It's the final countdown

So I'm out of this place in just about a month and ten days.

Which happens.

But what makes it feel weird this time is two things.  I feel like I'm really starting over--I'm getting rid of my personal ties and nearly all of my physical posessions.  The other part is how much people know about it.  I've tended to sneak away when I move, but I advertised it this time.

People are a bit frantic with the eminent deadline--no more me time.  And I guess the attention is kind of nice but it's also very overwhelming.  I hardly have time to prepare myself or even to spend a moment alone.  As much as I crave being with people I like, I need moments to myself.

It feels like my life is divided into time slots dictated by social and financial obligations.  I work 40 hours a week and I have to squeeze people into my allocated free time.  Part of my frustration might be due to my schedule--it is pretty unnatural.  I work nights--meaning I'm taken from 1.30 to 10 most of the time. Most of the time, it feels like.  And I stay up late to make it feel like I have a life.  And it works sometimes.  But sometimes I'm just tired all of the time and feel utterly oppressed.

I was in Louisiana about a week ago, which was nice and horrible in it's own way, and my schedule changed.  My schedule shifted to earlier and I felt better.  It might have ust been the free time though.

Man, I don't have focus.

I just feel trapped by money.  That's the real issue.  Because if I had enough, I would have time and that's all I really want in the world.


And the starting over part is scary because I have no idea what I'm getting into and I'm worried about running out of money before things get good.  Hah, money.

What's frustrating is that I can't help but feel like it's my fault. I'm in charge of my life--good and bad--so if shit goes wrong, there's no one else to blame.  There's no one else to talk to either because no one else is involved.


So I'm leaving again soon.  I'm saying goodbyes and enjoying people while I can.  I can probably handle being a little sleepy.  And as for the future, all I can do is what I can.

Delusions of grandeur

Is it that I want immortality?

I've always wanted to be in one of those circle of thinkers, creators, even just smart people who create the waves that shape the world; the group of artists from whom stem all the revolutionary ideas of a generation. A group where discussions matter on a large scale--they change the whole world--they make the ideas that penetrate every mind on the planet and determine the flow of history.

Fuck Baudelaire

OK, two things:

I apparently know some crazy ass people and drugs seem like a crazy amazing adventure.

I've always wanted to explore. Explore everything. Every kind of everything.

A friend of mine just told me about speed balls and when he was living his crazy, horrible, ghetto ass, fucked up, amazingly interesting life he could do two of those in a row.

And oh my god he will testify to what kind of shitty life he was living at the time, but I don't know what that's like and I want to.

The derelict and impoverished (both financially and every other sort of way) side of life have some horrible beautiful appeal.  It is another frontier I have yet to cross.

I'm running away

I am running away and will live out a dream.  


In August I am moving to Costa Rica.  oh man oh my god.  


This will be incredible and the thought is currently scaring the shit out of me.  I don't know what it's going to be like.  I don't know what to expect and I don't have a safety net.  


The gradschool bug in me is telling me to tour universities--take a backbacking trip across South America.  And I would so love that.  Part of me isn't ready for gradschool yet.  And part of me wants to settle down and get a job fast so I don't screw myself over and end up a hobo.


But despite what I'm freaking out about, I know it will be worth it.  This is something few people get to experience, be it because they actually can't or just don't let themselves (which is more often the case).


I live in Texas, and although it's Austin, people still react confusedly when I tell them I'm leaving.--"What?  You don't want to climb the ladder in your retail job?  What?  There's more out there?  Why Not just settle?" And so it makes me feel like a crazy person.


But now, I'm visiting my sister in Berkeley, which is a pretty cool place, and since everyone is a lot more accepting, it's helping raise my spirits.


I will be sad to leave Austin, but it feels like time to move on.  I've been there a while and I haven't been super happy.  I feel like I could do more somewhere else, so I need to go and try instead of stagnate.

I've got the grad school bug again

Ever since I got reunited with my grandpa over this last Christmas, I've been thinking a lot about family and genetics.  I've also been obsessed with determinism ever since I first heard of the idea.  Christmas got me fucked up with genetic determinism.


The thing is, it makes so much since.  I am so convinced that reality is dictated in a calculate-able, predictable, sensible way and there is no escaping it and we all lack free will.  I hate it and don't want it to be true so I'm reading everything I can to convince myself that it's not.  


I just finished reading "Who's in Charge" by Michael Gazzaniga and it is really good.  I recommend it to anyone interested in a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of the brain.  It did't quite convince me, but it made a really good case.  My current stance is that although complex systems can't be predicted, and human interactions and just even human existence is not only a complicated system, but a complicated interaction of multiple complicated systems, I still think that once we know more these calculations and predictions could be made.  I think they could, but I hope they can't.


How this relates to grad school is such:
I am interested in ideas.  When I studied literature, I studied it comparatively--how cultures and time periods interact to shape one another.  It is a representation of minds bumping into each other within one of our many complicated systems as humans.  It's mental evolution.  Through studying literature, you can see into the mind of the author, see where he came from, and see the people around him--his society--the world.  Books are doors.


There is a more precise study of ideas that I need to learn more about before I commit myself to it and that is the study of memes.  Memes are like the genes of thoughts. They are the building blocks of ideas and are transmitted and can evolve just like viruses.  


I would love to do a collaborative study with a neuroscientist involving memes, broadly, literature, specifically, and their quantitative role in the human mind.


There are so many places I would like to go with this!  For me, this seems to open doors to everything.


I just need to find what kind of program that would be and where I could find it.

Be my shoulder

I've been feeling really pathetic recently because I want a shoulder to cry on.  That feels so unnatural to me since I have been emotionally independent for a long time.  But right now I wish I could trust someone to be stronger than me.

What's bringing this up now is what happened at work today as well as all the back-thoughts that go along with it.  Today I asked Ex to get all his stuff by the end of the month because someone new is moving in (oh I hope this isn't another Mooch).  (By the way, if you're a vindictive person and feel like harassing someone for me, Mooch is named Dave and goes by Super Dave on Facebook.  The more I think about him the more I regret that I didn't do something more substantial while he was still here.  Fuck.  But any who.) 

Any who.

So I asked Ex to get his things, and it seemed settled, but we kept talking and that's when things got a bit more upsetting.  I don't remember what it was exactly that got things going down hill, but he started telling me all the bitchy things he could do to me in my current situation.  Things like kick out Roommie (who isn't on the lease yet), come in whenever and without repercussions (since he won't give up his key and is still on the lease), fuck me over financially, cut off the utilities that are in his name, etc.  Yet he said he wasn't trying to threaten me.  Hah.

It's all about power.  I hurt his feelings so he wants to feel like he could fuck me over to get back.  He is trying his hand at being vindictive.  That's also why he's not getting all of his stuff.  He said he'd have it out by the end of December.  Didn't happen.  He's come over more than once since, but refuses to take everything.  He wants an excuse to come back and harass me.  It sucks being on the receiving end, but in a way it's a good thing for his personality--he's being assertive instead of a doormat.  But, like I said, it sucks being the one getting fucked. 

So, after all these threats, he expects me to see the reason in his assertion that he is "being very cool about the situation."  That doesn't fit with his actions or with what he said to me last time he was over: "I want you to live in fear."  How the fuck am I supposed to take that?

And what kills me the most is that he's converted people against me.  The one person I used to talk to seems to be avoiding me and hanging out with him more instead.  He's playing the victim while throwing me under the bus.  I don't necessarily want to be pitied, what I want is for people who bother to know anything, get to know the whole story.  I hate the one-sided-ness.  In some ways he is coming out on top.  At the current moment, he is living with his parents again.  That means no bills, no financial stress, good food, and probably even gas money.  All he's got is hurt feelings.  I guess I should have just abandoned him at the beginning--I shouldn't have tried to stay in the apartment.  But I didn't and don't trust him to take care of his own shit, not to mention mine. 

So much about my current situation seems fucked and I don't see an end, at least not by the time I want it.  I'm unhappy at my job but I'm hoping to move at the end of my lease, so I've halted job searches.  But at this point I don't know if I'm going to have enough saved up to move.  And if not, then what do I do?  Stick around here, wasting time for another year?  Move in with one of my parents?  Move anyway?  Nothing seems like a good option.

Fuck I'm a downer today.  At least I'm making French onion soup for dinner.

What the fuck goes with these goddamn skirts?!

I've had these for a while and totally bought them on a whim and I've worn them maybe about three times.  I'm still kind of shitty with matching, and these don't seem to be for beginners.

I will post better pictures when not drunk.  (High-five empty bottle of rum!)