There’s an episode of How I Met Your Mother where it comes out that Marshall has dancer’s hip, and you think maybe he hurt himself playing basketball or something, but it turns out that he really does dance.  Like, a lot.  Whenever he’s happy or receives good news.

I share that secret, even while insisting that I don’t dance.  And I recently injured myself.  Okay, so not while dancing, but it is sure cramping my style. Not that I have a style other than bad.  There’s a reason the dancing is secret.

I hurt my foot a couple weeks ago, and then just as that minor injury was starting to heal, I started getting sharp pains up near my toes, and this afternoon when I was limping to my car, I heard this snapping/crunching sound and now it hurts much worse and a bruise has formed.

This injury is throwing the half marathon training into great concern, and making my job very difficult.  Plus it takes me forever to get anywhere, and I look like an old lady limping around, and I keep making these terrible wincing sounds when the sharp pain hits.  Add to which, whenever I feel the least bit limited, I become very aware that I live in a giant state by myself and suddenly I don’t feel so kiss ass and independent.

For whatever reason, none of that really bothers me.  What bothers me is that I can’t dance and I can’t go for long walks.    Call me Thoreau, but I get a lot out of standing up from my desk and disappearing outside with no particular destination.  It’s a habit I developed when I was at my most anxious, and it has stuck with me for the last couple years.  I like to roam around campus, listening to music (that still counts as communing with nature, right?).  Even when I’m at work, I will take any excuse to walk through the stacks.  Everything I really need is within walking distance of my apartment, so I have become used to walking everywhere and only using my car on the weekends (more nature points).

Right, so I can’t work out my feelings by dance-walking Troy Bolton style, which may result in me becoming a little angsty.  If I start wearing a bunch of eyeliner and talking about how no one understands me, you’ll know why.  And if you have any good thoughts to spare, my foot and I would appreciate some healing vibes.  Thank you kindly.

In the Summer, I found myself alarmed by my own inability to focus on any one thing for more than a few minutes.  I couldn’t even sit down and read for very long before I found myself checking my phone to be sure nothing interesting was happening on the internet.

It was like I was wholly uncomfortable with silence.

It was a mystery to me how I ever got anything done.  I actually had to use a program to block access to the internet on my computer and an alarm on my phone just to get myself to sit and read for a full hour.  You know when you know you’re being ridiculous, but you can’t do much about it?  It was like that.

Regardless of how I got myself to do it, concentrating felt good.  It was peaceful.  I felt productive.  World domination was within my grasp.

But I’d known for a long time that my problem with silence was not just about a lack of discipline.  You have to be pretty comfortable with yourself to be silent for long periods of time, because it’s like inviting all your very worst thoughts and doubts to a party without even balloons or alcohol for distractions.

Less deliberately than makes for an inspiring story, I kept working at concentrating for longer periods of time.  I was on a separate mission to ditch anxiety, and I found that also made quiet moments alone much easier.  I wasn’t always reaching for my phone, hitting refresh to keep from thinking about my own life, because I was already dealing with it.

Because change like this happens so slowly, I didn’t notice anything was different until it was December and I was reading for hours at a time with no care for what was happening on the internet.  And–SHOCK TO THE WORLD–without even listening to music.  That’s right, dead silence.  I guess I should say that with the small exception of philosophical texts that are so difficult that they require all of my attention, I haven’t read in silence since I received my first Walkman (approx. one million years ago).

Everyone knows that if you heard someone say they read something somewhere, then it must be true.  Well, years and years ago, a coworker told me that she read somewhere that multitasking is actually a myth.  You are really not accomplishing more by trying to do several things at once.  You’re just looking busy.

I held this knowledge in the back of my head while willfully ignoring it whenever I could, but sometimes I had to face reality.  When you have a 20-page paper to write, you can’t finish it by doing anything but sitting down and writing all five thousand words.  At a certain point, it doesn’t matter how neat your notes are or how many awesome articles you found, you have to do the really tedious work of concentrating for a good 10 hours.  No matter how hard I work to avoid it, there is a lot of value in that tedium.

So lately I have been working on doing just one thing at a time.  Aside from making me far more productive, it is also really peaceful.  (I tried to add music back into my practice of reading and found I enjoyed myself more in silence.)   Months ago I expressed concern that I don’t get lost in art anymore.  I always seem to hold myself back and hide behind a veil of distraction.  Somehow in dealing with anxiety and working on concentrating and becoming okay with silence, I think I found my way back into caring too much about fictional characters and crying at every movie.

What I’ve learned is that you actually can’t do all the things.  At least not at the same time.  Trust me, I tried for a really long time.  But you can do one thing, and since you’re only doing one thing, there is a much greater chance that you’ll actually finish it.  And having finished something, you will have the confidence to attempt a new thing, maybe something bigger and scarier.  And at the end of all of that: world domination.

I find it really difficult to write while irritated.  The words jump around in my head and none of them are quite right, and I don’t have the patience that writing demands.

People keep making noise and asking me questions.  My coworker is humming.  My brain feels mushy and I think my heart is beating faster than normal.

It’s stupid that I’m irritated anyway. There’s no reason.  I’m just annoying myself and being unfair to others.  But I can’t get back to my normal calm right now, so I’ll stop fighting myself, and give into the pettiness.

It really is unreasonable that anyone should make noise typing.  And why are people talking?  This is a library.  Do I really still have two more hours here?  Could anyone blame me for shaving my head so that I don’t have to deal with this one piece of hair that keeps getting in my face?  Stop coughing!  Why doesn’t anyone else seem to notice that this is the most annoying night in history?

I will laugh at myself very soon for being so ridiculous.  I could fake it in writing right now, and you would never know that I just glared at someone like this and then I tried to take a deep breath and it got stuck in my throat.

Happiness is easy to celebrate and sadness is interesting to articulate, but what about irrational annoyance at everything and nothing?  It gets no love!  Tonight, I take a stand against that.

Okay, I think I’m ready to laugh now.

I mentioned casually in my Boston post back in November that Ashley and Nicole talked me into running a half marathon in February.  It’s actually pretty easy to talk me into doing something that I already want to do, so for the last eight weeks I’ve been training.

I started running my first year of college when I was going through something that I only knew how to handle by waking up before everyone else and hitting the streets with JT’s first solo album (he used to make music).  That Summer I read all the books and then I started running some races.

The day before starting my senior year of college, I ran my first half marathon, and then I was finishing two majors and working two jobs and applying to grad school, and everything else was pushed to the side.  Running has remained there on the side for most of the time I’ve been in grad school.

The one big surprise about running again is that it turns out I’m not the raging perfectionist I used to be!  I realized almost immediately that 13 weeks was not going to be enough time to go from barely running to doing anything impressive, and I was totally okay with that. I actually haven’t felt discouraged once in all of these weeks. It’s just fun to be back out there again (with JT’s second album).

Last night I was limping home in the dark (because I did something to my foot) and breathing out of my mouth (because I have a cold), and I was really happy.  But I do kind of miss breathing out of my nose and walking without a limp.  And, seriously, it’s time for another album, Justin.

It's me, my books, my tinsel tree, and my Justin Timberlake bobble head. We are a happy family.

I wasn’t planning on getting a tree. I have lived without one of my own for the last five years, and I have this thing about collecting unnecessary stuff (I don’t like it).  There’s also this thing with my apartment (it is really too small for a tree).

But I was walking through Target and I thought I would just maybe walk through the Christmas decorations, since Christmas decorations are one of my favorite things ever in life (mostly the lights).  I had just put a giant bottle of wine in my cart, so I was feeling pretty happy with myself, and then I saw a tree made of tinsel selling at a very reasonable price, and I grabbed it and walked directly to the checkout before I could change my mind.

I got it home and then pretended to do other very important things for a while, but all I could think about was setting it up, so I did that instead.  Then I texted Bri a picture of it and she instagramed it for me.

I have spent most of the last week staring lovingly at my tinsel tree.  It will more than do until I go home to Washington in a couple weeks.

*I’m not actually sending Christmas cards.  You should have known I was joking when you didn’t see my tiara pictured.  And there just happens to be a stack of books on atheism sitting right behind my head.  I did not do that on purpose, Mom!

I love when I’m writing a friend a message and before I can even send it, I receive a message from that same friend, because we were thinking about each other at the same time.  This has been on my mind because it’s happened a lot recently and then I was listening to a podcast and heard someone argue that it isn’t all that surprising that this happens, because you’re on an unconscious schedule with most of the people in your life.

You have the friends you talk to every day, the friends you talk to every couple days, the friends you talk to the morning after your shared favorite show airs on TV, the friends you talk to once a month, the friends you talk to whenever you’re back in your hometown. And you come to each other’s minds when it’s been almost too long since you last spoke.  Not that it always works that way, especially now that we have so many ways to communicate and so many passive ways to keep up with each other (facebook, twitter, blogs), but I like that explanation.

Sometimes I don’t think all that much about the several fun and pleasant little conversations I have all the time with people who make me laugh.  They’re like exclamation points that hit throughout the day and keep me from getting stuck in my own head.  I forget about times in my life when I didn’t have a bunch of awesome people within reach.  It’s a good thing I didn’t know what I was missing.

I had this realization when I was 21 that good friends are the people you can brag to and it’s not considered bragging.  You can say pretentious things and they won’t think you’re pretentious.  You can say petty things and they won’t think you’re petty.  You can say irrational things and they won’t think you’re irrational.  You know, because they know you!  And so it’s okay to say all the braggy, pretentious, petty, irrational things you think (we all think) and it doesn’t have to define you.  When I see people acting this way in public, I think, “You need a really good friend to gchat with right now.”

Thanks to Nico for making me a gif (or making a gif me, I guess) just for funsies.

Have a great weekend, internet.  Love your faces.

Secret to no one: I really like blogging.  More than anything, and what I always have to admit when people ask how to maintain a blog when you’re busy, is that I just think it’s fun and so I rarely have to discipline myself to write and post things on a regular basis.

But it’s weird writing a personal blog and it does not get less weird as the years go by.

My feelings about it change all of the time.  Sure there are times when I don’t have much to say, but there are also times when I have a lot to say, but I’m not up to putting it all out there.  And I tell myself all kinds of things like, “be bold” and “this isn’t even kind of a big deal” and “you’ve already hit ‘publish’ on 675 other posts, so what makes you think this one will be different?” and “no, really, it is not a big deal–no one is even looking!”

More often I just pick up a book and forget about posting anything, because reading is easy and doesn’t require me to put myself out there.  And when you know you’ll eventually get around to doing the scarier thing, sometimes doing the easy thing feels pretty nice.  It’s like deciding to stay home and watch Pride and Prejudice in your pajamas instead of going out into the world and risking rejection.

So I have been reading a lot lately.

The title of this post was borrowed from a friend of mine.  I’m sorry she said it, because it will be hard for any option to compete with “or I could stay home and watch Pride and Prejudice in my pajamas.”

Lisa got married in the chapel of a Catholic school.  It was this awesome brick building surrounded by trees, the leaves of which really played it up for Fall.  It was getting dark when I took this picture, and I said I’d take many more the next day, but then I got kind of distracted by the wedding.  I mean, good thing there was a professional photographer there and no one was counting on me and my iPhone.

I loved being in Seattle for a few days.  It rained!  The colors were perfect.  It felt like Fall.  It made me want to move.  With more urgency than I’ve felt before.  Not to Seattle, though Seattle is lovely, and I do feel pulled in that direction.  To some place new.

A week later, California decided to be kind and throw a little rain our direction.  I woke up early on Friday morning, and I could hear it, and it made me so happy. (I feel ridiculous being this excited about rain, but we have barely had any in months and months and months.)  I just wanted to sit and watch it fall.

When I was in Washington, I had a conversation with a Californian who loves the weather here so much that she didn’t even care to spend a few days in the presence of clouds.  That got our table joking about how anyone ever gets anything done in Washington anyway when rain just makes you want to go home and climb under the covers.  I could only offer, “Well, I did manage to graduate from college.”

I do notice that the rain affects me differently now.  Everything is darker and quieter.  I start feeling double extra introspective. I want to listen to serious music. I slip more easily into melancholy.  Also, other cliches.  But I love the contrast.

I feel a little bit like I’ve been run over by life.  I’ve been sick with various ailments for almost two weeks now.  I was preparing to be in a wedding, I was away from home, I came back and everything was a mess, and now I’m getting ready to leave on another trip.  Not difficult for a healthy person to handle, but I have been dragging myself through all of these activities while feeling half dead.

I’ve been a really cheerful sick person.  For whatever reason, I usually am.  I guess I don’t get sick often, so when I do, I can’t get that upset about it.  I have that kind of swirling feeling like life is moving too quickly for me to keep up in this impaired state, and I am somewhat amused just watching it go by.

Not that I’m all giggles.  I am seven different kinds of annoyed right now, and I would appreciate it if everyone in this building would just stop sneezing and asking me questions and making sound of any kind.  I have that about-to-lose-my-cool feeling I get when I really just need to be alone.

That pettiness aside, sometimes I feel like maybe I’m a weird person who is bothered by all of the wrong things.  The fact that I’m sensitive is an important thing to know about me, but I don’t like to say it, because then people start tap dancing around my feelings, and I can’t explain why that thing that seems like it should have upset me didn’t at all, but that barely perceivable thing you probably weren’t even aware of doing hit me in a really vulnerable place.

I also can’t explain how I really mean the things that I say, but if you follow them all to their logical conclusions, you might get me wrong.  That’s probably true for everyone.  I just put on a convincing show about having myself all figured out or something.

Wait, how did we get here?  I blame the NyQuil. No, I take that back.  NyQuil has only ever been very kind to me.

So I’m going to go have one of those weekends where you don’t talk to many people and you’re pretty happy about it.  I figure if I drink enough orange juice, I’ll be completely healthy again, and if I spend enough time with a book, I’ll regain all of my lost cool.

Dear you, have a lovely weekend.  I insist.

Note to the reader: I only talk about barf in the first paragraph.

I always have a hard time believing people who say things like, “I haven’t thrown up in 10 years.”  I’ve never kept track, but I’d be shocked to realize I’d ever made it past the three month mark.  I threw up so much as a kid that my Dad developed a sixth sense about it and actually caught the barf in a jacket once and in a newspaper another time.  Thanks Dad!

I am on the whole a healthy person, but I have always suffered from headaches, and they often result in [see first paragraph].  It turns out that these headaches are pretty easily preventable, but I was a teenager before I figured out all the triggers, and a twenty-something before I actually started putting that information to use.

Once the headache has reached a certain point, I am dead to the world.  Growing up, I was tested for everything, but keeping myself from getting debilitating headaches turns out to be as simple as wearing my glasses or contacts, eating real food, sleeping enough, and not staring directly into bright light.

I very rarely get headaches anymore, but sometimes I can sense that I have pushed things too far (like I was up all night and had candy corn for lunch), and if I’m smart I can get things back on track, but I’m not always smart.  I am not self-destructive by nature, but maybe this is the very tame way I act out those feelings.

Take yesterday as an example.  I did not feel well when I woke up after only a few hours of sleep, but instead of going back to bed, I decided to just get up. It didn’t occur to me until late afternoon that all I really needed to do was eat a real meal.  So simple, except somehow that seemed like a Kilimanjaro-sized task, so I just kept drinking coffee instead, which was the worst decision, because I already have a low tolerance for sugar.  I have mass amounts of sick time, but I decided to go to work anyway.  Once there, I had Dr. Pepper instead of water, because obviously I needed more sugar and caffeine.  Things carry on this direction, but by some miracle, I made it through the day.

It’s not like I had just given up.  I kept trying to make the exact right decision and it would turn out to be the exact wrong decision instead.  This is like when I tried to figure out the most practical thing to wear to take the PSATs, and then somehow decided on a shirt I hated and a fleece jacket that was way too warm.  I have no explanation.

I am good at making decisions usually.  And it’s rare that I know what’s right and willfully go the other way; instead I convince myself the stupid decision is actually the smart one.  It’s like I get tripped up in my own cleverness sometimes.  I know I’m not alone in this, but I could use a little confirmation.

I used to blame the internet for making me look crazy in my real life.  Someone would say something on twitter and I would laugh out loud (lol, if you will) or someone would say something nice and I would grin at my monitor.  But now I do that so often that it has become the new normal.

Another thing I consider perfectly normal: reacting to a smart phone as if it were a person.  I assume that if I laugh or smile at my phone, the people around me will assume that I just received a great text message or something.  (Ze Frank even talked about this in a presentation at VidCon a couple years ago, and we know I treat his words like gospel.)

So I’ve found a new way to look a little crazy.  Or, it found me, and quite a while ago now, but it seems worse lately.

Things to know: I listen to a lot of podcasts and I walk around with ear buds in most of the time.  More details: I listen to a lot of comedy podcasts and lot of this walking around with ear buds is done in a quiet library full of people.  It happens once in a while that I’m walking around the library listening to a comedy podcast and someone says something funny and I start laughing quietly to myself.  As long as I keep from making eye contact with a stranger, it is not so bad.

Recently, though, I started listening to the podcast How Did This Get Made?  Basically, they watch awful movies and then break them down in detail.  Whether it is really that funny or just my kind of funny, I don’t know, but I have been walking around all week unable to keep myself from laughing out loud, despite how crazy it makes me look.

It is one thing when you’re talking to someone or looking at something (like an iPhone) and start laughing.  It is a different thing when you appear to just be walking down the street by yourself, maybe listening to music on your iPod, and you start cracking up or grinning wildly.  Maybe no one was paying attention to you before, but they sure are now!

Let me be honest.  This is a bigger problem than I am letting on.  It’s not just podcasts.  Earlier this week, I got a little too into the music blasting in my ears and didn’t notice there was a guy standing right next to me.  Another time, I was in the staff kitchen making tea, and I started laughing just thinking of something someone said earlier and then I turned around to see a new coworker looking right at me while I laughed to myself.

Introverts with imaginations: we throw parties in our minds!  Sorry, you’re not invited. Oh, you didn’t want to attend?  Is it because you think I’m crazy?

Me: Come take a picture with me.
Mom: For your blog?
Me: Yes.
Mom: This isn’t for comedy purposes, is it?

This picture brought to you by travel exhaustion, Mexian Martinis, and giggles.

I’m usually the kind of person who likes coming home after being away, but Austin was so much fun that I spent most of yesterday missing Ashley, Nicole, and Linda, and being bummed we weren’t still together.  We spent the better part of 72 hours laughing.  I just really love these girls and time spent with them feels meaningful.

We set a precedent in SF of tackle hugs and I’m happy to say that it was upheld.   I saw Ashley about two seconds before she saw me and we hugged and then a few minutes later, we saw Nicole running down the escalator.  She didn’t see us and she was looking the other way until the moment right before we attacked her.  From the airport, we went straight to dinner at Trudy’s, where we met Linda and drank Mexican Martinis.  You’re limited to two, if that tells you anything about how I was feeling after drinking mine and then three-quarters of Linda’s.

Since we had four of the five members of Totes Awesome Channel all in one place, we decided to vlog.  Basically a love letter to Bri, who couldn’t be there.  If you can believe it, we spent most of that night giggling even more than we did in the video.  Like, that was us trying to keep it together for three minutes.  I cut out the part at the beginning where we were trying to get focused.

We woke up pretty early on Friday and spent some time on the couch, drinking coffee and attending to the internet just like we do at home.  I like being around people who make this kind of behavior seem normal and don’t judge me for all the attention I pay to my phone.  I think it was then that we first busted out the Dawson’s Creek DVDs, which served as a constant source of entertainment all weekend.  Even when we weren’t watching them, we were quoting them.

Our big activity for Friday was to go tubing.  That is, float down a river on a tube while drinking beer.  Something I’d never done before, because in Washington, tubing is an activity that usually involves snow and hot chocolate.  Sitting in one place for two hours is not something I’m particularly good at these days, but I decided to just give in to the lack of ground beneath my feet and the absence of a phone in my hand.

We kept from getting separated by making a tower out of our feet.  We drank beer from mesh bags tied to our tubes.  We learned that paddling is really hard, even if you have weirdly long arms like I do.  We got a lot of sun.  It’s been a few days and I am happy to report that the river beer has not yet killed me, but Linda says we can’t be sure about brain amoeba until the three month mark.

We were pretty hungry after surviving the river, so we went for dinner at Kerbey Lane.  Our waiter was perhaps the most precious person I have ever encountered.  I think Linda described him best as the love child of a hipster and English butler.   His voice alone could heal the world.  After dinner, we stopped at Sonic and then went to see a musical performance of Footloose in the park.  It was fun, but by intermission, we were all tired and missing Dawson terribly, so we decided to head home.

Saturday started off with another relaxing morning.  Just when we were getting ready to head out to Justin Timberlake’s new movie, we received a pizza delivery courtesy of Peter.  We told Justin to hold on while we ate pizza, and then we caught up with him a few hours later over Blue Moons at Alamo Drafthouse.  A movie theater that delivers beer to my seat?  Yes and thank you.  The only thing that could have made it better was if our hipster-butler waiter had served us.

That night we ate more pizza, enjoyed boxed wine, made the most delicious dessert ever, watched Dawson’s Creek, and settled in for #winetoreach.  I hate to admit that #winetoreach is more fun when you’re with other people.  We spent most of the night tweeting at each other while sitting on the same couch.  The novelty of gchatting, DMing, and tweeting each other while within arm’s reach never did wear off.  One of us would send something and then sit straight-faced until the rest of us laughed in unison.

We did our best on Sunday to get through as much Dawson’s Creek as possible, but each episode felt feature-length.  Those Creek kids really enjoy using words that sound impressive, but aren’t, and spend more time talking about whether they can be friends again than they ever spend actually dating.  My favorite quote courtesy of Joey, “How did the moon become a state flower for romance?”

We spent our last hours together over mimosas and burgers.  Saying goodbye to internet friends never really feels like goodbye, because we’re usually talking on twitter minutes after we part.  We hugged Linda goodbye and then Ashley took us to the airport.  Lucky for Nicole and I, our flights going completely different directions on different airlines were right next to each other.  She was the last person I said goodbye to in SF as well, so we were like, “This is familiar.”

There are few things sweeter than laughing and feeling loved and understood. Whenever we’re together, I grow a little more thankful for all that the internet has done for my life.  I miss the girls terribly, but we were already planning our next trip before we’d even been in Austin a full day.  We’re thinking Boston in the Fall.

We continued sitting this close for at least another half hour.

Everything for me is big sweeping feeling.  Is the Ocean.  Is Kilimanjaro.

Is it any wonder that I study theology?  That I spend my time trying to answer questions like, Why are we here?  Is there a God? and How do I make sense of death?

I’m farsighted and it makes me bad at the day-to-day.¹  I rush to put everything in perspective.  I make it a story where there was a time in my life where I felt a certain way (miserable) and now I feel differently (happy).  But grand narratives are fragile and fall apart when confronted with the real experiences to which they are meant to provide meaning.

I say things like, I’m just going through something right now, which is how I make sense of feeling some way other than normal.  Sad. Anxious. Bitter.  My mind works overtime trying to talk myself out of these feelings.  I can only deal with them by placing them within the context of my entire life; I’m only 27, so this requires me to predict the future.  I try with perspective to undermine feeling or explain it away, but it persists.

I fight so hard to get back to normal that I end up frustrated that I’m frustrated, anxious that I’m anxious, or bitter that I’m bitter.  But I don’t know where I even came up with this idea of normal.  Certainly not from experience.  Why do I expect to get back to a place I’ve never been before?  A desert of feeling.

I think because my ideal is a smooth flight around the world and life is turbulence and engine trouble and multiple stops where you’re trapped on the tarmac and redirection and pretzels when you wanted peanuts.²   It’s when the flight is delayed two hours, but they tell you just 15 minutes and then another 45 and then an hour later the plane actually arrives, but there’s no flight crew.³

There’s no mystery to it at all.  I avoid the day-to-day because it’s hard.  If there’s anything in life that you should be able to count on, it’s yourself, but you never know how you’ll feel.  It’s a roller coaster, except there’s no getting off.⁴

So I try to do this thing I learned from Ze Frank (watch this video).  You assess how you feel that day and that becomes your new normal. Your baseline. You don’t fight the inconsistency of feeling, but accept it.  There’s no getting back to that pretend normal anyway.  The one where you feel nothing.  I think that’s actually death.  So please hold while I cross that off of my list of theological questions to answer.

My farsightedness pushes me to ask why I feel this way (what events led up to it) and how do I make it so that I don’t feel this way (not just now, but ever again).  Questions worth considering, but not to avoid feeling the way I do in that moment and not in the hopes of becoming a person unaffected.

I could say that it’s hard, but worth it to sit with uncomfortable feelings, but the truth is that it’s hard and there is no other way. So I’ll save the sweeping metaphors for my memoir.⁵

1. This is figurative, of course.  I am actually nearsighted.  With astigmatism.
2. This is starting to sounds like an Alanis song. It’s not ironic and I prefer pretzels.
3. I do not mean to say that this is the totality of life, but rather this is the way it contrasts with the ideal.
4. Premise to the screenplay I’m currently writing.  It’s a teen thriller.  #notreally.
5. Again, not really.  Sweeping metaphors are powerful and beautiful.

I have a bit of what I affectionately call the Summer crazies.  A close cousin to the January freak out.  What I’m saying is that I have no idea how to act when I’m not in school.

I get through most of the year focusing only on what I need to get done and ignoring everything else.  For a feeling person I am surprisingly good at compartmentalization. Everything else–even the things I really love to do–I put off for Summer.

Then Summer comes and it is time to do all of the things.  And I feel overwhelmed.  The stress is different.  It’s not tinged with dread.  It’s more the feeling that I’m trying to keep up with everything, but I’m always a half a step behind.  I am full of optimism and frustrated by reality.

I put all kinds of pressure on myself, because if I’m not going to do these things now, then I know that I will never do them.  I know it’s a reality of life that there’s never enough time.  The anxiety I have about it is just as much a reality.  Regardless of how all talk of anxiety sounds–and how the anxiety itself sometimes makes sitting still difficult–I wouldn’t give it up.  It’s how I keep moving forward.

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.” –Sylvia Plath

I start every Summer with a list of goals and then sometime in July, I rip them up or delete them from my computer (with flourish, of course).  That’s okay.  I’ll give myself that.  A sign that I’m pushing at my limits, but that I have higher priorities.  Like, happiness and sanity.

On a related note, I finished The Bell Jar this weekend and it did not freak me out, but it would have in college.  A book I don’t regret waiting until now to read.

Totes

If you say totes because I say totes, then you should know that I say totes because the 5 Awesome Gays say totes.  The 5 Awesome Gays is a collab channel on YouTube.  I started watching them about a year ago and I haven’t missed a video since.  They’re fun and inspiring and, most of all, hilarious.

Early last week, I got a tweet from Treavor asking if I’d heard that they decided to end the channel.  I said, “Noooooo.”  Then I broke the news to Sophia and she said, “Noooooo.”  This is the last week of the 5AG and I am sad.  But, the guys will all still be doing their independent things on the internet and I wish them well.

In an extra little bit of OMGawesome, Joe from 5AG has been here on this very blog!  Bri asked me on twitter if I had seen his new video and he replied!  This makes me very happy.  We love Joe!  (Joe, if you are reading this, I promise to stop being awkward right now.)

Vegas

In other news, I’m going to Vegas today!  Heute!  It’s finally time for Bloggers In Sin City.  I have always wanted to go, but the idea of a meetup that big was intimidating to me.  Well, it’s still intimidating, but I’m pretty confident I won’t end up standing in a corner talking to a wall.  If I do, at least I’ll have alcohol.

I pick up Nicole from the airport this morning and then we’ll meet up with Jenn and Nico and it’s off to Vegas!  There are so many people I can’t wait to meet.  Yes, I was just in Vegas, but I’m always due for drinking by the pool.  You’re welcome/I’m sorry for all the tipsy tweets.

Thanks

Thank you for all of your support on my Kilimanjaro!  You should know what a big difference it makes to me.  Love your faces!

I seem to get sick at the end of every semester. My body is a champ and puts up with all the crap I throw at it until I get everything done and then it’s like, “my turn!” Sadly, this meant being sick on my birthday. Not cool, universe! And now it’s my first week of Summer and I’m sick again.

Ah, well. It’s not too bad. Finally a reason to use the mass amounts of sick time I have accumulated over the last three years.

I’m sure this cold is life holding up big caution signs saying, “slow down!” But, I am really bad at being sick. I generally just carry around a box of tissue and otherwise act as if nothing is different. Message not received.

I didn’t realize this was strange behavior until college when Lisa (who was my roommate at the time) got sick with a cold and it was like her entire life stopped until she was healthy again. She actually used Kleenex and not toilet paper. She rested and drank orange juice. She went to bed early and reminded me at every turn that she was sick.

These memories might be exaggerated in my mind, but as I recall, she was sick for no more than two days. I immediately caught her cold, but rather than take care of myself, I popped a few Tylenol Cold and, pretending to be all stoic about it, continued working too much. I’m sure I was sick for more than a week.

I still have a hard time putting my life on hold to actually let myself recover. I did go buy myself some orange juice, but then I showed up for work when I shouldn’t have. Despite the fact that more than half of my department also called out, I was immediately sent home. Message received!

One thing I am very diligent about is taking my NyQuil. Sleep like I’m dead? Yes, okay. I already have the dreams of a crazy person. (When I was applying to PhD programs, I dreamed that President elect Obama had agreed to write me a recommendation letter.) But, with the help of NyQuil, I dreamed the other night that instead of taking a plane to I-don’t-know-where, I decided to ride on the back of an elephant (inspired no doubt by the picture in my Kilimanjaro post). It seemed so real and so very, very uncomfortable. Flying is worth the price of a ticket, friends.

I’m a highly sensitive person and it’s really annoying sometimes.  I have sympathy coming out of my ears.  I watch crime shows and feel bad for the criminal.  I can’t watch most reality TV because the awkwardness that other people find amusing kills me.  Even scripted shows I sometimes have to mute to keep from dying of sadness and second-hand embarrassment (before I lived in a studio apartment, I would just get up and leave the room).

Perhaps most annoying, I cry at every movie ever.  I mean, I’d like to forget that I cried at Drumline, but Lisa won’t let me.  Guys, he couldn’t read music and for some reason I found that to be very sad (spoiler alert).

Several years ago, I started to notice that I don’t cry as much as I used to.  I think this has a lot to do with the fact that I don’t live at home (or with anyone) anymore.  But, I noticed that I wasn’t even crying at movies as much as I used to.  I would talk to normal people  and they would mention crying at a scene in some movie that didn’t even give me that pre-tear tingling behind the eyes.  When I watched two movies on divorce and didn’t shed a tear, I knew something was going on.

I started to think that maybe I’m just not as sensitive as I used to be.  Then life was like, “No, that’s not it.”

Slowly it dawned on me that it was a problem of engagement.  I don’t get lost in books anymore.  I don’t let movies sweep me away.  I’m always distracted.  Usually when I’m watching a movie at home, I’m doing at least three other things and thinking of seven more things I’ll do when it’s over.  Sometimes I’m actually thinking of what I’ll say about that movie instead of letting myself experience it.  Any reading is interrupted regularly to check my phone. I don’t stay away from the internet too long for fear it will disappear without me to stare at it.

I’m not blaming technology, because I think the deeper motivation is to save myself from all those annoying feelings that come with being so sensitive, and in technology, I’ve found an easy way to do that.  I like that I am so able to be swept away.  I like being a deep feeling person.  But, if you ask me on any given Thursday evening if I want to put myself in a situation where tears are guaranteed, I will say no.  All those emotions to wrestle with, the running mascara, the salty tear streaks down my face, and the headache to follow just don’t seem worth it. I pull back to keep from getting pulled under.  I hide behind a veil of distraction.  I defer to that imaginary point in the future when I’ll have time for feelings.

I’m trying not to do this so much.  I’m trying not to resist the sweeping feelings.  It would seem that if you’re sensitive and cry easily like I do, then you’d be good at it.  I want to say no, because sad feelings are sad no matter what.  But, even when they knock me down, I don’t stay there.  So maybe I’m not so bad at it.

To be moved is one of the sweetest things in life and I don’t want to keep my guard up to that. But, sometimes it just makes sense.  So I’ll stick to watching my comedies before bed and save feelings for the weekends! (I kid. Feelings, seven days a week!)

Since we’re on the topic of tears, I’ve always found it strange that I never cry at happy things.  Tears are for when I’m sad–for myself, someone else, or a fictional character.  When I’m happy, I grin and jump around.  I’m not one to burst into tears at the end of a difficult day (that’s what wine is for), but people can make me cry very easily.  And then there’s that one question that always pushes me over when I’m on the edge: “are you okay?”  Gets me every time.  It’s weird to blog this much about crying when I’m currently feeling just fine.

I had this debate with myself several months ago about whether it really matters how much you have in common with a person.  For reasons I don’t remember, I concluded at first that it didn’t.  As long as you can talk to the other person, then that’s all that matters.

I made this definitive statement (to myself, in my journal) and then the thing that keeps happening to me happened again: the universe set out to prove me wrong as quickly as possible. I don’t remember what happened, but I know it was mid-January, and I’m sure it was something very small that sent me running back to my journal to write, “I was wrong. It makes a difference.”

Really, how stupid of me to ever think otherwise.  I’ve just been lucky enough to find communities of people who care about the same things I do and it’s made me think the same has always been true. But, as I wrote a year ago, “I’ve nearly forgotten that when I was in middle school it was weird to say that I like to read and when I was in high school it was weird to say that I like to write and when I was in college it was weird to say that I like school.”

And, hello, have I learned nothing from the internet?  It’s so much fun to have people who not only like the things that you do, but like them to the same ridiculous level that you do.  It’s strange how just one thing, even, can form the foundation for a friendship.  I mean, my friendship with Lisa has certainly evolved beyond *NSYNC, but we should probably send them a thank you card every year for all the conversations and trips and glow stick waving they inspired.

I love that when a favorite artist announces tour dates or a favorite vlogger starts vlogging again or you come home for a visit and find your mom now wears skinny jeans, you immediately think of the one person who will share in your excitement. It may actually be more fun and meaningful than the tour/vlogs/skinny jeans.

I’m so used to this that it bums me out when I don’t have anyone to share my excitement. Last week I tweeted that I wished I knew someone who loved Ze Frank as much as I do, so that we could talk about the show and everything else for hours.  Apparently I’m not the only one, because Pham tweeted at me over the weekend to ask if I’d started watching Doctor Who yet, because he needs a Doctor Who buddy. (I said “maybe this Summer,” but then I was attacked by four other Doctor Who fans and pestered until I said “definitely this Summer.”)

Something to talk about and validation that that thing you love really is as awesome as you think it is.  It is!