ice storm

"The Jacksonville area has had an ice storm that caused campus power outages for about forty-five minutes. Lights and heat have been restored to the main residence halls. Some off campus locations remain without power. Students in these buildings are being relocated to halls that do have power. Please check back on Monday for further updates. "

When they say some of the off campus locations, they really mean two foreign language houses and an entire apartment complex...200 students total? Two inches of ice on the ground now. More freezing rain the next two days. All on oncampus events (including tutoring hours) have been canceled and all students are requested to stay indoors as much as possible. I spent the day watching trees fall in my neighborhood...will there be finals? I hope not.

marc quoted in the peoria news

http://www.hoinews.com/News/news_story.aspx?id=71664

Today I received a $3,000 award based on volunteerism and advocacy in the homosexual community. The awards banquet was in Peoria and I was interviewed by one of the local news stations. I am misquoted in the above link and the amounts of the awards given out are wrong, but still, it is kind of exciting. Perhaps they will post a video clip like they said they would.

scary

I had a scary moment today. I realized that I could not remember the last time I had taken my daily antidepressant/antianxiety medication. It was at work and I ended up being quite distracted throughout my entire shift. Realizing there is a reason for the steady, broken feeling of a long-lasting depressive mood is however semi-liberating.

When I got home though, I couldn't find my meds. The last time I took them (sometime early last week) they were on the dining room table. Stephen would never move my meds more than a few feet, just as I would never move his--it is a room mate pact. I know he didn't move them. I moved them. I put them somewhere, shuffled them to the side, got them lost in a pile of something. I couldn't find them and I couldn't find them. I swear I thought I was going to die from panic. I ended up cleaning my entire room in hopes they were lost under a pile of clothing. In the end I found a sample pack of the pills and took two of those to make my regular dosage. I don't feel panic anymore, but I am still in my mood--my funk.

I just realized the pills are most likely in the trunk of my car. Living out of a random car in order to make all of homecoming run smoothly never bodes well for keeping one's life organized.

Time to read--this week I am focusing on my honors thesis. Next week: who knows.

sometimes I don't know how to deal with emotions

So, every time I start to look through pictures of Paris, I get a strange twist in my stomach that won't go away. It feels like I left a part of my life behind and haven't been able to pick it up again. How could I pick it up again? It is four thousand miles away. It hurts too much to do it.

fed up

Honesty is a hard trick to master, one that I have never been good at mastering. Lately I have felt like I stay indoors--sometimes in my back bedroom--in order to lie to myself. If I am lounging around in sweats or athletic shorts and old tees, I don't have to face the fact that I am not so slowly expanding out of my clothing--almost all of my clothing. I don't have to face that reality if I don't get dressed.

I need to get over it and start being honest. During the course of the summer I did some good things. I managed to quit smoking for almost a month, I kept my apartment clean and tidy and I even went spinning regularly for a few weeks. What happened? I certainly have fell into a slump which is unbelievably frustrating. Right now I feel like yelling at myself. "The only want to break that chain of frustration is to make a dramatic change and actually follow through with it you dumbass!"

I need to start exercising again. I need to keep my living environment clean. I need to quit smoking once and for all. I need to stop hiding anxiety and frustration behind alcohol.

Wish me luck.

Missing Paris

It isn't a sappy "Aw, wish I were back there," but rather a deep and hollow pain that starts in my chest and radiates outward until my upper arms are numb and I am dizzy and short of breath. It happens every time I open up a photo album and see all the friends I made in Paris--the friends that I am no longer in close contact with. I see them smiling and the backdrop isn't a Jacksonville bar or some lame party, it is the grand canal at Versailles or the crowded caves of Bar Trois. It just makes me think.

Somewhere along the line--probably when I was in Paris--I forgot how damn lucky I was to be there. It isn't that I have tons of regrets, but I do wish I had lived every day there like I was the luckiest kid on the planet because that is how I feel when I look back. I feel that if I hadn't taken it so much for granted I wouldn't feel so much of this pain and sadness now.

I could say that hindsight is 20/20 and not be lying, but I also wouldn't be hitting the truth on the head. That paltry little phrase doesn't take me back to Paris and it certainly doesn't give me any comfort when I start feeling this sappy. Paris was something I prepared for for more than a year. I spent more than a year of my life pumping myself up so I would have the courage to step onto the plane and in the end--I did it. I have immense satisfaction that I did it, but also immense sadness that a year and a half of preparation ended in four months--four months filled with more turbulent emotion that should be physically possible.

I guess that is it. I am not ready to deal with that emotion--or the magnitude of that emotion.

penpal

I remember the days when I used to have a penpal. It was an optional thing, a part of my French class. I am pretty sure my French teacher wanted us to sign up for a French penpal, but I didn't. I signed up for one from Malaysia because the Petronas towers had just been built, and they were the tallest buildings in the world and that country was suddently hopelessly cool in my eyes. I remember writing only one letter to him--the response I wrote to his first and only letter. It was a fascinating experience. I wish I still had that letter, but I don't. During a bout of frenzied cleaning I thew it away--apparently because it had little sentimental value to me at the time.

I recently checked out a book called 52 Projects--a book about projects and how they affect one's life. The projects are of all different types--anything from starting a stamp collection, to writing all of your old teachers and telling them what you remember about thier classes. I haven't officially started a project yet, but just reading the book gives me inspiration. I think getting a penpal would be fun. Having someone to share my experience with, and getting to share someone else's experience would be well worth my time.

changes

Life is funny. I don't know if it was ever understandable or chartable the way one can diagram a sentence. I do know that it certainly isn't that way now. I have been keeping a journal in some form or another for a long time. They haven't been consistant by any means. I remember one that I named Simba in honor of The Lion King and another one that I kept on my first computer when I was somewhere around ten. When I was a senior in high school, I started using xanga. Since then I have had a continuous journal. Five years of journals is nothing to scoff at, and I used to shun those who continuously switched from xanga to bloger to myspace to facebook. I kept up my xanga--mostly for nostalgic reasons. For me xanga was a form of solidarity in my life, coming around just after my mother died, when I learned the hard way the real meaning of loss and pain and emotional torment. For five years I have kept a semi-continuous record of my life on xanga, keeping every entry public for one reason or another. I decided today that it was time for a change.

It isn't that I no longer like xanga. I do, but I find it depressing that I am one of the final few holding on to a tool that few use. Anyway, in a few days I will be moving into a new apartment. In a little more than a month I will be heading into my senior year of college. For the past few weeks I have been researching graduate schools, scanning faculty lists, ordering books, and generally planning where I will be headed in a year. It is a time of change, and I am ready for it.

In the words of David Levithan, masterful author of Boy Meets Boy, "I find my greatest strength in wanting to be strong. I find my greatest bravery in deciding to be brave...If there's no feeling of fear, then there's no need for courage." I read that book a couple of years ago and have tried to keep that quote in my mind ever since.

Here's to jumping off the proverbial cliff without a parachute.