Turning up the music and pretending the noises in the hallway are background noises in "Taking the Farm" or "Shine a Light"

Wolf Parade says, "And I'm content, I'm content, I'm content to be quiet/ Some will sink and some will get called to the light."  I'm sitting in my bed, quiet, in my room, and my parents are fighting about where my Dad put his inhaler.  He can't find it.  My mother says he needs to be more responsible with his medication, and he needs to put it away when he is done with it.  That is, he shouldn't leave it in the kids room, in their drawer, on top of their desk, etc.  My father yells back that he needs his inhaler, or he can't breathe at night.  And besides, where is he going to put it?  "In a fucking safe?"  Etc, etc.  The wailing in the background of "Taking the Farm" can't be distinguished from the wailing outside my bedroom door, so I'm quiet, content.

When I am cleaning out the grease traps at work, or emptying the friolators through the fry-filter, I still get comments that I am not smiling, or that I don't look happy.  Why do I need to have a smile on my face when I am covered in grease, and while I am filtering that, if handled irresponsibly, could give me third degree burns on my arms?  Those too are occasions for smiling and chipper conversations?

A vicodin inspired rambling

On my bike ride today I saw a real estate sign in front of a house on the top of a hill, under power lines, that said: "For Sale: 21 Acres."  I shook my head in disgust, and thought, "great, a soccer mom and her robot husband and 2 robot, zombie children with penciled in schedules on the refrigerator are going to buy it, not use the 21 acres, because they think they need a sprawling yard in sprawling suburbs.  What a waste," because I've been thinking lately that our sprawling suburbs idea has not been the best long term plan.  Anyways, after I shook my head in disgust, I shook my head in disgust again, because I realized I too would want 21 acres of land.  But why?  What would I do with 21 acres of land?  Do I need that much land?  Does anyone, besides farmers, need 21 acres of land?  If we don't need it, why do we buy it?  Why do we buy anything we don't need?  Why do we buy anything?  

Randy Travis is on David Letterman right now singing a song from his new album.  He's sold 21 million albums and I've never heard of him.  Do people from other countries listen to country music?

You know our hearts beat time they're waiting for something that'll never arrive

Franklin smelled like a stogy last week.  I don't know why.  Driving through the center of town, past Devitas, I smelled a stogy, and thought it was coming from the psuedo-Italian men working at Deviats at 10:30 at night, mopping up the deli floor, but when I stopped at the stop lights in front of St. Mary's church, I still smelled stogies.  

I'm riding my bike.  Sometimes I get migraines afterwards, sometimes I don't.  There is no rhyme or reason to it.   I've conducted so many experiments on myself while riding.  I have an appointment August 5 with a neurologist.  This neurologist is supposed to be really good.  The office sent me a packet of information about migraines, neurology, etc, and a packet of information about my migraines that I need to fill out before arriving on August 5, and I have to bring a copy of my MRI.  At the other neurologist I went to, I didn't have to do any of that.  I think I got the ghetto migraine treatment.

I want to know what people are thinking when they leave their Dunkin Donuts iced coffee cups on the side of the roads.  I've been keeping track on every ride.  While I am riding my bike, I see medium sized ice coffee cups sitting inside the white lines on streets. They have remnants of cream and sugar, tinted with a little bit of coffee sitting at the bottom of the cup, tilted, spilling over onto the white line, or into a pothole.  There are more Dunkin Donuts iced coffee cups on the side of the road than any other kind of litter.  In fact, I bet there are more Dunkin Donuts iced coffee cups than old condom wrappers, empty bottles of water, McDonald's cheeseburger wrappers, and empty soda bottles combined.  The side of the road is not a trash barrel.

I haven't updated in a while, and I am going to bitch and whine and complain and look for sympathy

I haven't updated this blog in a while. I've been having a frustrating summer so far, and all of the frustration is a direct result of my migraines.

A month ago I realized that my post-exercise migraines were coming back after being absent for a year. I thought that maybe they were returning because of other circumstances: maybe I was dehydrated, fatigued, maybe I hadn't eaten enough before exercising. But the more I exercised, the more I realized I was getting a regular migraine that has no obvious cause whatsoever. Great. Same position I was in last winter and spring.

Last winter and spring I went to Milford to see a neurologist, Dr. Pearson. She said that a medication, Topamax, commonly used as an anti-seizure medication, has also recently been used in the few rare cases of migraine patients getting migraines for no obvious reason after exercise. So I started taking Topamax, and hey! the post-exercise migraines stopped immediately. Now, however, they are back, and they are back with a vengeance.

It makes sense. Prescribing me Topamax was like putting one of those tiny little circular Scooby-Doo bandaids on a gaping, profusely bleeding wound that requires immediate surgery and blood transfusions: it stopped my pain for a little while, but there is some bigger, more horrible and serious issue lurking deeper within my body that is causing me to be in excruciating pain and agony every time I attempt to exercise.

To complicate my whole migraine affair even more, any pain medication I was taking to alleviate the pain from the migraines has also stopped working. I can't take Imitrex because that was giving me cardiovascular problems, and Tylenol and Advil no longer work. I would have to take 10 Tylenol or 15 Advil for my brain to feel even the slightest cessation in pain. Excedrin migraine sometimes works, I think because of the caffeine that is in it, but it will dull the pain for about 3o minutes. After that, the migraine is back in full force. My doctor also prescribed some other pain medications specific to migraines, and those did even less than Tylenol or Advil. So I decided I would try a Vicodin. A friend of mine gets migraines frequently, and she takes Vicodin, and she says it gets rid of her migraines, so I figured I would try it. Anything to stop the pain.

I took Vicodin one day after I had my post-exercise migraine, and the pain stopped. It was GONE. ALL the pain in my head was GONE. The only medication to have done that before was Imitrex, but that caused so many other complications that I had to stop taking it. Vicodin got rid of my migraines. But after taking Vicodin whenever I got a migraine, which, without exercise, was at least once a week, my tolerance for the medication started to build. Now I have to take 3 Vicodin to get rid of a migraine. I've developed a nasty little habit according to my mother, but what am I supposed to do when I am in excruciating pain?

I also want to know why more research has not been done on migraines. All of the neurologist I've seen have bitched about the lack of research on migraines. The ones who have done the little research there is neurologists who are migraine sufferers themselves.

I have an appointment to see a new neurologist on August 4. Until then, Vicodin is the only thing I can take to get rid of my migraines. I can't really exercise. The only exercise I do now is walking. I'd rather be out of shape for a while than be in excruciating pain all the time. It would be nice, though, if this new doctor could find the reason why I get these migraines after I exercise, instead of giving me a bandaid to put over a more serious and complicated problem.



So what else is going on in my life? I've been trying to read a lot. Today all attempts at reading have failed, though, because, what a surprise, I feel a migraine coming on. This one hasn't even been triggered by anything I can think of, either.

I've been working a lot at Papa Gino's.



I've come to accept that I have no long term plans, no career goals other than getting out of the food service industry by the time I am 30 and becoming an English teacher, and I am ok with that now. I don't need direction in my life, and I don't want it. And it's nice finally to accept that my career (or lack thereof) and my grades should not have any affect on my self-worth.


There's my monthly emo-post.

summer goals

1. Complete my summer reading list.
2. Lose ten pounds by June 7.
3. Write/extend my Orange Line Construction Worker project.
4. Complete the Conversations project.
5. Let's toss in a few 50 mile rides on my bike.


Numbers 3 and 4 are writing projects I am doing. The Orange Line Construction Worker is a 26 page creative essay I did for a creative non-fiction class. I want to work on it more, extend it, and explore things I wrote it in more fully over the summer. The goal is 60 pages.

I hope I can do all of this. I did well last summer with my goals. I work at Papa Gino's around 30 hours a week, and it wipes me out, and I work out a lot in the summer, so the summer always goes by so fast!

When the Elephants Dance- Tess Uriza Holthe
Expensive People- Joyce Carol Oates
A Garden of Earthly Delights- Joyce Carol
OatesSong of Solomon- Toni Morrison
A Portait of the Artist as a Young Man- James Joyce
Chance- Joseph Conrad
The City and the Pilar- Gore Vidal (I've already read it, but I want to read it again)
It- Stephen King (I might not actually get to this one. It's fucking long)
Ulysses- James Joyce (same with this one. I have a feeling I am going to have to pick either It or Ulysses, but not both)
The Picture of Dorian Gray- Oscar Wilde
Nobody Writes to the Colonel- Garcia Marquez (I've read it in Spanish, so it's time to read it in English!)
Stone Butch Blues- Leslie Feinberg (It was on the syllabus for my gay and lesbian lit class last semester but we didn't have time to read it so now I want to read it)
The Blind Assasin- Margaret Atwood (I have owned this book forever and every time I start it I can't get past the first few pages! I want to read it!!!)
Water For Elephants-Sara Gruen (the sign on the big bug in Providence told me to read it so I am going to)
The Chronicles of Narnia -C.S. Lewis

calorie counting

So as a part of this new diet I've gone off bagels. I have completely stopped eating bagels (for a certain period of time) to get the whole bagel thing out of my system, because let's face it, eating a bagel for breakfast every morning is actually fairly unhealthy. You get the bagel, which is like 400 calories, then cream cheese, which is like 200 calories. Pretty intense. And the crazy part is that I would eat this breakfast, which is a 500-600 calorie breakfast, and then I would be hungry again an hour later because it's empty calories. There's no substance to it. It's just carbs. Now I've been eating yogurt with cereal mixed in it, so I get protein, a few carbs, and a little bit of fat (like 3g) all under 300 calories, AND I don't feel hungry until around 12 if I eat at 7:30. If I ate a bagel at 7:30 I'd be hungry again at 8:30. Eventually I'll eat a bagel here and there, cuz bagels can be AWESOME sometimes, but for now, not so much. Especially since they have helped in the gaining of 12-13 pounds since the summer :( :(

I'm trying to be as efficient as possible with calories too now that I am riding my bike again, because I hate getting fatigued on the bike or hitting a wall. I really have to make sure I eat enough protein, fat and carbs. I can't go no carb, or no protein, or especially no fat. I tried cutting back on fat last year and that did not work out. If I am cycling, I must eat some fat SOMETIMES.

Life is so complicated.

Really, I'm not in my bedroom slitting my wrists, I swear!

For my entire life I have been taught that since I have had the potential and the brains to do well in school, that I need to make school my entire life, and that I need to make school the path by which I reach my career. I have also been taught that once I have my career figured out, and once I have a career in mind, I have my life figured out, I have solved who I am and what I want to do with my life.

Life and career are two different words.

Life (n.) 1. the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.

2. the animate existence or period of animate existence of an individual

Career (n.) 1. an occupation or profession, esp. one requiring special training, followed as one's lifework

2. success in a profession, occupation, etc.

A career is a subheading in one’s life. It is not the main title. It is a sidebar. An indentation. Even if you decide that you are going to make your career your entire “life” (and keep in mind, when you say your entire “life,” you mean only after a certain point, only after you have made the decision to make your career your entire “life” (think of this as a linear timeline)), you cannot escape that it is still a subheading, and not the main title. When you were born, you were not “Dan, English teacher.” You were a squirmy, wet, dripping little baby with nothing attached to you anymore. You were out of your mother’s womb and thus not attached to her no longer, and perhaps your parents had not even named you yet. You existed. You were life. You career came later, and thus it is not the main title of your life. It may be the first subheading of your life, but it is not the main title.

That said, why do our guidance counselors, our parents, our grandparents, our peers, our teachers all insist that “career” is the main title of everyone’s life?

In kindergarten, the first step on the path to your career, your teachers have career days. You can bring your parents into school so they can tell your peers about their careers, how they got there, and why they love it. The association begins: school=career; life=career; school=life=career. They are all synonymous, and yet you are 4 or 5 years old. Your teacher then teaches you “stay in school if you want to get a good paying job.” School=career. If you don’t have a good paying job, or a normal job, or the job that the parents of your peers have, you are unsucessful. School=life=career. These three words are all synonymous at the age of five. FIVE!

And so you graduate on to 1^st grade, then to 2^nd, and then to 3^rd, working to pass each grade thinking that your schooling is also your career, and without it, you don’t have a career, and thus without school, you also don’t have a life, because your career is synonymous with your life.

In the 3^rd grade, however, you probably have not decided “what you want to be when you grow up” (remember that phrase?). Once you graduate on into high school, and you sit down with your guidance counselors, and you decide “what you want to be when you grow up,” you can put a period at the end of that sentence. You’ve figured out your life. You are all set. Your guidance counselor can move to his next 15 minute appointment.

So you graduate on to college knowing that you have your entire life figured out, and you have your entire life ahead of you SOLVED! AHA.

Only, you don’t work 168 hours a week (the number of hours in a week). What are you supposed to do with the rest of the time you have off? Even if you have an 80 hour a week job, there are still 88 hours a week left. But most people are content with a 40-50 hour a week job. So that leaves over 120 hours a week! What do you like to do in your spare time?

I am only writing this because the pressure that is placed on children and high school students to define their lives at such a young age is so harmful, and so ridiculous. If someone is the type of person in high school who does know exactly what he wants to do with his career, that means he is that one specific type of person, and yes, that may work very well for him to set a goal for his career, and to work towards that, and to work and work and work towards that. But, there are 6.5 billion people in this world. There is not only one singular type of person. The world would be a far less interesting place if there were only one type of human being. We are all different, but school puts us into little boxes that are all the same size, and are all designed to carry the same weight, and are sent off to the same destination: career (and please, note that career is different from job (or a means to support yourself and to eat)).

It is only now, my third year of college, that I am realizing that, even though I have a career in mind (English teacher) I DON’T know what I want to do with my life, and that is something that is so hard for some people to understand. I say, “I don’t know what I want to do with my life,” and they respond, “I thought you wanted to be an English teacher?” (again, life=career). They are not the same thing. And I don’t know what I want to do with my life, and that is ok, but to realize that when I am 21 years old, after years and years and years of people telling me that I do in fact know what I want to do with my life since I have a career chosen, is very troubling.

So now the question is: what do I want to do? (AND DON’T SAY ENGLISH TEACHER).

I don’t know. I only have vague ideas.

Vague ideas like: I want to drink beer on summer nights outside. I want to ride my bike. I want to buy a beagle and name him Maurice. I want to wear flip flops. I want to have sex on Saturday afternoons. I want to live near the ocean. I want to write. I want to read. I want to drink tea. I want to drink black coffee. I want to wake up early and sit in my backyard. I want to walk around barefoot.

They are vague ideas, but they seem like pretty good ideas, no? And imagine, after all the years I have been in school (let’s see, since I was 4, so that 17 years!) I have never really sat down with myself and thought these things out until now. That is a shame. The things we do while we are living define our lives. And I don’t care what you say, you cannot possibly work 168 hours a week, so you must be doing other things, and if you’ve never thought about those, or don’t care about those, I feel sorry.

My cousin's Catholic high school is giving him a graded test on why homosexuality is wrong.

Y Tu Mama Tambien

I watched a movie the other night. It made me think. If I found out I had cancer, and I knew I was going to die in a month, what will I have left behind? Will I be happy with what I've done and experienced?

I want to go here:











(Bolivia)


And I want to go here:










(Santa Cruz, Bolivia)



I also want to go to Alaska, California, Nepal, France, England, and Germany. And I want to do it before I am 30. And I want to write about it, for me.

I also want to move somewhere outside of New England. But where? And when? When will I travel? Will I travel by myself? Would it be better for me to travel by myself?

When can I do all of this? I also need to get a teaching job right away out of school and start paying off my student loans. I get so stressed out about these things, and I know I shouldn't.

I just don't want to be that person who always says, "I'm going to do this, and this, and this, and that!" but never does any of it, and instead goes through the same dance every day of work, some necessary socializing with other humans, and sleep. I don't want to be that person, but I have been that person so far.

In the movie Little Miss Sunshine, one of the characters, Dwayne, says towards the end of the movie, "You know what? Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another. School, then college, then work... Fuck that. And fuck the Air Force Academy. If I want to fly, I'll find a way to fly. You do what you love, and fuck the rest. "

Life is one (fucking) beauty contest after another. Where is the time to do what you love, or to do SOMETHING else? You have to make time, and when you make time, people label you as a "slacker," or "irresponsible," or a "dreamer," or "silly," or as "living in his/her own fantasy land" (or something like that, you know what I mean). People think I don't live in the "real world," whatever the "real world" is, like I am somehow living in an alternate universe.

Well, I'm not living in an alternate universe. I just hate that I'm stuck doing some stupid dance, or going through one beauty contest after another, when I shouldn't be wasting my time with that. I should be doing other things, but instead I write about it in a blog, or in a notebook, and then close the notebook, and go back to work, back to the same dance, the same beauty contest. Once I graduate, fuck it, I'm taking a road trip somewhere, and everybody can suck it.

Spring break work

I have so much work I've been doing this spring break, but I am actually getting a lot of it done!

For spring break I have to:
-(re)read The Awakening
-Read 7 critical essays written about The Awakening
-Read When I Was Puerto Rican (memoir)
-Read Madame Bovary
-Read The Warden
-Read 3 essays in literary theory
-Summarize the 3 essays on literary theory
-Write 2 pages of writing project, do memo sheet
-Write 15 pages of writing project for WMS 490 (its a 30 page project)
-Research for Madame Bovary presentation

The things in bold are the things I've done so far. So all the big things are out of the way. Now I just have to finish the rest! Yay for spring breaks to get caught up on work.

bicycle

I am on my spring break! And I am starting it off by doing what I love to do most! Riding my bicycle!

Spring break is almost here!!! I can't wait to workout all week and drink tea and read!!!

I am so fucking tired. Is it 10:00 yet? Is it? Is it? I want to go to bed. Spring break, please come quickly. I know I will be using you only to catch up on work, but still, I can sleep and wake whenever I feel like it. Bah! And I can make jasmine tea all day while I do work! This sucks.

Seriously

Seriously, my life sucks this week. UGH. Class 8-5 tomorrow, then work 5-10, then on Wednesday I have to write a 6 page paper, and I have no idea what I am going to write about. Great.

Veins

I am feeling so completely unmotivated the past three days. It’s horrible. I wanted to get up at 7 this morning, but that didn’t happen. I suppose getting 3 hours of sleep the night before, and then having to go to class 8-5, then work 5-10 didn’t help that. By the time I got to bed last night (around 11), I was exhausted. So I slept until 9, got up, took a shower, watched tv, then came here to the library, where I am doing nothing but updating my blog, drinking coffee, and reading messageboards. I have to go to work at 1. Sucks. After work I have to study for my philosophy exam. Also sucks. I have to be able to articulate fully the “brain in a vat” problem for the exam. I have a lot of trouble articulating myself with philosophy, which I guess IS one of the essential problems of philosophy. If you can’t articulate yourself, you’re not much of a philosopher now, are you?

I have this vein that runs across the top of my temple on the right side of my head, and whenever I get a migraine or get really stressed out, this vein pops out and I can run my finger across it and feel it. This vein used to pop out only when I had a migraine or was extremely stressed. Lately, however, the vein has been perpetually visible on the side of my head. That is how this semester is going.

I think the girl sitting next to me is on coke. She is tweaking out and is always looking around behind her, acting all paranoid. Cocaine is bad, mmkay?

more thoughts on creativity and why it sucks

School completely and totally sucks every ounce of creativity out of my body. I cannot possibly be creative, invest myself in creativity, live creativity, be creativity, if I am constantly trying to get by in academia. My thoughts right now are only on the epistemology exam I have to take Thursday, and when I am going to find time to study for that. And when am I going to find time to read (again) The Awakening and Mary Barton? Perhaps I should not have pissed my entire Monday away by trying to write something creative (for a class even, but nonetheless, I am investing WAY too much time and creative energy into it). Every night I am left lying in bed, planning my next day, planning when I can read such and such chapter, such and such book, and write such and such literary analysis paper. Sometimes I just want to move to some unknown city (unknown as it, I have never been to it before) and put all my time into working (obviously, so I can eat) and being creative, and writing. Sometimes I realize I can do that HERE while working, but not until I've graduated. Ugh. It's such a mess. It's a sad day when one realizes and fully understands how much energy and time it takes to be "creative." I can't just set aside an hour a day for "creativity" as though I were setting aside an hour a day for exercise, or reading. It's a full time commitment, like having a child, which, actually, is probably why when so many women artists or musicians have children, a huge change in their work is very noticeable (see Tori Amos, Sylvia Plath). Sigh. I want to graduate badly. School has never been my strong area because of reasons like this.

Paper Daughter

Do not waste your time reading the rubbish that is the memoir Paper Daughter by M. Elaine Mar. First, most people should know that I think memoirs are shit to begin with.

Second: this memoir especially is SHIT. M. Elaine Mar, why the fuck do I want to listen to you complain to me for 292 fucking pages about how difficult your life has been because you are Chinese? Do you think I care? Do you think no one else has had it difficult? And moreover, did you ever stop to think that maybe your woes are not the fault of the United States, but the fault of your incredibly stupid parents as described in your shitty "book"?

Third: grow a pair of balls, M. Elaine Mar, and write fiction. Memoir writers are fiction writers without balls. Grow a pair and write a memorable, significant piece of fiction. Instead of telling the readers what the restaurant in your memoir represented, grow a pair of balls, write fiction, and make the restaurant symbolic of some bigger concept that you could have tackled through writing fiction, but instead pussy-footed around in your little, nice nice memoir.

Fourth: in case you didn't know, M. Elaine Mar, but Toni Morrison already did the "I'm a minority trying to live up to the white, blonde hair, blue eyes, Shirley Temple, American ideal" thing. It's called The Bluest Eye. Read it. It's a good novel.

Fifth: learn how to write. No reader enjoys whining, complaining, self-loathing. For example, on page 79, you write, "I was sick of being ugly and stupid and hated." Awww, sorry, M. Elaine Mar.

Sixth: on that same note, I don't know if you talk to other human beings about childhood, or if you thought it would be wise to do so before you decided to dedicate 292 pages to writing about childhood, but in case you didn't know, most people do in fact find childhood difficult. It's not just you! I was picked on too in elementary school. And middle school. It is nothing new, nothing special. Instead of telling the world for 292 pages about what it's like to be picked on as a kid, an experience that most people know about anyways, grow a set of balls and write something significant about childhood (ie, write fiction).

Seventh: your memoir explores nothing interesting or new. Every child has faced the issues you discuss in your memoir. To make these issues interesting and/or symbolic, you could have grown a pair of balls and written fiction, and created a piece of art that reaches out to the entire world, but no, instead you wrote a memoir, focusing only on yourself. Poor, poor you.

Ok I am done with my rant. That, people, is why I refuse to accept the memoir as a art form with any credibility.

50 words!?

So my writing teacher told us to pick a scholarly article and to do a "textual analysis." She said to start our "textual analysis" by summarizing the article in 50 words. 50 words? 50 words!? My first sentence (ONE sentence!) is 53 words. I hate obligatory writing classes. I hate this. My first sentence was, "In her article “Be(e)ing and ‘Truth:’ Tar Baby’s Signifying on Sylvia Plath’s Bee Poems,” Malin Walther Pereira asserts her claim that a critical reading Sylvia Plath’s Bee Poem sequence (a sequence consisting of five poems) through Tony Morrison’s ant colony metaphor in her novel Tar Baby shows Plath’s limited, white perspective on feminism." Do I really need to take a writing class with freshmen? PC said I didn't have to, but apparently at URI even English majors can't write.

Cold Weather

Ever notice the difference between the different types of cold weather?

Reductio Ad Absurdum

I haven’t updated in a wicked long time. I started classes. They’re going well. The usual blah blah blah. I’m enjoying my reading. Speaking of reading, I have to read Benito Cereno tonight, and then start Jane Eyre tomorrow. I also have to start Paper Daughter tomorrow. So much reading!

I like the writing I do for my advanced writing class, but I don’t like the class. I’m not going to say it’s “too happy” for me, because I don’t want to sound like a completely miserable person, but, well, it’s too happy. In this class, everyone is a winner. Everyone’s writing is wonderful, and everyone’s writing is a winner. I hate it, because it’s just not true. And I am not saying that to be stuck up because I think my writing is better than everyone else’s. I am saying that because when I read a piece of my writing out loud to the 11 other students in the class, I want feedback! I’m mad because I know my writing sucks! If my writing didn’t suck, I’d be a published author selling books at Barnes and Noble. But I’m not a published author selling books at Barnes an Noble, so my writing sucks! (my philosophy teacher would cream her pants over that deductive argument I just used in my journal entry!) Moreover, I want negative feedback so I know what to improve in my writing! In this class, when we read out loud to the class, the rest of the class is not allowed to respond or comment, because the teacher said, “I don’t want anyone responding or commenting, because if someone or some people respond more to one person’s writing and not as much to another’s, I don’t want that other person to feel like her writing is left out, or not as good.” I’m not in kindergarten anymore. I can handle criticism, and I can handle it when someone doesn’t like my writing. In fact, I really, really, really want to know when someone has a problem with something I wrote! I write (and all writer’s write) for an audience, whether the writer acknowledges it or not. Therefore, if the intended audience doesn’t understand what I am saying, or has ideas as to what I can improve, I definitely want to know! I am taking a writing class to improve my writing, not to have everyone hold my hand and say, “aww isn’t that nice?” Ok, that rant is done now.

I’m gonna order myself a pizza tonight, eat it, then pass the fuck out because I am so tired! I worked two shifts at Bagelz yesterday, then wrote a 5 page paper, then read half of a novel. I also went to class Tuesday 8-5 non-stop, then worked 5-10 Tuesday night, and went to class today 8-5. Fuckers!

writing, creativity, and ice scrapers in the back seats of cars that are more significant and useful than those airport novels

I move back to Rhode Island tomorrow for the semester. Well, actually I am going back to RI for about a day, going to work in RI tomorrow, then going to class 8-5 on Thursday, then leaving at 5 on Thursday to come home, then going to Boston either Thursday night or Friday to visit my Jonathan for the weekend. I am really looking forward to going to Boston this weekend to see him. Spending time with him is always fun, and we're going to go ice skating, go out for tea (which we always do), and DRINK. I love it.

Anyways, I went off on a tangent. I'm moving back to Rhode Island tomorrow. This semester I am going to try to organize group rides with the cycling club. The cycling club there is kind of dormant so I want to revive it.

I'm also taking creative writing class. Well, it's sort of creative writing class. It's its weird own little class. It's a 400 level writing class in the women's studies department, but it's taught by a fiction writer, so it's a fiction writing class. Anyhow, I'll have to stay deep in the creative process this semester in order to do well in the class. I need to take the class to take my writing and my creative process to the next level, and I haven't done that in so long. It's just such a drain to go all out and write. I can't just write fun little poems here and there for fun. It's either going to be everything or nothing. Lately (as in the past few years) it's been nothing. It's just not the time to write. And instead of driving myself towards insanity about it the way Plath did for example, I'll just accept it. It's not the time to write. Maybe now it is, since something told me to take this class this semester. But I have to stop beating myself up over not having written anything significant the past two or three years. It's not writer's block. There is no such thing as "writer's block." People who suffer from "writer's block" write suspense novels or romance novels thrown away in airports or left to get dirty and wet on the backseat floor of cars. They get torn up every time you throw your ice scraper down next to them, or stained every time you toss that styrofoam white, orange and purple Dunkin' Donuts coffee cup next to them . They're just as insignificant as the authors who wrote them. And if that sounds condescending and elitist, then, yea, it is.

So will I write anything of significance this semester? Will I finally submit something to a literary magazine? A poetry contest? Will I invest myself in my writing the way I did in high school? If I don't, why not? Am I lazy, or is it just not the right time? Will the right time show itself eventually? Do I have to move away somewhere to be able to write? What is it?

Hi. I am so tired. I've just finished working 32 hours in 3 days, and I have to go to a funeral early tomorrow morning, and it's late now, which means I won't be getting much sleep tonight. It's shitty, but I guess it could be worse.

We're supposed to get a lot of snow tomorrow, and apparently a lot of schools have already canceled for tomorrow. So that means when I get home from the funeral and whatever else we have to do tomorrow, I am coming home and passing out in a nice warm bed while I watch the snow fall outside. I love it.

I'm mad at my parents. If they don't stop bitching at each other, I am going to kick them. When I am older and married, I'll never raise my voice to my husband, and if he raises his voice to me, I'll kick him.

Anyways, I went for a bike ride yesterday. I hit a wall, BIG TIME! I got to the biggest climb of the ride, and right before I started the climb, my legs just like, stopped. I couldn't pedal anymore. I had to stop for a minute, have some water, and try to figure out wtf to do. I ended up finishing the ride and completing the climb, but god damn. I have never hit a wall like that before. I think I miscalculated how much I needed to eat the two days before the ride. The 11 hour closing shift at work followed by the 7 hour closing shift definitely didn't help either. I need to remember: when going on long rides, don't do so after closing shifts! My legs can't take that kind of abuse. Well they can, but I don't get as much out of my ride as I could if I were riding healthy.

I did some yoga today.

So far since the new year, I've lost 2lbs. I weigh myself at the same time every morning. 2lbs! My goal is 7, so I have 5 more to go. I want to get to 125 by the spring for my riding.

Drake and Josh is the dumbest show I've ever seen.

I've decided to vote for Hillary instead of Barack.

My new clothes that I bought are AWESOME. I look hot.

People I do not enjoy

Tony Romo- He was spotted this weekend in Mexico vacationing with Jessica Simpson. He has the biggest game of his career to prepare for, and he's vacationing in Cancun? Not very professional, Tony. Likewise, where was Tom Brady spotted? Oh yea, in the weight room. Getting ready. For another big game. When Tony Romo's blubber left over from his little siesta in Mexico is hanging over his belt and dragging him down next week when he's trying to get away from the Giants defense, maybe he'll wish he took notes from the man he wants to be. You don't take a weekend off when you have the playoffs and potentially the Superbowl, the biggest game in football, to prepare for. It's arrogant. It's like Floyd Landis being spotted eating at an In-N-Out while he was training for the Tour de France, the biggest bike race in the world. It's arrogant, and it had an obvious affect on Floyd's performance. Maybe he would not have blown up and cracked on that stage that nearly cost him the Tour, or even finishing in the top 10! And maybe he would not have been caught shooting testosterone into his ass. Ah well.

Roger Clemens- He too should take notes from someone else. Lance Armstrong. Roger: it is not beneficial to your case to be an asshole ala Barry Bonds while trying to defend yourself against cheating for your entire career. Lance faces the same accusations every single day, and he's been doing so since he won his first Tour in 1999, and yea, on the bike Lance is an arrogant ass, but that's how he competes. To the public and everyone else, he isn't an asshole. Get a grip, Roger. And grow up. Aww someone doesn't like you? Cry me a river.



Ok, I had to vent.