Trying

I try to keep it under wraps, but I actually have pretty low self-confidence. I'd like to point out (or make the distinction or whatever) that this does not mean I have low self-esteem or otherwise think my worth is in the low-ish range. I just don't have confidence in myself. I used to take my self confidence from racing. That's a pretty empowering sport to compete in, for anyone, not just a girl, though obviously that adds to its effects. When I stopped racing, I picked up photography and was the go-to-girl for the high school newspaper and yearbook. I had people relying on me. I took my confidence from that.

So the problem comes in college. In college, everyone is self-reliant. You don't depend on others to help you or to turn a decent project into something amazing. It's all on you. No one else needs you. The newspaper is cool, but they can get along without you. Someone else will take the photo. And you don't have your "I play [enter uber cool sport here]" to fall back on. It's just you. And, at least for me, I fell apart. I got lost. I didn't have anyone who needed me to do anything for them. I didn't get praise for my work. I didn't have a source of self-confidence. And I don't think I ever learned how to have self-confidence that just generates inside me. Before racing it was ice skating and before ice skating I was just 3 years old so I didn't have that sort of self-actualization need going on. I dabble in ways to find self-confidence. But there lies another problem.

I hop from thing to thing to get self-confidence. Oh, doing poorly in ice skating? Pick up racing. Not doing well in racing? Cut back so it's just a fun thing you do when you're not taking photos for school. Don't have high school anymore? No worries, we have the student newspaper and rugby. Oh, no more time for rugby? No worries, here's the English class you're doing well in. I didn't like journalism so I turned to Japanese. Japanese wasn't going well, so I turned to teaching English. I adjusted my whole plan of study because I didn't have enough self-confidence to pursue something difficult to me. So maybe that's extrapolating a little, but you see the issue here? That actually happened. I let that happen. And yes, there were other factors, but I can't order them. I can't tell you which is more important, which is closer to the truth.

I know this though - I stop trying. If something stops working, I stop trying. If something stops being easy, I don't want to put the effort in to try to make it easier. I don't try hard enough to get internships or summer jobs. I don't try hard enough to be on the front page of the newspaper. I don't try hard enough to be great at rugby. I used to not have to try to get good grades. Then I started getting decent grades and I didn't want to try in school anymore. I don't know how to try and get what I want from life. I'm used to it just kind of falling in my lap. Not being handed to me, exactly, just more me stumbling upon it. And I took self-confidence from those things. And right now, I seem to just be stumbling around, realizing that I can't keep hoping these things will keep falling from the sky. It's a good thing to realize, but a hard thing to try and accept.

Dear Biological Clock,

Please stop ticking frantically. You have plenty of time. Stop being influenced by silly TV shows about dress shopping. I mean it! STOP IT! You forced me to switch to Comedy Central and listen to fart jokes. Yeah, see the pain you're causing me?

Listen. You are not registering at some stupid wedding planning site because it gives you access to two other sites about freaking married life. You're less than a week from 20. JUST 20. You don't need to get married right now. I know all the middle class kids are doing it, but you're not them. You are upper middle class! You graduate college before getting married. No more planning!

So, I (being your rational side) am going to cater to your desires right now. But let's think about this rationally, yes? You're in a committed relationship and it's going pretty well. So, you've got three more years of college, yeah? Then you guys can live together, maybe even before (since he only has one more year)? So that's almost 6 years together overall. Before you even graduate college. And you'll only be newly 23 when you graduate. Give it a couple of years. Mom and Dad didn't get married until 28. And they're better off than a lot of their friends who married younger. You don't want to be in the half that divorces do you? NO! DUH!

Therefore, I politely request that you. Please. Freaking. CUT! IT! OUT!

Sincerely,
The Brain

Headache

I have a headache. It's been bothering me for almost 12 hours. I've stolen medicine for it from my roommates (thanks A and R, even though you'll never know and never read this!) but it hasn't gone away.

I'm pretty sure it's because of a dream I had last night.

You see, it started off I was part of an Indy race car team. Yeah, kinda cool. Except then we turned all spy and stuff. And one of my teammates wanted to kill me so I had to hide in a bathroom in a mall and dye my hair black so they wouldn't recognize me. Yes, it was super cool. I wish I could remember more, but I don't and trying makes my head hurt more.

Anyway, so the last scene before my alarm went off (I was kinda waking up anyway) was my spy friend getting shot in the head in the back of a car. We were in the getaway car, my male friend driving, my female friend telling me to duck. Good thing I ducked, yeah? Not so much. Not only did I see my friend die, but right after that male friend either turns on me or gets killed b/c someone hit me in the back of the head. Cue alarm clock.

So here's the thing. I don't have anything hard on my bed that could hurt me. And I didn't wake up with anything on my head, like a pillow or stuffed animal. I thought maybe I hit my head against the wall, but my pillow was there.

Yeah. The dream was really a lot better than that but you know....head hurts and all. Better post after I get over this headache. I swear I'm not dead guys. Just not totally thrilled right now.

And Moving On...

I feel like this blog could, for a while, turn into a "how I grieve" blog, and I don't want that, so think of this as a moving on post. That's not to say that I won't bring it up again, but it's going to be less obnoxious. Less about my grieving, and more about that of those around me. Mainly my roommates.

At any rate, I was thinking about how easily things can be misconstrued or misunderstood, especially with people you don't really know. Three things happened today and I feel like I just made everyone around me think I was a total...well, witch...just because they took something I said or did to mean something else.

One guy in my English class sent out an email, asking that we print his story instead of him printing them for us because his printing quota was out. A fair request, except my quota is running low as well and his story was 14 pages. Yeah, not going to happen bud. I told him so (the quota, not the other sentence) and gave him three options and asked which he preferred - I could print it out but squish everything together (possibly ruining the form it was in, so it's nice to ask), I could write my comments back to him just on the document and he could read them on his computer, or I could print out my comments on a separate sheet. He was griping in class that he only got two replies to the email he sent out. One suggested he go to the library and use the printing service there. The other was just rude and unhelpful and gave him a whole bunch of different options that he didn't want. The person was just trying to get out of printing the story. He didn't understand why the person even bothered to email him back. I sit two rows over from him and heard everything. It hurt. I was only trying to help, but had to do so under my constraints too.

The second thing happened on the bus. I was sitting sideways, taking up two seats on the earliest bus you can take. It's never crowded, and today wasn't any different. There were plenty of other empty two-seat benches for this person to use, but they must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed because I was glared at and called a seat hog. I only sat sideways because the bus was no where close to full and I needed to put my laptop on my lap and do some work. It's not like they didn't get a seat because of my hoggie-ness.

The third wasn't a comment. It was a look shared between two passing students then a laugh and a slight glare my direction. Maybe I had something on my face...but I hadn't eaten anything yet, so probably not. I don't have any holes in my jeans. Were they too tight, making me have a muffin top? I did a double check. No, they were fine. Is my shirt too low? Is my bra showing? Nope, nothing wrong. I didn't have any more popped zits than usual, and none popping up. What could they have gathered from the way I looked that deserved a glare? It had to be the low shirt. It's the only thing that could be construed as offensive.

I dunno, I'm probably just being overly sensitive (it's not that time though, damn it!). Do you guys have days like that though? Where it seems like communicating with people just isn't something you should do that day? I already experienced it the night before all this stuff happened, but that was none of my doing.

Fyi, next post will be that roommate post I mentioned earlier. I think I've observed enough to write about it objectively, not just...whiney. XD

Ooze

I was searching news about Sri Lanka's parliamentary elections this morning on Google News using Google Chrome on my laptop while checking my Gmail on my Android powered phone.

And I realized it. I don't know how. I don't know when (though I can pinpoint some dates, of course). But it's happened.

I am a Google whore. I have let Google ooze into every aspect of my technological life. I'm even blogging about it on a Google powered blogging site!

I used to pride myself that I was never an Apple whore or a Microsoft whore or a Sony whore, though I've come close at times to each. But now...it's official. Google is trying to take over my life. I believe I complained about how my economics teacher said Google was being a monopoly last semester, if not here then somewhere public online. I still stand by that statement, but would like to adjust my stance. Google doesn't want to dominate one market. It wants to control our lives.

RUN!!! Run away from the ooze! (J, it's not moving slowly, this is a very energetic ooze, it'll get you too if you don't watch out.)

Daze

I go through life in a daze. One day passes, another comes. I'm just going through the motions right now. There are moments, brief, when my brain is fully functioning and aware of what's going on, but right now it seems incomplete.

Is it because roommate-K's gone? I keep having to make the distinction because I know many K's. Another one is gone too, but it's not my concern - brother broke up with his girlfriend K this week.

I slept 10 hours, but it wasn't enough. I feel like I can't pay attention in class, I can't analyize anything...or spell, apparently. It's strange, given the circumstances of her death, that I feel the best when I am around my K. It's like most of the haze is lifted and I can think clearly, I can move on with life and process other things. You can probably tell my writing isn't the same. Were I writing this around K, it probably would be, but since I'm writing it around memories of roommate-K it's really difficult to form a coherent thought.

Teachers all ask what we did over spring break. I'm not sure I want to say. I could just say I went to Salt Lake City and skied with my dad, but then I leave out the "big news" and it seems like a lie. But I don't want to really say "oh, my roommate died, so I had to cancel all my plans and come back to Missouri and drive around a lot and it sucked" because that's just so damn whiney. But it's what I feel. So I just shut up and look sad and no one bothers me.

But I don't want to be sad. I can function in the apartment, that part's not hard. It's like she's still living here, just not here ever. I had to go into her room because A put my tupperware in there, thinking it was K's. So I took some time and made sure nothing else had been put in there that was mine. Was it an excuse to see K's things as she left them? I know you're thinking it, but I don't have an answer either way. I'd say no, because it's not like I went through her things like she stole something from me. I just looked at the stuff on her bed where A said my tupperware was and made sure that there weren't any more of my things. But that would be denying that I wanted to go in there and was relieved to have an excuse and ignoring that I stood in there for 5 minutes just looking at her room.

I'm sorry. I don't really know why I'm writing this. It's not like I'm having issues coping. Haha, yes I am, that's the whole reason I'm writing this. That damn daze. But is it purely because of K? Maybe it's just coming back from break and I need to give it more than a day. Maybe I should try and think of boyfriend-K more, since it seems that helps? Why would it help?

edit: must have just been that class/the morning. got outside, got fresh air, took care of self, now am in political science class and am totally focused. besides this. but just thought i should let you all know. =)