oh, what a week...

i started writing this post in september and never finished. i thought i'd put it up anyway.


i have had an insane week. let's start at the beginning...
last monday, i was awakened at around 8:30 by the sound of the workers in my landlady/next-door neighbor's yard breaking up the debris from re-siding her house. as i sat in my bed poking around on the computer and reading, i started getting the distinct impression that the noise was now coming not only from the back yard but also directly over my head. i first called my dad, who denied any knowledge of construction planned on our house, and then my landlady who confirmed that yes, they were redoing the roof. since it sounded like the incredible hulk had taken it into his head to use our house as a trampoline, i decided i had best leave. after dropping my car off for a long-overdue oil change, i took the bus downtown to shop for shoes that i could wear to potential job interviews and/or eventual actual jobs. not being in a decisive mood, i thought that the solution to do would be to buy everything i remotely liked (on credit cards, of course) and bring it home to ask the opinions of everybody i knew, eventually returning the shoes that didn't make the cut. six pairs of shoes and $800 later, i took the most crowded muni bus i have been on in my entire life back to my car, drove home, and trudged upstairs to examine my purchases in a different light. the first thing that i noticed was that there was a large mess in the center of my room. it took a moment to register that the large mess was composed of paint, plaster and insulation. this prompted me to actually look up at the ceiling, which had a large hole with the sagging boards showing through, and half of my light fixture was hanging off. i first called my dad, whose response was something to the tune of "no. you're kidding me..." and then my landlady, who came over with one of the workers to take a look. she translated their explanation to me (they're not used to working with roofs like ours, whatever that means...one of the men had put his foot through the top layer...), but made no apologies. she's generally a kind lady, and she likes our family, but apologies are not really her style.

dawdling at the crossroads

so, i have concluded that i'm bad at this whole keeping a blog business. however, i will keep trying. in some ways, it's bad for me to be home. i tend to isolate myself out of sheer laziness, and end up bored, unhappy and having alienated all my friends. it's not that i don't want to hang out with people...it's just that it's easier to play computer solitaire than to pick up the phone and make the effort. which is sad and pathetic and really no excuse, i know.
likewise, i have been extremely lazy in the whole job-hunting endeavor. people (adults, mostly) keep telling me, "oh, take some time off, relax, have fun." the problem is, i'm not relaxing and i'm not having fun: i'm sitting on my ass, and i'm bored. i'm scared of becoming too comfortable at peet's and living at home and having no motivation to get a more interesting, fulfilling job. i don't want to be one of these people.
people (again, most of them adults) also seem very eager to reassure me that nobody is pressuring me to figure out what i want to do with my life. this is not true. i am pressuring me to figure out what i want to do, if not with my life, than at least with the next year. not having any sort of plan, goal, hope, or daydream makes me profoundly uncomfortable. for some, what i'm currently doing might be relaxing. for me it's anxiety-inducing.
the really silly thing is, i arrived at the end of college thoroughly and genuinely surprised that i hadn't yet figured out what i wanted to do. i always just assumed that the path would become clear to me, since every previous stage of my life had led naturally to the next. it really didn't occur to me until the about winter quarter this year that maybe the answer wouldn't just drop into my lap, maybe it required some thought and effort. to be perfectly honest, though i've devoted a fair amount of thought to the subject (and 2 blog posts so far), i've put in very little real effort. i meant to make an appointment at the career center, or go see the department counselor, or go to one of those seminars on campus that i kept seeing fliers for, but i never did. i've also been visiting craig's list regularly to check out the postings, but have yet to send in my resume. actually, i've yet to complete my resume.
something inside of me keeps screaming just take the plunge, just do it, do something, do anything, set your life in motion...but whether it's culinary classes or internships, i haven't been able to make myself actually take a step in any direction.
as a concluding note to a rather depressing post, i would like to state that i am not miserable. i am bored, frustrated, anxious and afraid, but i'm not dragging myself in agony through every day. if i were, maybe i would actually be motivated to do something about it.

sorry 'bout the wait

so, it's been a while...right now i am supposed to be doing research for a presentation that i have to give on margaret atwood on thursday, but i'm actually listening to ulca radio and playing spider solitaire, so i thought it might be a good time to revisit the cliffhanger post that i put up a week and a half ago. ooooohhh, and now they're playing waltz #2, which makes me sad, both because it's a sad song (duh) and because of the person that it reminds me of. and it's sad that elliott smith is dead...

but i'm going to shut up about that now and try and focus on the issue at hand. so. the "thinking vs. feeling" debate, as people have dubbed it...thinking has traditionally been aligned with a masculine way of approaching the world and feeling with a feminine way of same. of course, especially in these oh-so-enlightened times, this is not a strict either/or division; one can be (and should be) both a thinking and a feeling human being. but IGAOTW (which stands for In General And On The Whole, an acronym that i just made up. take note.), males are expected to value logic over emotion and females to value emotion over logic. and, since western philosophy is overwhelmingly dominated by males, logic has long since won out as the more "civilized" value. thus audre lorde, trying valiantly to counter centuries of hetero-, masculo-, euro-centric culture, champions feeling as the voice of the "black mother" (counter to descartes, a "white father"). when we remove the racial element that makes us all so uncomfortable (i know, this is unfair...but it's not the issue for today. another day, perhaps.), we still get thinking=masculine, feeling=feminine, we just have lorde insisting that the value of feeling should also be recognized. okay. let's set that aside for a moment and look at the quotes themselves. as ryan noted on my earlier post, "thinking" is presented as providing a certainty, while "feeling" makes no guarantees. the way he presents this difference (and he can feel free to correct me if i'm wrong, but i think it's probably the way that most of us look at it...the way society looks at it) is that this makes feeling a weaker force. thinking promises existence, but feeling only offers the possibility for freedom. however, i see this as being an essential and valuable attribute of emotion rather than a shortcoming. it is exactly the potential that is important. feeling does not and cannot guarantee freedom. you can even (rather easily, in fact) trap yourself in your own emotion. you must make your own freedom; feeling only gives you the possibilty. but you cannot be free if you do not value feeling. logic, for all its advantages (and it has many), is essentially and irrevocably rule-bound. logic is, in fact, a set of rules by which one progresses from one set or piece of information to another. if you live your life strictly by logic, you cannot be free; you can only do what the rules dictate. if you allow yourself to transgress these rules however, and act on emotion, it opens up whole new avenues for living. now, to return to the gender divide...i would like to posit that the idea that males follow logic more than emotion and females vice versa is nonsense. it is simply that society allows men to express certain logical and emotional patterns and women to express others. men are expected to hold to a much more absolute standard of logic, where the same rules apply to all situations; something is always advisable/right/acceptable or it is inadvisable/wrong/unacceptable. they are "allowed" to express anger and very little else. women, on the other hand, are expected to have a much more relative standard of logic, that seems to be much more conscious of social standards and each individual situation (i am not talking about "emotional logic" or anything strange or confusing like that. it is not "feeling mixed with thinking." it is abiding by a different set of logical rules that are largely based on social norms). women are allowed to express happiness, desire (but not too much, or else they're sluts), fear, sadness, but not usually anger (or else they're bitchy). now, neither of these characterizations are exhaustive, and clearly (being female) i have more to say about the female experience of the thinking/feeling dichotomy. i would not privilege one over the other. each has its function and its place - it is, as always, finding the balance that is important.

on a completely irrelevant side note, while i was writing this post, my friend's radio show ended (you should listen to it, by the way: tuesdays 10p-12a on uclaradio.com) and the next show came on. the dj is somewhat irritating to begin with, but when she started advertising the giveaway for the night, i had to turn it off. they're giving away free tickets to a shindig that a band is putting on that they have dubbed, for whatever reason, a "bacchanal." however, the way that she was pronouncing it was "back-anal." not to be snobby or elitist, but that just annoyed the hell out of me. i almost called in and corrected her (and should have, now that i've thought about it more), but i don't know if i could have done it without being rude. in any case...i had more thoughts, but they've either leaked out of my ears or retreated to the depths of my brain and will be fished out later. right now i've got to get some sleep...

the old debate

i think, therefore i am.
- Descartes

i feel, therefore i can be free.
- Audre Lorde



more on this later...

internet identification

i was wasting time on facebook yesterday and happened to notice that when i view my own profile a little box tells me "this is you." and yes, fine, it is in the space labeled "connection" that usually shows who you know the person through, but it could just say "you are (insert your name here)." instead it insists that you are the information that is posted alongside your picture. and i suppose that, in a certain sense, you are. as far as a lot of your "friends" who haven't even seen you, let alone had a conversation with you in years are concerned, you are who you say you are on the internet. apparantly i am a collection of my preferences in movies, music, books, and a handful of stated interests. and of course, my list of people who are willing to list themselves as my friends (even if they haven't had any interaction with me in ages) largely in order to boost their own number of friends. and i buy into it completely. i try to pretend that i'm reconnecting with people that i lost track of, but that almost never happens. it's just another way to make me feel like i have more contact with the rest of humanity than i actually do. just like checking people's AIM away messages and profiles. just like writing in this blog.

senioritis vs. realworldaphobia

back in good ol' sf (for a few days at least). unfortunately i seem to have brought back a head cold from ny (along with numerous souveniers and countless memories), and the stuffiness is driving me crazy. i'm glad i don't have allergies, or i think i would seriously consider suicide every spring. i've been downing sudafed and willing it to go away. i'm also feeling a) a little grumpy about going back to school and b) denialistic (a word i just made up - say it out loud, it sounds even better than it looks) terror about what's going to happen after i'm done with school. at the moment i'm indulging in the mental equivalent of the sticking-your-fingers-in-your-ears-and-going-"lalalalala, i can't hear you" routine, but that's not going to fly for much longer, especially if want to do something besides work at peet's for the rest of my life (which i must say, after nearly five years i'm getting heartily sick of). problem is, i don't know what. anybody else want to pick a career for me? something you think i'd be good at? i feel very silly and adrift and am trying to tamp down the panic. i think part of it is that i'm extremely reluctant to limit myself. as a kid, people tell you "you can be anything you want to be," and i think that a lot of people hold on to that for as long as you can. i don't have a mission, a vision. i am not somebody who "always knew" that they wanted to be a doctor or a marine biologist or an insurance broker. i was more interested in the idea of possibility. one day i would be a future ballerina, the next a future lawyer. though the ballerina ship has definitely sailed, and i'm trying to avoid becoming a lawyer because i think it would pose some emotional and/or ideological problems for me, i still like to pretend that i could be an editor, a bookstore owner, a librarian, a little cog in a big clock, a big cog in a little clock, a thinker, a dreamer, a doer, a people person, somebody intelligent and kind and productive and efficient and helpful and knowledgeable...

solitude

i just lost $10 to a bunch of 50-year-olds. grrr. i also spent god-knows-how-much today in soho...but that was fun. until i was walking down houston back to sonia's apartment and was suddenly hit with the fact that i was walking alone. all by myself. nobody's hand to grab onto, nobody to make conversation with. which doesn't mean that i don't love this self-sufficiency thing that i'm beginning to reclaim. but i forgot how lonely it can be. sometimes you have a great moment and just bask in it - but sometimes you have a great moment that you want to turn around and share, but there's nobody to share it with. which is not to say that i'm spending my time completely isolated by myself, but there's something different about having someone around whose life is entwined with yours, who automatically thinks of you when they want a partner for an experience. i'm having plenty of experiences - i miss my partner.

yum

i am currently eating the best falafel ever. mmmm...i love new york...

so i thought

heh. discovered what i left behind (my face moisturizer)...there's always something, isn't there? just glad it wasn't my wallet...

ready for anything

so, after 16 or so hours of travel all told in the last two days, here i am in nyc. it's absolutely gross weather, but i'm still excited. it took me a while, though - my body does not respond well to planes. my theory is that no matter how i try to fool it, it knows somehow that it is not supposed to be that high up in the air going that fast. and also the cabin pressure might have something to do with it... but i survived, and now i'm here and ready to do anything and everything.

backing up, however, by about 32 hours, i was not quite so serene. i left la on tuesday around 6:30am, got home to sf shortly after noon, and immediately started in on some frantic laundry. around 2:30, i was moving clothes from washer to dryer, vaguely annoyed because it seemed that i had left a tissue in a pocket somewhere, when i uncovered, at the bottom of the washing machine, my cellular phone.

i was not pleased.

2 1/2 hours and $131 later, i was back on track, though slightly more disgruntled, and eventually got everything packed that needed to be packed (or so i think so far...), and though i didn't get to bed until around 2am (pacific), that was probably more due to me taking an hour and a half out to discuss a book with my dad.

so i think i've finally regained both my mental and physical equilibria, and hope put them both to the test tromping around in new york snow/rain tomorrow.

valerie's attempt to keep an online journal, part II

so, i'm trying this blog thing again...last time it didn't last so long. we'll see how it goes.