The Countdown Begins

Tomorrow is my second LSAT diagnostic. I am dreading it more than I think I have dreaded most things in life. It is in many ways a significant example of my inability to make my own decisions, my clear lack of motivation or desire to succeed in the absence of passion, and worst of all a sign of my procrastination driven by what I would presume to be depression that is highly recognizable but that I steer under the radar in order to function in daily circumstances. The point is, the more the pressure beats down, the more I want to cut and run.

The strange thing is, I've never been the run away type. I've never been the quitting type, or the take time for me type. Only in extreme situations of dire exhaustions have I succumbed to the temptations of procrastination or have I fallen back from an obligation. Rarely had it been an issue of desire. What is it in me then that literally draws me away from my studies and to any other pursuit? My teacher thinks it is some kind of cognitive response to the pressures of the test itself. Others claim self sabotage. Could it be at age 21 I am buckling under the pressure? Or could it be that only now am I truly recognizing my ability to stand on my own and determine what I want?

Nevertheless, there is roughly 5 weeks until the test, 3 diagnostics, 2 jam sessions, 10 more classes, and 3 reviews. I will conquer this as I have been through much worse, though most dreadful occassions come unexpectedly in life. This one's terror, I believe, comes more in the anticipation. And so, the countdown begins...Blech.

Looking for my medium

I'm in an LSAT class, which, to most people is a ready indication of your full and adequate desire to attend law school and in most accounts to become an attorney. I still, however, have not overcome the pit of doubt that resides in the bottom of my stomach. I attend my class and study as I can. My blue books are these haunting reminders I carry with me and a weight on my shoulder; the reason I carry a bag rather than a purse. I'm trying really hard to want this and most of the time I do but on days like today I think, is this my dream?

There is this part of me that refuses to take any job, rather do any job that doesn't directly or positively affect other people in a good way. That is why I wanted to do Teach for America, to affect people, to make a difference in their lives. I often look to what I used to want to do and realize I must not look to what I wanted in the past or what made me happy then, because I have evolved and I have changed and I must now look to what makes me happy. I so often look to what might may make a direct impact and am reminded by stories of history, politics and even my family that maybe I don't need to be directly touching someone to impact their life.

What I mean to say is, I often look to programs like TFA or other non profits and volunteerism to directly impact people thinking this is the only way I can impact people; that that may be my only medium or means of reaching the world, making my mark. What I so frequently forget is that if I maintain my integrity and strength of character in what I do, always, I will make that impact in what I do, whatever it may be. That is not to say I no longer want to reach people, but I so narrowly defined my focus. I look at people I admire, newsman from past and present, film makers, artists, writers, even lawyers. Their impact is not always in what they do one on one to meet us in our lives but in the way they interact with us through their public mediums. I'm looking for my passion, for my dream, for my medium. I'm really just looking.

In the meantime, the studying continues....

“Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.” -Edward R. Murrow

A Change is Gonna Come

I've heard that when you leave a dog that they feel that loss or sense that change. While this claim is backed up by no greater evidence than word of mouth based on my experiences most recently with my dog Teddy, I believe this to be true. I've wondered as of late if this is true of humans. If we feel the same sense of loss and appreciably in the same way. When my family left town leaving me and Teddy to hold down the fort, so to speak, his appetite seemed to fade, his desire to play was gone, he stared out the window longingly and everytime I left the house it was as if it were for the last time. I've been told (again by word of mouth) that this kind of experience wears on a dogs mind, heart, body and perhaps even their soul. So if a person, if they abandoned the hope that their loved ones were to return, had repeated episodes of loss, would it age them as it does a dog? Hope, as it were exists only as a glimmer, kept alive by love, faith and our hearts. Loss seems to be a much stronger and weightier feeling. I'm not trying to be a downer it just seems when times are hard we are more apt to let loss take us over than let hope be our guide.

The wind is blowing in the backyard today. A strong breeze indicating a change is coming. My family returns Monday and my hope remains, so my dog-human theory remains only speculation. The breeze however blows to usher in the fall. However hard it blows though, the leaves will not fall. They are not yet ready to come down, their colors have not changed. I wonder what it means; but the breeze always prevails.

The Resilience of the Human Spirit

I called it his most redeeming moment, I later realized he needed no redeeming. It was late last summer and my friends and I had decided to do something fun to bring us closer. After a few minutes of telephoning back and forth and awkward ideas being thrown around we settled on white water rafting. I did the research and we settled upon a trip into Buena Vista, $80 for the full day, $50 for the half, lunch on top of a mountain - corn on the cob and steak, salad tossed from a trash bag - and we thought we would have a great time, all of us together. We would be like the babysitters club, or the sister hood of the traveling pants or some other such group of friends realigned for the summer soon to be seperated for the school year. We invited our siblings, me my brother, and they their friends and my excitement slowly began to mount and my friends slowly began to find reasons not to go. Price was to high, family in town, summer was almost over and tension was high, boyfriends were leaving, one day seemed like too much to give and yet not enough. My brother too found no one to accompany us and on the day before what I imagined to be the "WHITEWATER EXTRAVAGANZA" my brother and I sat face to face on the couch with no one but each other.

Dejected and feeling somewhat alone I kind of asked, "We aren't going to go, are we?" He didn't fully answer but I realized he was looking up hotels in Buena Vista to avoid the early morning drive, I knew that anything on the am side of noon was not something that was appealing to my brother on a non workday and I thought maybe I don't even want to go anymore. All the hotels were booked up and in my dramatically tragic manner, I took it as a sign. At 5am the next morning, the alarm blared and I don't know if I woke him up or he woke me up but we went, and we drove - fast to boot - and we had fun together.

I sometimes feel like I shouldn't be invited or included in what goes on, like I should sit on the outside and look in. I feel sorry for myself, down on my luck and at those times I have a tendency to look for people to blame when there is no fault. I realize very quickly though, when the hearts of those around me raise me up that when there is love and dedication and family, no matter in what form, there needs no invitation and with that thought my spirit bounces back. I thought mostly that because my brother took me and only me and was so truly dedicated to me that that was his most redeeming moment. As I have grown into myself in the last year, however, I have come to realize that his dedication was and is always ever present and that was just one of my favorite memories. He never needed redeeming, at least not in my eyes. My brother has always been a bad ass and the one that lifts my spirit.

Maybe not much of a story right now.

I'm housesitting. I sit here in relative boredom and as I write this sentence I think to myself who would want to read this crap. Come to think of it, who would want to read any of the crap you write because you don't do anything and in order for you to have a story you have to do something, right? I'm housesitting. Literally speaking, I am sitting in a house, watching it. I am watching more specifically three men I don't know redo the hardwood,but technically I am housesitting. I listen to them. I listen to them talk, I hear them pee, I listen to them drill, hammer, sand. I hear the house sounds, the neighbors doors slam and the water run through the pipes, the relatively low buzz of the refrigerator or the elecrtronics in every room. I listen and I sit and I think to myself, who would want to read this crap. Who would want to read this crap? I'm asking, really, I am.

Then I think a story doesn't always have to be thrilling to make it relatable, millions of people just sit in their houses. Just because I sit in what I now hasten to admit is more than relative boredom and in someone elses house doesn't make my words completely obselete. What does, in fact make this crap readable is that people can identify on some level with my restlessness, my joblessness for some, my stagnation, my frustration, not just today here, sitting, listening, hearing others accomplish a task beginning to end as I might have in a different situation in a different place at a diffent time, but they can identify with my position as a post grad here stagnant in my place in life, unsure and unavailable. Many are in this same place, people in transtition, because life is full of change and it rocks your worlds and you cope as you can and we cope in funny ways. There are entire films about these stages of life The Graduate, Wall Street even, Breakfast at Tiffany's, American Beauty, all films about people changing their places in life, but all people in different places at life...

Our stories though, no matter how inconsequential, are ours and should been be shared, even if they are just the stories of the days that we sat, and we did nothing but cope with the fact that we were relatively bored, and we listened to the others moving forward and heard them pee, and heard them drill and heard the low buzz of the refriegerator humming.

What do I do? no suggestions, please.

In a time of relative loss and no redemtion I look to the things I love. Things have been fairly difficult on a personal level in that I am trying to cope with a cleanse of sorts, become someone more in tune with who I say I am. I am in essence the person that takes no shit from anybody, strong in my womanhood but when push comes to shove do I define myself in truth? As I have heard often in the past few days about influences in my life, do actions speak louder than words? So in an attempt to make my future strong and my self stronger I have decided to keep only those influences that are positive and be true to my inner beliefs but it is that journey that is truly difficult.

What I love is to stand on the grass without my shoes on when it's just sunny enough and the grass is just green enough. What I love is to wear my high heels and dress up and maybe not have anywhere to go or anyone to impress and just see a movie that is not any good. I love to sit in the driveway that my Daddy built where our handprints were set before the cement dried and let the bugs crawl by and let the shade guard me and the trees blow in the breeze. I've taken to the outdoors to calm me down and I love the pond or the trees or the flag in the wind. I love a lot of things that contradict and many people will tell me that love must be defined but as I have said in my speeches, in my life and in my lectures love is all around and unconditional and so as I need it for me love is all around so I will love the little things.

He didn't look like Santa

I used to have this recurring dream when I was a little kid. Someone was pushing my mom off a balcony, an indoor theatre balcony and it was a very vivid dream. He was a bearded gentleman, not bearded in a pleasant way like Santa Claus, rather bearded in a frightening way like someone that did it to make them look older or more threatening. He was never unkempt or dirty as one might imagine the unabomber to be, he was someone you might have seen in the grocery store and discussed the ripeness of your melons with, and he was throwing my mom over the front of a balcony.

My mom, even in her fear and agony, was looking radiant, always wearing a silk blouse and being on the cusp of a generation that found feathered hair "the thing" she wore her short dark hair in a fluffly toussle around her hair and I could see it wisping backwards and forwards around her as he threw her. In my sheer terror I would always wake up before the man suceeded in throwing my mom over the edge, in some respects saving her from my own worst fears.

Although I would save her from my imagined fears, I never did find out the outcome to that dream, but when I would scurry my pint sized body as fast as I could to my unharmed mothers side in the middle of each night I would see that the man had not won this time. Now, over 10 years later, as real life drama escalates that dream comes back to me in sleep and in waking and I wonder will simply waking up be enough to save the day?

There's no crying in Crazyville

I've recently taken to feeling very sorry for myself. It's a feeling similar to that felt by the Beat Generation or Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie the graduate. I finished college and am anxiously or hesitantly in many cases awaiting my next step. I can't really fathom the point to all this "relaxation" I am doing and as I see my friends take off around me I've had a mini bout of depression.

The television and news media recently has gone crazy with the subject of depression amongst celebrities as one beloved one tries to kill himself, the rest come forward to reveal there secret lives of sadness and Larry King and Greta Van Susteren host panels of experts on the subject. If I was a celebrity, it would be okay to be down. But, it would only be okay to come forward in the wake of someone else's tragedy, in their fall from grace.

My friend Joe has taken to calling my house in Denver Samiraville, maybe because of what it is - a beautiful kingdom or village over which I have absolute rule...I don't think so. More likely it is because I masterfully manipulate the comings and goings of my own life from under the table because that is the only way I know how. Given the environment I am in and the life I lead, I must live under the rules that I have been given, to a degree of course, but you understand. Of course Joe wasn't thinking all this when he said, "Are you in Boulder or Samiraville today?"

A more accurate name for where I live, all the time is Crazyville, because we're all a bit mental. The problem is you can't even cry here. So, you sneak in your moments. Where you didn't used to like to waste time in the bathroom, now you take a minute and collect yourself and you emerge a new woman, ready to greet the world. Maybe it's not that profound, but it's that kind of thing, the little things, the tiny sobs in the bathroom, the stolen kisses on the train, the last day out with our friends moving to Tanzania that keep us sane and keep me the Queen of Crazyvi...I mean Samiraville.

;)

"Is it too much to ask of you, to stay inside with me?"

It is odd for me to be here right now. HERE, in this current predicament. Everyone's going it seems and I'm staying still. I was the first of my friends to graduate and I'm staying still. Not moving, somewhat stagnant. Many of course are just returning to school but some are going to the places of their dreams and I, I can't even remember what my dreams look like. Regardless of where they are all going there is a semblance of permanence in their departures this time.



There is a suitcase sitting by my door, I brought it home with me. Usually a suitcase sitting by the door signifies some sort of impermanence, a journey yet to be begun, but for me it was the end of my journey and my coming home. The suitcase was full of my shoes and they just needed to get back where they started.

Burn Baby, Burn

When bad things happen there are several ways that people can react. Some react with anger, some with spite, some calmly and cooly display their emotions on their sleeve and some don't even react at all, not even at all. In many instances we are compelled to look for someone to blame. To find a scapegoat, when the universe seems to have collided unfairly just in our directions and sometimes we act compassionately displaying the true grandeur of our hearts, saying things like, "At least we have each other," or "Thank God no one was hurt."

In situations like those, when we hold our emotions in and in chillingly kind voices take care of eachother, we wonder if we are condemnable if we are really pissed that we crashed our new "used" VW Passat into our best friends van or that our brand new million dollar investment burned into the Florida ocean or even that we dropped our new bracelet cavalierly from our wrist on the walk to McDonald's on a Mediterannean Vacation. It's just stuff so truly it doesn't matter. We do have eachother, we didn't really need all of that, and really, thank God we are alive, so then why do we secretly mourn their losses when everyone stops looking at us to be brave and the sad eyes stop telling us how much it sucks to lose your stuff?

It's a funny world we live in, the goals we work for and the way we look at stuff, and when it all comes down in ashes what do we have, if not eachother?

Soul Suckers

Your sitting on the brink of something, it's like that moment right before you brake when you might hit something and if you hadn't looked up you would have crashed. You most definitely would have crashed and you felt your foot hit down and your heart skip a beat.

You are sitting on the brink of something and everyone knows it. You can either give in to everyone or you can yell out what you want to say. If you give in, you will follow a path and make certain decisions always bearing in mind the things that you want but never really having them completely in your reach. If you step out and do what you want, perhaps "disappoint" everyone you may not have a clear path but you will know that things will be okay.

"Did you believe ,when they told you they discovered you? And that everything is free,as long as you do what they tell you to. You think it's true?"

Today I went to career services thinking I could keep up the game, think that they wouldn't see through my facade and they would give me a nice tidy package that consisted of career for a year, nonprofit of some kind and then graduate school. The package would have not only satisfied me but my family. After about a quarter of an hour with me and my empty plead for the career services savior to "fix it please" I had revealed the dire struggle between my sense of obligation and love to my family and my sense of self. They then realized that any help they could give me was secondary or even tertiary to any help that I might need sorting out what I could do within myself and my desire to satisfy those that mean the most to me. They can help me find jobs or do personal assesments or take prep tests but they can't help me be the black sheep of my family. They then recommended I "head upstairs." I knew what that meant, the sign that points upstairs points to Counseling and Psychological Services.

I still think I can look up before I crash and I will figure this out on my own, although the folks upstairs have helped me through things before. Ugh.

"Wait for Tomorrow, You'll Be Alright."

When I was little my brother, in an attempt to prove his God-like skills to my sister and I, put my childrens books in the oven. He was trying to highlight the scientific fact that the paper wouldn't melt or burn above or beyond a certain temperature. Of that he was sure. He was so certain and confident in what he said, he was unfaltering in what he knew. So sure that he really put our books in the oven, our beloved stories that we held so dear to our heart.

He was right, the paper didn't burn, it didn't ignite. Nothing happened to the paper. Not a damn thing. We nervously sat, shrieking and screaming, clutching his lean, stronger than our arms begging him to pull the books out and as we did, the glue and the binding that held those invincible pages together began to slowly cook. The books pages began to come apart and soon those stories were less cohesive units but just seperate pages with oozing goop, warm and soft around them. The books were ruined, pages intact.

He had been so confident, but there had been something that he had not accounted for. There are always things we don't account for. My brother, like most of my family, is wise, and has since learned to take into consideration more than just the pages. He doesn't always see the story for the book. My family, for example, sees me now as a law student. I am, taking the lsat prep courses to buy myself some time to see if that is where I should end up, or if I should go where I see myself, TFA or someother noble cause that I deem equally worthy and would be just as priviledged to work for.

In the mean time, I try to put all the pages in order for everyone to read but it seems like they were never meant to go in the right order to begin with. At least not in my stories .