life. Wan and Lucy. Lucy and Wan. Princeton has helped me remember how crucial Wan was to me in Kijabe, how grateful I was to her, how lonely I was before her. At D we were still close, and we had claims on each other that perhaps no one else did, but it's fair to say we both have an embarrassment of riches, friendwise, at dear old D. And she had a lot at RVA, but for whatever, reason she spent a lot of time with me for the 6 weeks we were friends. Mostly we just sat and talked, or she sang. I remember the night we started out sitting in a big circle of RVA kids under the stars, but Wan and I got to talking, a few spots removed from each other in the circle, anda half hour later I realized with amuesment that everyone else had drifted a few paces away from us into a new circle while Wan and I talked intensely. We really clicked, and she really blessed me. And Lucy does, now. P's rather a different place than RVA, in a lot of ways: I was guaranteed to run into Wan within the confines of RVA, but Lucy and I blitz back and forth and agree to study parties and movies and dinners. She told me last night she's had 4 people ask her if we were "more than friends". (I responded that I'd counted 23 askance looks). We hung out on Monday, and I commented (though I'd had the thought before and vetoed it...shows how good I am at censoring myself) half-jokingly that it had been so long since we'd hung out, since Thursday. She matched my tone with her assent that it was ridiculous, absurd, terrible. Wan was so unlike me in her heratfelt exuberance for joy and beauty--when we would talk at night, whenever the power flickered (which was often), we suspended our topic of conversation so she could glory in them; Lucy is unlike me in her sweet legitimate encouraging spirit. Only the most recent example: I was chastising myself for poor use of a good opening Lucy had given me to insult her, and she jumped in, all seriousness, with "no, you are a very funny person". I was expecting banter, would've enjoyed it, but thats not really her. And...it's really not me, but it's so kind, so sweet, and it's a useful thing to learn. SHe's loveable in many ways though. I don't want you to think she's milquetoast or whate'er. She's got some nice laying-out-into-a-giant-mud-puddle pictures up from her ultimate tourney this weekend. I actually copied one of the pictures and sent it to a D friend who I'd recently spoken to of Lucy, with a message like "Now do you see why I love her?" Though I do wonder, actually, why Lucy is so good to me. Because for all the students I know here, and there are a lot (I have 34 facebook friends here now), she's really the only one I hang out with one-on-one, the only one who seeks me out and invites me to things and tells me what's going on. I get along with everyone else. We laugh and banter and I attend events and during the summer we played. But no one else invites me. I guess time is part of it. There's at least one person who would, I'm pretty sure, hang out more, except she's a workaholic of sorts. But I joke with Lucy about how she's my only friend here, and I wonder if she knows how true it is. I may have to ask her why she's so good to me, if I don't decide that question is fishin- for-complimentish. I mean, I believe I'm good company, I suppose, but she's a senior, and she had a lot of friends before I came here. With Wan I was very much someone from the outside, from a world she was headed for rather than the world she was of, or, to pick another example, with my freshmen last year they were new and grateful for a sort of "big brother" figure, perhaps, so we bonded and loved each other and it was good, but I really don't know what I bring to this relationship. We click, sure, but Wan and I click, and we still weren't overly central to each other once we were both at D with a lot of other friends. I suppose the mindset of "how have I earned this love" is a wrong one, in this or any case. I don't really understand it I am grateful though, very much so, to Lucy and to God. To Lucy, more than she may know. To God, never enough. | | |
| about the time I was 12 or 13 I got very involved in this thing called the Fantasy Powers League. It's an online game where you create a character, write his story and give him a variety of powers (you only get so many to give him) and then your creation is randomly pitted against other people's characters, and members of the site vote on who they think should win. It's an interesting thing, actually, because while you're theoretically judging "do I think someone with flight and invisibiliy would beat someone with pyrokinesis and armor skin" and some decisions are made that way, most people vote on which character they like more, who has a cooler backstory, a better picture, something like that. If your character lost a certain number of times, then he was kicked out, and if he won a bunch of times he could get to something called the main event. It was a fun place, and I got some previously uncirculated creative juices going (and not much circulated since, sadly, though writing for a living is something I've always thought would be cool). Still, what I remember more than the game is the community that surrounded the FPL, and the internet social life that sprang from this. I got to be close buddies with Hexxy, 3D, Piggy, MrGraves and many others in the FPL chatroom. I still occasionally chat with 3D on IM. On my 14th birthday, I remember, they made me a little website, and recorded a message (audio, not video. This is turn-of-the-millennium) for me. It was really very sweet. Eventually the FPL went through some shakeups and I stopped doing that, and I drifted into real life sociality when I went to HS, but still, this was an interesting chunk of my life Anyway, the lone girl of the bunch was Kane (pronounced Kah-nay, properly, but I never thought of it that way), and we got very close, in the weird internet way of things. She was the first person to whom I ever admitted liking a girl (it was Sarah at the time, my longtime friend in youth group). I remember shaking as I typed and sent the message, because, even though it was obvious to everyone else in the world, admitting something out loud (well, in a message) for the first time is kinda big. And she told me her secrets too, some of which I wouldn't divulge to this day. And yet, for reasons I don't remember, we would also fight a lot, or at least, I would get mad at her. I would get so mad at her that I would delete her from my contact list, delete things she'd sent to me, try to wipe her completely from my hard drive. Of course, my temper would pass, and I'd add her back and regret having lost the files, the message history, whatever I had deleted. I'd feel a little foolish for my temper, and that sense would be heightened as the IM client would make me request to be added to the contact list and so on. After several iterations of this process, I grew to know that, despite how I felt at a moment, ultimately Kane and I would make up and I was really better off not deleting anything of hers just because I was temporarily irked. It's a good lesson, and one that's followed me throughout my life. There are a lot of related lessons I learned from my siblings, but whenever I have the urge to delete anything from my computer, I think of Kane, and know I'll eventually regret it, and I don't. Which is mostly a positive thing, but it's kinda annoying, too, because deleting things, being vindictive, it feels good, in the moment. The even-keeled me that tells the raging or hurt me to chill out, because things are bound to blow over, I get frustrated with him sometime. There's a part of me that's utterly sure that I won't ever go crazy and start doing destructive things, and I hate always having that knowledge with me. But then, it's only the knowledge that "I'm not that guy" that makes me not that guy, I think. And I'm glad I'm not that guy. Just don't tell me that right now | | |
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