I went to the dentist this morning and was there for 2 hours. :-P Also the place seemed really ghetto… but the dentist himself turned out to be very nice, even though I only saw him for like 5 seconds. Anyway, I have to go back on the 19th and have a root canal!! :-( I’m skerred! Then I have to go back 2 other times after that to finish the “procedure”… one time for something called a build, the next time for a crown. Yeah my insurance pays for a lot of it, but I was trying to save as much money as possible to move back to Georgia… and most importantly… I F%&KING HATE GOING TO THE DENTIST!! I do not have a good threshold for pain! :-(
January 2004
Mark your calendars everyone — January 17th is National Penguin Awareness Day! Unfortunately I couldn’t find any web sites about this obviously under-appreciated holiday, but it is noted on the monthly calendar my apartment leasing office distributes. So don’t forget to celebrate!
I need a .Mac account. I’ve been too lazy and/or busy to make pages for all the pictures I want to link to from my Bio page…. it would be so much easier if I could just have iPhoto do it for me.
Here’s something I heard yesterday that I liked:
Someone was trying to make an important decision and was torn on which way to go with it. So their friend said, “Why don’t we flip a coin?” The person said, “No, this is too important to just leave to a coin toss.” The friend replied, “Yes, but in that second when the coin is in midair, you know which way you want to go.”
Ok, so I did sort of a crappy job of telling it, but hey, I’ve never claimed to be an excellent storyteller. ;-) The point is, I like what that little parable is getting at… that when there is a difficult decision to be made, often you already know within yourself what decision you want to make, but are afraid of committing to it because of real or perceived potential consequences.
So, I know what I want to do. And I wish I could honestly say that I don’t care what anyone else thinks about me or my decisions. But I’m just going to try to go forward with it, and if people disagree with me, then I’ll just have to let them disagree, but I can’t let it stop me from doing what I know within myself to be right for me. Also, what’s “right for me” may change depending on the time and place — something else that if other people don’t get, then well, they just don’t get it.
Is this making any sense? This is the thing: My friends, loved ones, and acquaintances matter a lot to me and I wish that I could have their blessing from each one of them (horrible grammar, I know)… but if not, then I guess that’s the way it’ll have to be, and hopefully they won’t think any less of me.
Oh and be sure to check out Chris’s excellent page documenting our recent pilgrimage to the Georgia Guidestones: http://tangerinecs.com/~chris/blog/guidestones/index.php
MacWorld Expo is going on this week. I wonder what new and exciting things Mr. Jobs will introduce. I still have plans to buy myself a new iBook, eventually. And an iSight… then I can set it up beside Franny and Zooey’s cage and have a 24-hour “bird cam”.
I am still irritated by the fact that my rouded corners don’t line up perfectly in Safari. If I have time tonight, I may just tear the whole thing down and start over from scratch, rebuilding it piece-by-piece. It doesn’t make sense, because I have done rounded corners plenty of times before, in exactly this manner, and it’s worked fine. I know it’s not a big deal, but it’s the principality of the thing, yo!
In terms of the soap opera known as MY LIFE: I’m still just as confused as ever, but I think I need to take it easy and go with what I feel to be right for me; block out all the noise. Of course, that is easier said than done. But that’s where I stand right now, philosophically anyway.
Hey, Jenny and Niki! Are you out there?? You have been incommunicado for too long! What the dilly-o?
My moods are all over the place. Maybe it’s due to all the medicine I’ve been taking; ever since I got back to Dallas I have been bothered by cold symptoms and persistent headaches. So I have been drugging myself on ibuprofen, Sudafed, etc. to try to get rid of it. I can’t help wondering though if some of these symptoms (the headache, at least) could be *because* I’m back here in Dallas; read: are they stress headaches? I suppose it’s likely. Also I have a nagging toothache… I should really go to a dentist and/or stop eating so much chocolate. Geez it sounds like I’m falling apart, like I’m 70 years old or something. Anyway…
One minute I’ll feel like I’ve got to get out of here, NOW; that there’s no way I can stand it until May and I need someone to come “rescue” me. Then at another moment I’ll feel like it’s not so bad and I can probably stick it out. And other times it’s somewhere between those two extremes. Some general questions: What would I be proving by staying here if I’m unhappy? Would leaving make me a quitter — or a person taking charge of her own life? What shape is the future going to take in terms of friendships and relationships? Does anyone really know, at 24, what the hell kind of direction their life is going to take anyway? (Answer to that last one: I think not.)
These are just a few questions swimming around in my mind…. and there are more, many more. But right now I’m going to eat a mess of raviloi and watch this show on the Discovery Channel about Easter Island. Stay tuned for more arcane musings.
I don’t wanna go to work today. No no no no no! :-( I didn’t sleep well last night and it’s 29 degrees outside. I wanna stay curled up in bed. Waaaahh! <whine whine whine>… (What if I can’t do this until May? Does that make me a loser and a quitter?) Waaahh!!
Tomorrow (later today, actually) I’m heading back to DFW, but reluctantly so. It’s not the place itself really. It’s not any *one* thing. It’s a complicated combination of many things. Location, circumstances, job, et cetera… it all just combines with the result being that I have a big headache. Add to that my bad habit of second-guessing myself and the insidious feeling that people are judging me, and it’s not very good. This sounds like a television commercial for Paxil or something. Screw that. I’m on anti-depressants and have been for many years; they keep in check a chemical imbalance. But people also live in the real world and have real emotions and have to deal with real, *hard* issues in life. I don’t know where I’m going with this, so I’ll stop this train of thought. I wish I could just “trust my gut” more and live 100% true to my mantra of doing what’s right for yourself and not worrying about what other people think of it. So here is what my gut (for better or worse, whether right or wrong) is saying right now: I hate my fucking job. For the most part, I am dissatisfied living in DFW. I want to move back to Athens and work at a bookstore.
For any of you who have the urge to get all holier-than-thou and comment-happy about my thing of “doing what’s right for yourself and not worrying about what other people think”… don’t. Or do. I don’t care. This is a personal blog and I’m not trying to impress or please anybody. But here’s the disclaimer anyway: if I had kids, that philosophy would not apply, because when kids are in the picture everything changes. But I *don’t* have kids and I don’t intend to have them for quite some time. I figure I’ve got a good 10 years or so ahead of me to do my own damn thing rather than burdening a child with my soul-searching. -Oh, and don’t tell me to find Jesus either.
Thanks for listening. Or not. (If you think I sound bitter and defensive, it’s probably true.)
You should not be allowed to name a neighborhood after features that don’t exist there. Exhibit A: Park Oaks, off Highway 441 in Athens. A new, sprawling neighborhood of cookie-cutter duplexes, which contains neither a park nor oaks (nor hardly any trees at all, for that matter). To me it resembles the aftermath of a nuclear bombing. But that’s just me. (Unfortunately a Google search turned up nothing I could link to, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.)