Like many people, I keep a running to-do list in my head. Also like many people, it's just a thing that I tell myself I do, because whenever I make a note to add something to the list, I forget the whole damn thing a second later.
Eh. Can't bring myself to care. Things work out one way or another eventually. Either I'll remember it at the last minute, or I won't remember and then I'll be faced with that icy feeling of "CRAP!" when I realize that essay was due an hour ago and there's nothing I can really do about it.
I turned 20 a couple of days ago. I feel like somewhere inside of me there's a post about that, but I'm having trouble getting in touch. I think I haven't really accepted it yet. Maybe for the rest of my life, I'll think of myself as a teenager (and turn into Amy Poehler from "Mean Girls"? Horrible thought). Maybe one morning I'll wake up with that same icy feeling of "CRAP!" and then have a midlife crisis at 20.
Don't you just kind of feel like those first 10 years of your existence were kind of wasted, though? I barely remember anything about them. And yeah, I realize that physical, psychological, emotional growth and development, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But where are the stories? You can't be like "This one time, when I was 7, I was at this party and this dude was so DRUNK..." This is partly because whoever you're talking to will call child protective services, and your parents will be taken away. It is also partly because I don't remember anything (I went to a lot of CRAZY parties when I was 7).
Wasted years! Am I wasting my life right now, sitting in deserted Norbucks while thunder and lightening and rain all clash and erupt just outside of the thin windows? Is staring at a Celtx document for hours on end wasting my life? Is it working towards something bigger? The Future? A job? Junior year? What counts as something bigger?
This isn't a freak-out. This is pretentious contemplation, but most of all, this is procrastination because I don't want to have to START the process of staring at that Celtx document.
I wonder what TV I can find to watch on Netflix?
Monday, May 31, 2010
Friday, May 7, 2010
The awkward years
I'm always absolutely shocked when I see middle- and high-schoolers around downtown Evanston. To me, it's such a college town. Everyone I know here is connected to the university, and it's jarring to be reminded that there is life outside Northwestern in Evanston. And then I start getting bitter, partly because I sometimes miss having a life outside of school, but mostly because I hate middle-schoolers.
I'm sitting here in Panera (at 8pm on a Friday night...I lead an exciting existence), glaring at a group of middle-schoolers across the room and trying to drown their chatter out with Queen. It's not working, but god bless Pandora and classic rock for doing their darndest.
Was I ever that obnoxious? Hell, yes. I mean, I am DAMN obnoxious now, but the self-importance and the shrillness were multiplied about ten billion times over back in middle school. I guess it's because that's the time when you're turning into an actual person (and that's kind of a mind-blowing process--just like what Kirsten was saying the other night about having the realization that all babies are actually future PEOPLE), so you try to compensate for the weirdness by being as many people as possible, sometimes all at once. And when you have all of those personas clamoring for attention, I guess you kind of have to shout to be heard over yourself.
Back in middle school, I guess I was undergoing the struggle between Goody Two Shoes and Drama Dork and BAMF. The BAMF didn't really stand a chance, but I was friends--best friends, in one case--with people who had serious shit going on in their lives and did drugs and wrote poetry. I wasn't. I'm still not. But it made me feel important to be friends with people who were, so I kept my own personal BAMF in a little cage on a shelf and sort of taunted it with my choices to do homework and spend time with my family and get good grades.
My BAMF hated that. I laughed the laugh of the evil in its face.
But in all seriousness, middle school sucks. I don't think that I'm saying anything too revolutionary when I say that. It's a festering wasteland of pre-hormone hormones, and if you get out of there with one single personality, you are the luckiest bastard of them all. So maybe I should be feeling sorry for those kids across the room instead of glaring at them. After all, they're going through something you could not PAY me to do over again.
In a certain way, though, college is kind of middle school-y. You get here with no established personality. You can try on different people and do different things until you find something that works for you which, god willing, you will. You have to fight it out with yourself to find a level of comfort that doesn't reduce you to a total shut-in (guilty), but at the same time doesn't result in you partying every night and sleeping with every douchebag on campus.
Oh god, now they're all singing "Staying Alive" in their cracking, weedy voices. Screw solidarity. I'm going to glare at them until I kill them with my eyes.
I'm sitting here in Panera (at 8pm on a Friday night...I lead an exciting existence), glaring at a group of middle-schoolers across the room and trying to drown their chatter out with Queen. It's not working, but god bless Pandora and classic rock for doing their darndest.
Was I ever that obnoxious? Hell, yes. I mean, I am DAMN obnoxious now, but the self-importance and the shrillness were multiplied about ten billion times over back in middle school. I guess it's because that's the time when you're turning into an actual person (and that's kind of a mind-blowing process--just like what Kirsten was saying the other night about having the realization that all babies are actually future PEOPLE), so you try to compensate for the weirdness by being as many people as possible, sometimes all at once. And when you have all of those personas clamoring for attention, I guess you kind of have to shout to be heard over yourself.
Back in middle school, I guess I was undergoing the struggle between Goody Two Shoes and Drama Dork and BAMF. The BAMF didn't really stand a chance, but I was friends--best friends, in one case--with people who had serious shit going on in their lives and did drugs and wrote poetry. I wasn't. I'm still not. But it made me feel important to be friends with people who were, so I kept my own personal BAMF in a little cage on a shelf and sort of taunted it with my choices to do homework and spend time with my family and get good grades.
My BAMF hated that. I laughed the laugh of the evil in its face.
But in all seriousness, middle school sucks. I don't think that I'm saying anything too revolutionary when I say that. It's a festering wasteland of pre-hormone hormones, and if you get out of there with one single personality, you are the luckiest bastard of them all. So maybe I should be feeling sorry for those kids across the room instead of glaring at them. After all, they're going through something you could not PAY me to do over again.
In a certain way, though, college is kind of middle school-y. You get here with no established personality. You can try on different people and do different things until you find something that works for you which, god willing, you will. You have to fight it out with yourself to find a level of comfort that doesn't reduce you to a total shut-in (guilty), but at the same time doesn't result in you partying every night and sleeping with every douchebag on campus.
Oh god, now they're all singing "Staying Alive" in their cracking, weedy voices. Screw solidarity. I'm going to glare at them until I kill them with my eyes.
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