..stream

of consciousness.

• Tonight my mom was telling me about Steven Curtis Chapman's young daughter who was killed in a tragic car a few month's back. It makes me sad. What makes me mad is when Christians care more about tragedy that happens to fellow Christians than tragedy that happens to 'non'-Christians. It baffles me but it happens quite frequently.
  
• I didn't realize how large of a shift it would be to walk back into UI after a summer of hyper-liberalism with the maverick, John Fox. After having my metaphorical fists up all summer working in 'advocacy', diplomacy and Christian ministry seems so passive and neutered. 
• I have found myself yawning and just wanting to curl up into a ball of sleep over the last few days because I have been exhausted. Thoughts: 1. I have been watching my language and the topicality of my comments. It's rather exhausting trying to watch my conversations and I am beginning to resent it. 2. There are millions of people in my office. Well, maybe like 30 but that's 29 more than my entire summer. The highlight of my internship would be the fieldtrip days. John and I would engage in pleasant car conversation, driving to meet with a low-incoming housing resident or a politico, whom we would talk shit about on the ride back to the office. The adjustment to a solo operation was difficult and not something I prefer in a work environment but the shift back is proving rather prickly as well.
• Today, I was getting dressed in my room and I was struck with an overwhelming feeling. I starting look at my things and had an drenching desire to make sure they were all being actively utilized in my life. My desk is the object that makes me feel most uncomfortable in this context. Desks are probably the most underutilized piece of furniture in existence (or maybe just my existence). Sometimes I think I can do homework in my bed. This is not true, I just sleep. Usually desks collect dust and bank statements. I will use my desk this year, even if it is just to use it. Otherwise I am burning it in the backyard, along with my typewriter and this purse I got from my grandma that I have toted around for 6 year and never used.
• Lifestyle expectations. Seriously. My brain is insulted with the fact that it must navigate these waters for another year. I simply have other, more pressing issues of education to wrestle with over the next year. 
• That leads to being a senior. I am tickled I am a senior. After spending a few days this summer working with a professor outside of SPU-land, the lackluster requirements of the sociology department are slightly nauseating. By the end of the year I think I will be extremely done. It's been a great run, but the time is almost here.
• PMS is okay. PMS during the most stressful week of my life: crying. All I want to do is cry. Today my dad asked me about the economy/bank/sub-prime crisis (with explicit intent to rattle off his soapbox rant) and I just started crying. Mostly because of the dynamics of the conversation but a little because of the economy. When I am crying about AIG going under, I know that I am stressed and slightly emotionally unstable.
• I am sacrilegious. This is not my intent and it does not reflect the way that I think about 'the sacred' or God. I am just disenchanted by religious delicacy in my vocabulary and want the times when I care and am indifferent to be distinct  in the ways I refer to them.
• I have probably eaten 9 Chips Ahoy! real chocolate chip cookies tonight and they taste like buttered shoe insoles. They are just created in the most perfect, appealing size that makes you feel like you are eating nothing.
• Tomorrow is the end of an era. I will no longer be the only collegiate Beach, my parents will have a shit-filled empty nest, and my brother will be learning to play his acoustic guitar on his twin extra-long bed in the city of Ellensburg, Washington. I'm proud of him and excited to come back for Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks. Maybe it's just a vain hope that some shift in circumstances will cure the difficulties I have with my family. Whatever. I think that he will be fine and WILL EXCEL AT EVERYTHING, EVER.  I am very excited for him and proud of him. 
• My room is finished. I like decorating. I don't like that I had to think about gender roles when I was decorating my room. It just makes me happy, regardless of my sex.
• All of this is meaningless. Haha. I'm not even chasing after the wind. I am sitting on a couch eating carbohydrates.

Favorite quote of the novel that I am reading right now (and the first novel that I have read in three years. No, I don't really want to talk to you about it.)

"Blindness is also this, to live in a world where all hope is gone." Jose Saramago, Blindness