WARNING: long post, on a variety of topics on my mind at the moment, and it's entirely too honest to be posting for people that don't really know me, and most people will probably stop reading pretty soon, but here goes anyway:

I decided tonight that I'm going to volunteer to work with Texans for Obama. I don't know what they need, but I can write, and do media and publicity work, and speeches. Hearing Obama talk actually makes me understand what people like my dad must have felt when they heard Jack Kennedy speak. Texas is, of course, traditionally a Republican state (another area where Austin really isn't part of Texas), but I really feel like volunteering to do whatever small part I can to try and help out with this campaign. I've always followed politics closely, but I've never actually felt inspired to volunteer for a candidate's campaign. And this all happened just as I was finally beginning to grow disillusioned with the whole politcal scene at the age of 24, 15 years after I first started paying attention to politics (I was a weird kid).

In other news, I'm finally hearing from my professors who are writing me letters of reference, and I think it's finally getting done. All that's left is to see if I'm good enough to impress any grad schools....

Speaking of my writing, I've started a new tactic of forcing myself to write only one page a day. That way I don't get lazy, or overwhelemed with how much I have to do, and only have to worry about a single page, which doesn't take more than 20 minutes on a bad day. Sometimes I write more, of course, but all I really hold myself to is one a day, and it all seems very do-able. If nothing else, after a year, I'll have 365 pages -- that's pretty damn good. And it really helps that I know this story is good, and it'll be fun to write. It's one of those things that I want to write because I want to read it, too. I feel really good about this one. It's geared more toward teens, a la His Dark Materials without the relentless atheism. I love those books, but I think Pullman gets a little too overzealous and intellectually lazy when lambasting all forms of Christianity for being totalitarian and anti-wisdom. Nevertheless, I do love the story, and Pullman's approach to writing it: he said that, when you're writing for kids, you have to get to the story, because they're not interested in any of your fancy wordings or literary prowess. This basic approach is a differrent style for me, but I like it; and like I said, I think the story is really good, and it doesn't need any literary dressings (if anything, it would be easy to overwrite it). So far, as it exists in my mind, this story is a mix of Star Wars, Casablanca, and Lawrene of Arabia. We'll see how this one goes.

My mom should be starting her Hep C therapy pretty soon. She's trying to hide it, but I can tell she's really dreading it when I talk to her on the phone. I realized that I don't pray to God all that often; I talk a lot, and have little conversations in my head (like I used to do with imaginary friends based on real people when I was younger), but, for all that, I don't actually pray and ask Him for much. I know this sounds corny, and I respect people who don't believe in God (most of my friends don't), but it's something I do believe in, despite my scathing opinions of religion and fundamentalism. Sometimes I ask Him for the wrong things; I've gotten better about praying for a sports team in the heat of the moment (though I have recently prayed for a certain group of fans to simply not be rewarded for their terrible behavior, which I readily acknowledge is probably an inappropriate thing to pray for, but some behaviors have really started to bother me lately -- I just can't stand people who actively try to make others feel bad -- I'm a hopeless idealist, despite what most people see in me as relentless cynicism; ironic, huh?), but this thing with my mom is something that I feel better praying about. Maybe it's just some sort of psychosomatic feeling of relief, that I feel feel better because I think I'm praying to a higher power and that the sense of comfort I get from it is only imaginary, but I don't really believe that. We all have faith in something, whether it's devine or not.

It's weird... I'm normally someone who wants proof of things, and I've gone back and forth intellectually on whether or not God exists all my life, but I always keep coming back to believing in Him despite the lack of apparent proof. It's just a feeling. I can't really describe it, I definitely can't prove it, and I know it could be driven by some subconscious psychological need (see above), but nevertheless it's what I believe. Maybe that's what faith really is, after all: the belief in something that you constantly doubt with no evidence other than what your heart tells you. All I know for sure is that faith is not believing whatever your parents/church/school tells you and refusing to open your mind to any other possibilities.

There, that's enough honesty for one night.