Dear Facebook,

It use to bring me an amusement, even a need, to come to you and see what news you had for me. I can't bring myself to look at you at the moment, for a long time, actually. You bring me pain seeing posts of people I no longer consider friends but I can't bring myself to fully discard. I guess we can call this period of mourning. I can't bring myself to look at you but I can't bring myself to get rid of you either. For once, I wish you'd bring me something I couldn't wait to hear.

Thanks.


I've had 2 good nights sleep in the last two nights. Words can not express what this has done for me. I thank Natalie for the conversation - all 5 hours of it. I can only hope this is the end of the insomnia.

 

Just saw the movie for this last night, which sparked a good conversation. The argument was for the sudden awareness of an animal or conciousness. Unlike how the movie portrayed it, I don't think it'd be a violent awareness. I think it'd start out much like slavery did. A man who has always seen the animal as being inferior would in fact, fail to treat it equally even after awareness. THAT is where cruelty would start.

It also lead me to think about the evolution of all races of life. There may come a day when I may stand behind a primate in the supermarket buying groceries. I don't see this as science fiction. I see it as eventual, if the world survives long enough to ever see it. The only thing science would have to discover is why some races evolved faster than others. And is that, in and of itself, why one race feels superior to another? We got there first. That makes us smarter. It was fun to think about.

 

It's finals week of the weirdest summer I've had yet. I've spent my summer logging alot of hours at my desk doing homework. I don't know if its enough to pass. Maybe I didn't catch the concepts fast enough. Maybe I spent too long figuring out the homework and not enough time actually doing it. I broke my toe and blew out my back at work. The pain medicine from my back made it difficult to do homework cause I'm slow as it is. I spent alot of the quarter stuggling with not having the right calculator for one of my classes the cost of that was devastating.

I've taken the week off from work to prepare for my finals, something I haven't done yet in my college career. I hope its enough to make a difference. I really don't want to retake the classes. I'm prepared for the possibility that it could happen though. The next time, I won't take the same teacher for finance. I think he's the laziest unrelatable teacher I've come across. The next time, I will recognize that I'm struggling sooner and ask for help sooner. I'll not let the focus of one class cause the dimenishment of another.

It's tough to consider the alternative.
 

If it's true, it's a good story and a good analogy.

There's a story out there about the African Impala and that even though it can jump 8 feet in the air and 30 feet from its original location, it will not jump outside a mere 3 foot high fence it can't see though. The reason is, it can't see where it'll land. The majority of folks won't take big risks in their lives because they don't know how they'll shake out in the end. Won't know where they'll land. So instead of being free, they stay fenced in.

I have to remember some times that I've taken some huge risks and they turned out amazing. That the fear is paper thin. I forget sometimes that I am the type of person to step up or go home. I'll justify my reasons for not doing something rationally, logically but in the end, I wasn't sure how it'd work out and might have been afraid of the result.

I can't promise there will always be grass on the other side. I can't promise the landing will be a smooth one. But I can say with absolute confidence I'm a better person for jumping the fence.
 

I wonder who this person is, typing the things that get deleted as soon as I deem them unworthy. I would not have recognized this person five years ago. Someone with chronic insomnia who hasn't read a book in months, who hasn't written anything much less anything good in longer. Someone who spent the whole day bent over finance and management books, wanting to as much as needing to.

I'm a pretty fluid concept at the moment, it seems. I was once convinced I was born to be a writer, a philospher with a pen and a striking thought. At the moment, I'm pretty content to get a formula filled in on the first try without flipping signs for forgetting to add something. I've just read 3 books in the past 10 days. Something of a freak occurance actually.

The bottom line is that I'm becoming a person a lot of folks thought I'd naturally become, even as a kid. Even though it's my backup plan. Even if it's killing the writer in me. I keep crunching numbers, wondering if I'll become the person to do the math, and not the person to write the speeches. Wondering if writing the speeches is something I even want to do any more. I can not imagine a plot I've not already thought of. I can not see a conversation playing in my head, a spark of inspiration. But I can see weakness in leadership. I can spot the need for restrain of distain.


 

I sat down to get a headstart on my homework, first stopping by my FB page to just "check in". I can't tell you why pictures of my husband when he was a kid make me hopeful for where we're going but it does. There's a picture of my father in law sitting on a bench, arms on his knees, concentrating intently on peeling an orange. My first thought was "That's damn serious for an orange." to "He looks like he's unwrapping the secret of life." It makes me laugh because well, frankly, it's an outragious expression to have for peeling fruit but it's one of my favorite photos.

I can't tell you the last time I've been hopeful. Hope is quieter than I thought it'd be. It's the first fingers of sunlight peeking over the horizon in the morning right before the first sliver breaks dawn. Maybe it's because I'm reading again, engrossed in a trilogy I can't. wait. to. get. through. Maybe it's the oustanding meal I've just eaten. Whatever the reason, there's hope where there didn't use to be anything.
 

A question came to me yesterday - that seemed to be one of the contributing factors to the differences between men and women. If men view themselves as a work in progress and women view themselves as being something of a final product - why do women feel the need to view themselves like that? Why not be a work in progress?

Somewhere along the way, either with advertising in marketing or long held beliefs about what a woman "should be" - there's always been the need to be perfect. Either June Cleaver perfect or some airbrushed magazine model perfect. The definition about what is perfect has shifted as the years have gone by.

It just struck me as being yet another thing that keeps the dissonence in a society between the sexes. I'd be the first person to volunteer to be the airbrushed, polished, toned, always perfect woman - if there was someone working to be the perfect man. The standards for what women are doing seem to be so much hirer than they used to be. And for men, it seems the standards have never been lower.

I look around in the classes I'm taking - I'm outnumbered by men four to one. But when I look at the men I'm out numbered by - they're all in various stages of disarray, some of them alarmingly unintelligent and content to be so.
 

Its more than just a daily tired. I'm bone tired. I do not want to return to work. There are those who would tell me to continue, that it's not that hard to do, but it's not necessary and it's not worth the small difference in money. I want to recover my creativity. I want to give school my full attention and I've been slacking on that. I only read one book in the last 6 months. I haven't written anything decent in years. I need to have a game plan for when I graduate. I need to have the next step lined up and I haven't had time to think, the desire to think about it because I'm too tired to.


 

One of the best things I've had lately is the introduction of my husband's extended family to my life. They do not replace the ache I have to see my family. However they do ease it. They are easy going, relaxed, good people. They are a welcome reprieve from my life. They have been good for the soul. I've also discovered my wedding ring's origins. It was my husband's grandma's sister's originally. Im glad to know
 

You know the couple, the two who are ooey and gooey and pretty much make people want to puke at watching together? My husband and I are decidedly NOT that couple. We'd recently gone out for a drink after work with a couple of girls from mine, and it was my husband who said "We're the `I love you but I'll push you down a flight of stairs' kind." That phrase made me love him more for saying it outloud because we are THAT couple.

It made me think on the way home about the fact that we didn't have the "Can't live without you" vibe. Maybe what we have is quieter than that. So quiet you don't automatically see it. We're the "Get our stories straight" kind of couple. The partners in crime kind.