My aunt discovered about a month ago after breaking her hip that the breast cancer she thought she had beaten a couple of years ago has now spread to her bones, spine, lungs, and several other places. It's amazing how much energy I've been devoting to think about this undeniable fact as little as possible. I call home once a week and I immediately return any calls from her or my mother who is helping to take care of her, but then I just kind of shut it out of my head. It's like the implications of the event are simply too massive to fit in my head for very long. I'm an over-analyzer, usually when something happens I think about it incessantly, but all I can do with this is remind myself that it's happening and that I should be preparing myself for the worst and yet staying optimistic to prevent any negative vibes from shooting out into the universe and effecting the outcome.
I'm kind of superstitious about my thoughts really. I'm usually very logical. I consider myself agnostic and sometimes border on atheist and yet I'm still paranoid that the way I think about things has some sort of non-negligible effect on reality.
In any case my aunt just made me the beneficiary in her will because she doesn't have any children and I'm the closest thing she has to a daughter. As I write these words a part of me feels like I should be with her now. My mom and my aunt both live in Norcal and I have my life and my job in San Diego. I'm coming home for Thanksgiving but that hardly seems adequate. I suppose that in the end we make the choices we make and we value the things that we value and we live with the consequences. I certainly hope that I can. That's probably why I'm choosing not to think too much about it. Because I love my aunt, but I also love my life in San Diego and I know I'm too selfish to sacrifice the latter for the former. Yeah, that whole not thinking about it thing, was in fact an excellent idea.
Want to hear about something happier? I know I want to write about something happier. So without further ado, what I did this weekend:
On Saturday it was a friend's birthday and she had the best idea for a party. She asked all her friends to donate art supplies and money and she had an art party. She had a giant canvas so that we could all contribute to a group painting which turned out surprisingly good, but also really chaotic - at the end of the evening the painting included a dragon, a rain cloud, a giraffe and an elephant kissing with the elephant being struck by lightning, a bleeding sky, and the words "Another sunny day in somewhereland." There were individual canvases where people with varying degrees of artistic ability painted pictures with varying degrees of abstractness. One girl creating something that was a spitting image of a Monet landscape and one guy seemed to be the living embodiment of Jackson Pollack. Someone had brought a sewing machine where a rather feminine boy with the most startlingly blue eyes attempted to sew his first shirt. He had to cut a slit down the front to get it over his head and there were no hems but it turned out surprisingly well. There was also face painting. I had brought the straight girl I'm in love with (long story) and tried to paint her face to look like a dragon. It ended up looking more like tribal makeup, but we had fun. We then started the Trivial Pursuit game that would not end and I learned that the Andy Griffith Theme song with all the whistling actually has words. It was a perfect evening.
I joined a Ren. Faire last month (I'm kind of addicted to joining things, sometimes to the detriment of my own sanity, but it keeps life interesting) and faire was this weekend and also next weekend. I keep worrying that the guild is another commitment that I really don't have time for, but if I thought about it logically I'd realize that there are only two faires a year and that the guild is basically a bunch of people who want to get into faire free, very minimal commitment. It's a fairy guild and I dressed as a unicorn. It was kind of a blast to the past because when I was a kid I was obsessed with unicorns and begged my mom to make me a unicorn costume in 3rd grade. The nostalgia was fun. Having a bunch of guys tell me that they'd never ridden a unicorn before wasn't. To be honest I didn't have the best of times. I got all paranoid about not knowing anyone in the guild. My boyfriend (primary) is a member. He joined the guild 'cause his best friend was in it, but I don't really know anyone and I keep having trouble remembering peoples names and feeling guilty and antisocial that I'm having trouble fitting in. I need to be patient and stop acting all emo and bipolar. That would help immensely, but something about the situation keeps setting off my weird "nobody loves me" buttons which go off much less frequently then they used to, but still go off sometimes. I am a recovering moody basketcase. Two steps forward. One step back. Two steps forward. One step back.
Status of goal to write everyday:
Um, um, um. I only wrote one day last week and that was Monday and I didn't submit any writing. I seem to have put myself in the awkward position that the thing in my life that is supposed to have the highest priority has the lowest priority. Well, clearly brow-beating myself over not writing everyday is having no effect. Maybe I should baby step this one. I will write tonight for 10 minutes. I will time myself and then I will log it. 10 minutes. I can do 10 minutes. Hell I've been writing this for longer than that. I think it's the myth of inspiration that's getting me. I'm worried that I'm not inspired and that it won't be good, but it doesn't need to be good. It just needs to exist. 10 minutes man, 10 minutes.
Status of grad school:
Texas writer's school said I needed to talk to graduate admissions and gave me the number. I was not able to get through. I will try again tomorrow.
Status of apartment:
Um, um, didn't clean at all over the weekend but have been doing a load of dishes or decluttering a room everyday this week fairly consistently. Tonight I'm gonna do the dishes. I also want to put my clothes away. They've been sitting in the clean hamper since I did laundry which leads to dirty clothes ending up on the floor. My boyfriend (we live together) says he'll clean up his clothes on Tuesday after his midterm. I wish the place didn't look like it exploded, but we've both been busy. Dishes and clothes away. Goal for tonight. Make it so.
I've been doing much better about getting to work on time. I forgot to bag a lunch today, but I had a fairly clean record for bringing my lunch last week. Keep up the good work on being on time. Bag your lunch tomorrow.
Okay, seriously, excessively long journal entry. Back to life. Pandora out.
I'm kind of superstitious about my thoughts really. I'm usually very logical. I consider myself agnostic and sometimes border on atheist and yet I'm still paranoid that the way I think about things has some sort of non-negligible effect on reality.
In any case my aunt just made me the beneficiary in her will because she doesn't have any children and I'm the closest thing she has to a daughter. As I write these words a part of me feels like I should be with her now. My mom and my aunt both live in Norcal and I have my life and my job in San Diego. I'm coming home for Thanksgiving but that hardly seems adequate. I suppose that in the end we make the choices we make and we value the things that we value and we live with the consequences. I certainly hope that I can. That's probably why I'm choosing not to think too much about it. Because I love my aunt, but I also love my life in San Diego and I know I'm too selfish to sacrifice the latter for the former. Yeah, that whole not thinking about it thing, was in fact an excellent idea.
Want to hear about something happier? I know I want to write about something happier. So without further ado, what I did this weekend:
On Saturday it was a friend's birthday and she had the best idea for a party. She asked all her friends to donate art supplies and money and she had an art party. She had a giant canvas so that we could all contribute to a group painting which turned out surprisingly good, but also really chaotic - at the end of the evening the painting included a dragon, a rain cloud, a giraffe and an elephant kissing with the elephant being struck by lightning, a bleeding sky, and the words "Another sunny day in somewhereland." There were individual canvases where people with varying degrees of artistic ability painted pictures with varying degrees of abstractness. One girl creating something that was a spitting image of a Monet landscape and one guy seemed to be the living embodiment of Jackson Pollack. Someone had brought a sewing machine where a rather feminine boy with the most startlingly blue eyes attempted to sew his first shirt. He had to cut a slit down the front to get it over his head and there were no hems but it turned out surprisingly well. There was also face painting. I had brought the straight girl I'm in love with (long story) and tried to paint her face to look like a dragon. It ended up looking more like tribal makeup, but we had fun. We then started the Trivial Pursuit game that would not end and I learned that the Andy Griffith Theme song with all the whistling actually has words. It was a perfect evening.
I joined a Ren. Faire last month (I'm kind of addicted to joining things, sometimes to the detriment of my own sanity, but it keeps life interesting) and faire was this weekend and also next weekend. I keep worrying that the guild is another commitment that I really don't have time for, but if I thought about it logically I'd realize that there are only two faires a year and that the guild is basically a bunch of people who want to get into faire free, very minimal commitment. It's a fairy guild and I dressed as a unicorn. It was kind of a blast to the past because when I was a kid I was obsessed with unicorns and begged my mom to make me a unicorn costume in 3rd grade. The nostalgia was fun. Having a bunch of guys tell me that they'd never ridden a unicorn before wasn't. To be honest I didn't have the best of times. I got all paranoid about not knowing anyone in the guild. My boyfriend (primary) is a member. He joined the guild 'cause his best friend was in it, but I don't really know anyone and I keep having trouble remembering peoples names and feeling guilty and antisocial that I'm having trouble fitting in. I need to be patient and stop acting all emo and bipolar. That would help immensely, but something about the situation keeps setting off my weird "nobody loves me" buttons which go off much less frequently then they used to, but still go off sometimes. I am a recovering moody basketcase. Two steps forward. One step back. Two steps forward. One step back.
Status of goal to write everyday:
Um, um, um. I only wrote one day last week and that was Monday and I didn't submit any writing. I seem to have put myself in the awkward position that the thing in my life that is supposed to have the highest priority has the lowest priority. Well, clearly brow-beating myself over not writing everyday is having no effect. Maybe I should baby step this one. I will write tonight for 10 minutes. I will time myself and then I will log it. 10 minutes. I can do 10 minutes. Hell I've been writing this for longer than that. I think it's the myth of inspiration that's getting me. I'm worried that I'm not inspired and that it won't be good, but it doesn't need to be good. It just needs to exist. 10 minutes man, 10 minutes.
Status of grad school:
Texas writer's school said I needed to talk to graduate admissions and gave me the number. I was not able to get through. I will try again tomorrow.
Status of apartment:
Um, um, didn't clean at all over the weekend but have been doing a load of dishes or decluttering a room everyday this week fairly consistently. Tonight I'm gonna do the dishes. I also want to put my clothes away. They've been sitting in the clean hamper since I did laundry which leads to dirty clothes ending up on the floor. My boyfriend (we live together) says he'll clean up his clothes on Tuesday after his midterm. I wish the place didn't look like it exploded, but we've both been busy. Dishes and clothes away. Goal for tonight. Make it so.
I've been doing much better about getting to work on time. I forgot to bag a lunch today, but I had a fairly clean record for bringing my lunch last week. Keep up the good work on being on time. Bag your lunch tomorrow.
Okay, seriously, excessively long journal entry. Back to life. Pandora out.