Life is Good

I hate that it gets dark so early in the evening now. It's strange that it's dark at five now. Super strange.

Today was my cousins husbands fathers funeral, and I spent the majority of the day helping my mom set up the dinner that they were going to have following the ceremony. The dinner itself occupied the majority of the day.

Following that we traveled back to the house where we've proceeded to sit in the living room and watch movies. For the most part it's been a productive day, at least to some extent. Tomorrow we plan on going to visit Riley, something that I definitely have to do before going back to school tomorrow evening.

Hopefully that situation can work itself out.

To some extent though going back to school is exciting. I am really excited for the month ahead. In the next two weeks the semester will wrap up and in the week that follows I will nail down my final GPA. I think I'm going to finish this semester strong, and as a transfer student that is a major accomplishment.

I'm also super excited to get to go back to work over break. I've missed it more than I ever really could have imagined I would. I miss the people that I worked with, and to some extent I miss the work that I did. I was on top of things when I worked there, I had two years of experience and therefore felt competent at my job.

It's exciting to get to return to that. Over this break I'll get my new drivers license and I'll have the opportunity to hang out with some of my best friends. Life right now, despite any stress or pressures I may be feeling, is good.

NANOWRIMO!

NANOWRIMO starts tomorrow, and that makes me a little nervous. This is the first year that I've decided to actually participate in NANOWRIMO. Can I manage to finish writing a novel in a month? We shall see!

I don't know though. Lately I've felt a little buried in homework, and I'm thinking that adding to this a novel writing goal, plus my blog is going to up the stress level a bit. Although, there is also the potential for writing a novel to be a destessor too. Hopefully novel writing proves to be my destressor and not an added stressor. Fingers crossed!

Sarah is coming up to visit this week, and I'm excited! She's going to get here Monday afternoon, and then go to the All American Rejects/Taking Back Sunday concert with me on Tuesday. It's going to be a lot of fun! We haven't worked out whether or not I'm driving her back Wednesday, or if she's going to stay and go back with Felicia on Thursday. Either way though it's exciting.

I worked late night over in Wilson tonight, and that was interesting. They had me work over in the Hub, where they make subs and wraps. Initially it was really, really busy. But near the end of the shift it tapered off. It is Halloween after all.

The Why

Doubt, my old friend,

You stumble in,

I am hounded by my failure,

To comprehend,

I don’t understand,

The way things stand,

Between you and me.

I find the path

And walk it a ways

Then stumble and crash

When the tide shifts

And what I believed true

Proves frightfully false.

It’s one step forward,

And two steps back,

It’s a failure to gravitate

Away from this shallow pool

Of consistent failure

I want to find

A reason, a way.

Why, Why

I want to know

I want to understand

I can’t see beyond

These blinders

I can’t find, I can’t distinguish

The why.

J-School Application

I need to describe in five-hundred words why I want to major in journalism, for my application to enter the School of Journalism here at MSU. Somehow I think that a "just because" response isn't going to cut it. Thankfully, it's made slightly less vague because it also asks about my career goals.

I take this to mean that I am being asked what area of the field I want to enter into, and how I want to make my time there count. Considering I haven't written anything yet, and the application is due by November first, it would probably be a good idea to get my ideas organized.

I mean, really what spurred me into choosing Journalism in the first place was finding an enjoyment in writing. I like to write, and supposedly it's something I'm good at, so it seems like the natural direction to go in.

I guess some of the stress that I'm feeling at the moment stems from the fact that I find the whole application process a little intimidating. What do I do if I'm not accepted into the major? I have no idea what my next step would be. Transferring schools is such a strange thing, because now all of a sudden it feels like I'm so close to being done and that's kind of scary.

The future is a little daunting at the moment quite frankly.

Clearing Something Up

I feel like I need to clear something up about last fridays post. That was written because I was largely frustrated with myself. Had I been more organized and efficient then I would have had the reading done earlier that day or even the previous day. My frustration with my own action fueled the impatience that I exhibited there.

I don't think I phrased myself very well when I expressed that frustration, but I want to be clear that the true target there was me. I am my own best target. I had options and I didn't utilize them and that was my problem. My frustration was expressed in this medium, solely because it me that I was frustrated with.

I am generally the one that I get frustrated with. I have reading that I should be doing, but I can't find the motivation to get started on it. Actually, I'd much rather reading "Hunting Ground" by Patricia Briggs. I knew I shouldn't have started reading it because of course it's good...

Not What I Promised

The big event of the day was assembling a fire pit so that we could put it on display in our department at work. I managed to get half of it put together before I had to leave. Either my coworker finished putting it together tonight, or it will be there waiting for me in the morning.

Really though I don't mind putting things like that together. Some day's I'd rather do that than actually deal with customers... Or maybe I should most days, rather than some days.

My headache has returned. I wish it would disappear, but that doesn't seem all together likely at the moment.

Spider Overload

My day started out with spider overload and went downhill from there. I must be noted that I HATE spiders. While I understand that logically, yes, I am larger than they are they still freak me out. No one ever said that fear had to be rational. If fear was rational than I would be afraid of water rather than spiders.

Anyway, I got to work this afternoon and just before I got out of my car I noticed that there were spiders ALL OVER the outside of my car. Okay, okay maybe not all over but there was more than one and each of them were about the size of a dime. I didn't want to get out of the car, but faced with being late to work I opened the door and hopped out as quickly as I could. Thankfully no spiders made it into my car. That would have been an intense drive home.

Work, was work. There was nothing particularly exciting about it, aside from the return of my headache. At this point I'm fairly certain it's just a tension headache, and once I have things sorted out it will go away. Hopefully in the next week or so I can manage to get things sorted out.

Now there is a moth flying around my room. GREAT.

Headache

I feel as though my head is going to explode. I should probably take something, but... eh.

I suppose it would help if I could just breathe, just take a moment and stop THINKING. Thinking will get you every time. I have the day off Thursday. Maybe I'll spend the day writing. Maybe that's just what the doctor ordered.

Sometimes it is easy to feel like a coward, and generally that is because cowardly behavior isn't all that difficult to identify. At the moment I am tempted to refute these self-aimed claims... and yet I can't bring myself to. If I weren't so cowardly maybe I wouldn't feel the stress of all of these decisions weighing down on my shoulders.

I know what I need to do, and yet that doesn't make me any more inclined to get up and going about doing what needs to be done. I need to make a decision and follow through with it, and perhaps than I will manage to lose this headache.

Fictional Worlds

The goal for this evening is to finish reading "Cry Wolf" by Patricia Briggs. It's marvelous, and is definitely putting to rest any notion that I may have previously held of not enjoying her novels that aren't about Mercy Thompson. While the Mercy Thompson Series remains my favorite, I am definitely enjoying "Cry Wolf".

Tomorrow morning I go back to work after having yesterday and today off. It's hard to get back into the groove, but that is life I suppose. Tomorrow night I have to focus on finding a cosigner. I'm anxious for August to get here, but I need to get the funding in order if I still plan on going to school, which I very much do.

Why does school require so much money? Is it really any wonder that college students today are facing greater stress levels?

Eh. I am now returning to fictional worlds, where things make sense.

Under the Wire

I will warn you in advance this post is being hastily written and therfore will most likely be crap. Sorry, it's just been that kind of day. Hopefully tommorow will be better, but today was crap.

I spent the majority of my day at work, which is generally fine. I mean work is not necissarily the first place you want to be, but being there results in a pay check so whatever. The thing is, my shift didn't start off well. I got there early and noticed that two new schedules were up, so of course I checked them out. Now the one I had seen already, and knew that I wasn't on it which had bothered me before but I was over it.

So I checked it out today only to discover that I'd been penciled in, and of course my schedule now conflicted with plans that I had made prior to its existance. Of course, there is nothing really to be done here but to change my plans because the whole work thing is pretty fixed. It's annoying, but I'm not half so annoyed as I was.

So of course, I finally got around to clocking in and heading to my department. The minute I got there I found out that my manager wanted to talk to me. I was informed that first of all I am not carrying my weight as far as whoring out the company credit card, and second of all I am not badgering enough customers into handing over their phone numbers at the registers. Apparently I need to work on these things. Whatever, sure. Is it August yet?

Alright, so maybe my temper hasn't cooled as much as I thought... The day before the whole work thing wasn't all that great either though. My front tire seemed to be deflating so we had to put air in it. I really hope I don't have to buy a new tire. That would suck. Then of course because I am so absent minded I nearly left my lunch sitting in my car. That would have been a genius move.

But really this takes the cake. I walked in the door, thinking about the fact that I needed to post this. I was going to go get my computer and write this and get it out of the way with plenty of time to spare, and then I didn't. I have no idea why I didn't, but I didn't. So of course a few minutes ago I looked at my watch and suddenly remembered that I had failed to write ANYTHING for today's blog. O.M.G

So this is crap, and I'm sorry, but really this is the the perfect ending to a perfectly crappy day.

Computer Issues

The last several days have been kind of crazy. My computer for whatever reason has decided that it no longer wants to recognize the presence of my optical drive. This happened several months ago. Recently, as I believe I have mentioned, I've tried to correct that problem. I haven't had any luck on that front.

I took it to a local company to fix it at the end of last week, and they aren't sure what's wrong. According to the computer everything is working just like it's supposed to be, except for the fact that it actually isn't. They even called HP to see if they had any suggestions. All they had to say is that it's a common complaint with that particular model and they aren't sure how to fix it.

Great.

So I've been living without a computer for the last few days, which isn't optimal but it's alright. Thankfully their offering to trade my computer with one that they have, and all I'd have to pay is the service fees for what they've done to investigate the problem with the origianl that I brought in.

Bassically this means I will have a computer again some time tommorow. Thank God!

Technology Woes

Technology is not my friend at the moment, and Window’s Vista has certain never been my friend. Why can’t my computer just stop gross and work like it is supposed to, or even like it did say four months ago. Roughly four months ago, because I can’t be bothered to actually remember when this happened as it would be too helpful; my computer decided it no longer wanted to recognize the optical drives existence.

They are no longer communicating, which makes my life difficult which seems to be the theme of the universe.

So I have lived without an operational optical drive for some time now, and have recently embarked on correcting this issue. This is plan that I should never, ever have acted on because it has been nothing short a headache. I have tried installing driver updates, and BIOS, I’ve referred to the HP site and their advice… I’ve even reset the computer to its original factory settings managing to lose a couple files that I failed to remember I hadn’t backed up. Thankfully it was nothing vital.

My older brother works with computers. I let him take apart the drive and look it over, and by all appearances it should work. Following that inspection I “borrowed” my younger brothers computer, which is the same model and traded drives. I thought maybe the drive was the problem and since his worked before switching them, it was worth a shot.

Upon switching the optical drives I discovered that not only did the one from his computer still not show up on mine, but the drive that refused to exist on my computer worked just fine in his. O. M. G.

At this point based on what research I have conducted regarding the issue, because I’m not the only one who has had this particular problem with this particular model… It looks like the problem may be the motherboard. Now I am not fluent in computer, but this prospect doesn’t make me all that happy. To add insult to injury I can’t seem to communicate effectively with the HP support people to find out a concrete solution to my problem.

For the moment the prospect of just living with the mysteriously missing drive is appealing. Technology is short sucks.

Paving the Path

It’s been a hectic last few days drenched in uncertainty. Sometimes it seems like the world has been turned on its head, and everything that I once believed to be true, quite frankly, isn’t.

Why? Why, oh why, oh why?

The next few days and weeks and months are going to be rough. It’s going to be hard to want to move, to breathe to keep on keeping on. But that’s the thing, these things will need to be done and they will be. Sometimes it’s only when you don’t believe in your strength to fight the fight, that you are able to find it.

Strength hides and bides it’s time, waiting for that moment when it is most needed. This is a moment for strength. These coming days, and weeks and months will be the time to draw on that strength that has been hiding.

It’s time to stand up, to use that silent voice and pave a new path into the future.

Broken Plans, Looking Forward

My goal for the week is to actually manage to post each day so that I don’t have to remember to post on the weekend. Thankfully this week is a little less crazy than last week. Yay!

I went and got my hair cut today. It’s slightly shorter than I was planning… but it’ll grow back out so whatever. I’m still a little stressed out about the prospect of not transferring when I was originally planning, assuming I get in, but I’m trying to take a step back from the situation. What’s done is done and I just need to keep pushing forward.

Ultimately things will work out the way they need to and maybe I’ll be better off for it. I hope so anyway…

Stressed

Sometimes it feels as though I am endlessly waiting for a tomorrow to make its appearance. It’s a torturous waiting game that at times seems hard to maintain. The current goal is to wait for MSU’s pronouncement, whether it be affirmative or not. That is to be my current goal of tomorrow and from there I can begin to formulate plans as they relate to the future.

It’s difficult to pin point exactly how I’ve been feeling lately. It’s just easy to feel as though I’ve been backed into this corner and I can’t find my way back out. Over the past week I’ve persistently felt as though my own self-concept has been challenged, and I seem to be the one making that challenge.

I’m frustrated. I’m tired.

It’s seems like I have a general idea of the path that I am on, but I can’t fully see the whole picture. I’m lost in familiar territory, and I don’t know how I managed to do it…

On an unrelated note… my brother-in-law got to come home from the hospital today, which was awesome. We were surprised because at first the doctors said that he wouldn’t be coming home until Tuesday, but it was a welcome surprise.

Compounded Stress

Today did not go as planned. I thought I had the whole day to do homework, and write up my blog posts and just relax in general… Wrong on all counts. I got called into work and it was an all around cruddy day.

No one seemed to be clear on whether I actually needed to be there or not, or on when I was actually leaving, OR on who was going to give me my one allotted break. As it turned out I had to give myself a break, the other two issues were never really resolved but I made sure I was out of there by five.

What is so hard, first of all, about simple communication? Second of all, what is the deal with no one seeming to be capable of working when they are supposed to? It’s like they’ve got my number on speed dial over there. You don’t want to work? Well don’t worry, call Sandy, she’ll fix all your problems.

I need a break; I need a mental health day. What I really need is to breathe, just breathe.

Moments of Worry

I can’t understand why it is so easy to be motivated before I actually sit down to write… and then when faced with a blank screen my mind goes suddenly blank. Well… that’s not quite true.

At any rate earlier today I was thinking about how we always ask people how they are doing, and the standard answer to that standard question is, “I’m alright”. But are we? Is that answer ever wholly true when we give it in reply?

Not generally. Usually there is something on our minds that eating away at us. How honest are we with the people around us? How honest are we with ourselves?

I’m not alright. I’m worried; worried about the next week, the next month, and rest of the year. I feel tested and stretched, cornered and unsure. Things will get easier, eventually. If eventually could be tomorrow that would be great, but if not it’ll be alright.

That’s the thing about rough patches, their difficult in moment but once you’ve gone through them you are able to appreciate the role that they have played in building your character.