More to Life

Thank goodness this week is over. One exam out of the way, one more chemistry lab report behind me. I thought it was insanely rough going through this week, but now looking back, it doesn't seem so bad at all. The sun is shining so bright, and the sky is so blue today. It's been like this just about the whole week. That's quite a rarity for upstate New York. It's a lot nicer than all the cloudiness and grey dreary skies I usually have to put up with around here. My mood goes down the drain when it's all grey and depressing. So, yay for the sun.

So since I got through this week in one piece, of course it's time for me to look ahead and freak out a little more. That's what I do best, right? So, next week: 1 paper, two exams: one on Monday, one on Tuesday. Have I studied? You may ask. Nope, not at all. Have I even started to study? You may ask again. Nope, not at all. Oh well, that's what the weekends are for. Studying, er well, planning to study, and then not studying at all, and then flipping out on Sunday night because I didn't accomplish nearly as much as I wanted.

It's hard to just keep on studying non-stop. Especially when I'm running on a diet of, what, 5 hours of sleep a night? Sometimes I just want to go online and write in this blog that no one reads. Sometimes I just want to read a book for fun, or just surf the net, or just socialize (what a concept). Sometimes (no actually, all the time for this one) I just want to sleep. It's tough to have much of a life when school takes up so much time. There are some great causes out there that I wish I could devote more time to.

One cause I need to take care of right now is e-mails. I have let way too many pile up for way, too long!
Anyway, more later. Have a great weekend, y'all!

Things are so complicated. My trip to Boston was absolutely fabulous. It was so great to get out of my small college town for a couple days. It was wonderful to see a different skyline, new faces, and to fly. I love flying.

I had this really fascinating discussion with my English Professor. We were talking about social change, specifically with regard to poverty in the USA. There are millions of people living in poverty today. Did you know that? Are you aware of their suffering? Of the corners they have to cut just to make ends meet? Of the hard, endless hours of work that still, for some odd reason, aren't enough to live off of? It's horrid, it's awful, it's dehumanizing, it's real, but it's so invisible.

We talked about the political system. The income and wealth gaps in the country. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. How many times have you heard that already? Well, and what does that mean? We're just not talking about the benjamins. We're talking about health, about living conditions, about (gosh this might get me into some deep water, but...) the extent to which some people can pursue happiness. And how are we going to fix that? We ought to know better than living in a system where we live comfortably off of the sweat of someone else.

The problem is, when people try to start talking about solutions, it's hard to get passed the stage of awkward silence. How are YOU, one person, going to change the system. How are YOU going to make the lives of millions of people better? Is that maybe even an irrelevant question to be asking? I don't know... I hope not. But then again, what can be done? It's easy to toss around ideas like improving the educational system, promoting Medicaid, childcare services, and other necessary social services. But how can we get that done when we need to rely on the government for that stuff? It can take forever! We're talking about mass social change. Total social reconstruction. Tear the fabric apart and piece it back together in a way that makes better sense. I don't know... People just seem so disillusioned these days.

"No," my professor said. She thinks things are on the verge of revolution.
"Woha, are you serious?" I mean, it's not like I walk around the and can see or sense the premonitions of a revolution. People don't seem to be plotting or planning anything major. In fact the poor and unhappy seem to locked down and powerless to amass lots of power, and gosh... doesn't that whole idea of revolution sound kind of Marxist anyway?
"No," she replied, "people are very disgruntled these days. It's in the air. We have reached the point where all it will take is one charismatic leader."
"One charismatic leader..." I repeated hypnotically. Doesn't that sounds so... I don't know... deep?

There you have it... All it will take is one charismatic to change the USA, if not the world. ONE charismatic leader. It could be you. Will you heed the call?

Hi.

So, I've been logging on to this thing almost every night since my last post... Logging on the website, entering my username and password. Getting to this site where I can post new entries, watching the cursor blink for a couple seconds, maybe a minute or two and then leaving. I'm that eagar to post, and post, and post, and post, but I can't bring myself to do it to the industrial extent my heart desires. Whatever. I'll figure it out.

Part of the problem is that I probably need to allow myself a good 20 minutes if I want to post something half-decent. I just don't have that kind of time these days. Isn't it ridiculous? It's late now. Past midnight. How am I rationalizing this post? Well, I won't be able to check out this website for at least two days. So this should make up for the two days I won't even be able to go online. Gosh forbid a week should go by without a new entry to this weblog thing, right? I am trying to take this more seriously now, right?

Why will I be gone you ask? I'm going to Boston for the weekend! Yay! Yay for getting out of a huge college in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Yay for going to a big city where I can see sky scrapers again. Yay for getting to see some of my friends again! The actual reason I'm going is for a conference. Yep, I'm so excited. It's not too often that over 400 students from across the North American continent converge onto a small school called Harvard. The purpose of the conference is to address the issues of global warming, pollution and renewable energy, and hopefully to get a couple students jazzed up enough to want to do something about it. I know I'm pretty excited (and I haven't even gone to the conference yet!).

I want to vent about my boring life. I want to vent about the crazy course load I'm taking; about some of the teachers who drive me up the wall; about the incessant piles of homework that I can never seem to tackle; about my urge to get another job although I already have one, and I have no time, but I want another one, and why?! I confuse myself, and so I won't subject you to all this stuff. Well not now. Not yet.

So I intended this to be a really serious and deep type of a blog where I'd philosophize about all sorts of important topics, yada, yada. Yeah, I still think that's a great idea, but I don't have the type of tenacity and energy to make every post here all serious and elegant.

I'm in school. I'm stressed out. I want to write, but I want to write something that does not qualify as stuffy, academic writing, which all my professors demand. Heck, there's so much more to life and to writing than doing everything the "right way." You know what? For goodness sake, a couple misplaced, commas and a few tpyoes add some character to writing, in my opinion! This is my chance, here's my opportunity. After months of being complacent, I think I've finally garnered the strength start. To hell with it all, I'm going to do it my way, and I'm starting now.

So I suppose you want to know who I am and all that. Doesn't it make sense to just write a nice, tacky description of myself on the first post? Well I'm not going to. Heck, for all I know nobody is even reading this. So there's no point in introducing myself to an audience of no one, right? I'm not telling any of my friends about this goofy blog. Well at least not yet. No, I don't really plan on it. This is for you. You are the person I don't necessarily know. You are the person who doesn't have any heavy baggage or stupid preconceived notions about me. You are my fresh start, the one who actually cares enough to read my posts and take interest in my boring life. Hehe, I only have one little problem right now. YOU are not here yet, er, you haven't found me yet. Er, you haven't found this blog yet. Will you? We'll see. I hope so.

So it's ten to 1am here on the East Coast. Thank goodness Valentine's day is over. I can officially say I've spent my 18th valentine's day single. Woopdie doo. My roommate just turned off the lights in our small dorm room, and he's in bed. The minute he went off into dreamland is when I started to write this. It's somehow liberating to be the only one awake, and not have to worry about him bugging me (not that he does at all). I think that our room smells a bit, it sort of makes me nauseous or however you spell that. I kept my window open all day long in subfreezing weather in a desperate effort to get some fresh air in here, but so much for that. Ergh frustrating.

Well, I better get to bed, too. The darkness is weighing down on my eyelids (well, not really at all, but I sort of like that description). I just think I'd like to get up somewhat early. Who knows, maybe I can actually be productive tomorrow. With 21 credits on my shoulders, a productive day could be a useful thing. Of course... We all know how productive tomorrow will REALLY be...