"I'm allergic to my right and my left...Sometimes it's too hard for me...I'm also allergic to big, scary animals." "Like what?" "Like bears."

-Allison Toomer

Some New Years Resolutions

1. Keep running every day. 2 miles at least.

2. Let my hair grow out.

3. Cook more.

Ok, I might have to come back to this later.

Here are some things I'm looking forward to accomplishing this year:

1. A successful internship with Wolf River Conservancy. Making their newsletter kickass.

2. Moving into my first house with some pretty great people.

3. RAing at AGS again this summer.

4. Studying abroad in Barcelona.

Some Things I'm Bad At (number two)

1. Small talk.

2. The Science section on the ACT. I was really bad at that.

3. Matching clothes.

4. Compartmentalizing.

5. Puzzles.

6. Explaining how to play a game.

7. Beer pong.

8. Remembering when to take stuff out of the oven.

9. Remembering names.

10. Walking in heels.

Sorry for the overflow of ANGST lately. It has recently come to my attention that some people read my blog. So how bout that.

But at the moment I don't really have any thoughts of my own, so I'm gonna borrow a couple.

"Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts. What they subvert is that notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have."

-Mark Vonnegut (Kurt's son, who wrote the forward in Armageddon in Retrospect)

Oh, here's a thought of my own: You know what my goal is? I want to live a life worth WRITING about. I want to do things that make people want to hear my story. It's very cliche to say this, but really, is it bad for that to be the reason why I want to get out there and do things? So I can someday decide to write a book about it?

I fell in love, and I needed a roadmap.

I'm reading Virginia Woolf's The Waves right now. Her writing, combined with being in Little Rock, which, for me, is the angst capital of the world, is making me all...

something that I can't find words for.

You'll call it angst.

All I wanna do is quote a little bit...

"Now, too, the time is coming when we shall leave school and wear long skirts. I shall wear necklaces and a whte dress without sleeves at night. There will be parties in brilliant rooms; and one man will single me out and will tell me what he has told no other person. He will like me better than Susan or Rhoda. He will find in me some quality, some peculiar thing. But I shall not let myself be attatched to one person only. I do not what to be fixed, to be pinioned. I tremble, I quiver, like the leave in the hedge, as I sit dangling my feet, on the edge of the bed, with a new day to break open."

"But nature is too vegetable, too vapid. She has only sublimities and vastitudes and water and leaves. I begin to wish for firelight, privacy, and the limbs of one person."

-The Waves

I'm reading this book, The Rules of Attraction, and it's really just something incredibly light after all the mind-numbingly heavy reading I've had over the semester. But it has me thinking. It's all about the death of romance in college, everyone's just fucking everybody just because they can. I can't say that this relates directly to my life, I am not fucking everyone by any stretch of the imagination. But have we all stopped looking for romance? Do we just settle for...whatever we can get because we don't dare to hope that there's something more substantial out there? Have we been disappointed by romance too many times to believe that it exists (for us)?

Dear CBU Study Abroad Department,

You will NOT be able to stop me from going to Barcelona. Although your purpose is to encourage students to study abroad, and then play an active role in helping them actually get there, as far as I've seen, you have done the exact opposite. Anyway, no matter how many short, rude emails I recieve saying that I can't go because of some dumb problem that can easily be solved by thinking about it for eight seconds, I will not be deterred from studying abroad. The only reason I can see for these hoops you make everyone jump through would be to test their resistance, and see if they have what it takes to study abroad.

EF and Wanda, I'm talking directly to you. Thanks for being so helpful. I constantly see you going the extra mile to ensure that students have a safe, organized study abroad experience. Anyone who says you actually need to be in your office during office hours is just crazy. What do they expect, that you'll actually respond to emails during that time? That's just ridiculous.

Thanks again!

Angela

"Whenever I breathe out, you're breathing in."

-Modest Mouse

I always talk about the seasons. I'm CRAVING summer. And I still have a lot of winter to get through. But I guess that's what makes spring and summer so great--having to get through some winter first. You appreciate it more.

Winter makes everyone reatreat a little bit, feel comfortable with lots of layers, you don't want to show your skin.

There are good things about winter. I get ambitious and want to turn my life around when I get bored, which inevitably happens in the winter. I have two interviews for internships within the next week, and I'm equally excited about both of them. I'm realizing that I'm sort of choosing what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life right NOW, in a way. I'm having to choose between interning at some place like AutoZone or FedEx, or for a local freelance editing group or editing the newsletter of Wolf River Conservancy. The former internships would probably be paying, but I would want to tear my eyes out every day, and the latter ones would probably not pay worth crap, absolutely nothing, but I think it would actually be something I enjoy.

I'm pretty sure I know which way I'll go, at least for the time being. If I find it necessary to get a job I hate because it allows me to live, then I guess I'll worry about that later.

I was talking to Dr. Easson about this, actually he was rambling and I was trying to leave, but I think he was suggesting that I have to marry rich in order to do something I don't hate.

I'm getting restless again, you know?

I want to be somewhere and have something new to do. I need to be less comfortable. I want someone to scare me just a little bit.

Hot Damn

Finished my 15 page paper. ACCOMPLISHMENT. All you people out there whining about your three-page shit, I have no sympathy. If you do decide to complain to me about it, I'll show you this massive stack computer paper with stuff about modern art and the Cold War on it. And you will realize just how lucky you are.

Does anyone else really miss Reading Rainbow? Granted, there's something a little strange about watching a book on TV, but its greatness made that irrelevant.

With your shirt tucked in, and your shoes untied

I guess there was caffine in that coffee/mocha milkshake I got from Baskin Robins. Oops. This could explain why I'm still awake at 1am (about an hour past my bedtime).

OR it could be that Barcelona is a GO now. For serious. Cross my heart. Serious in the sense that it hasn't fully hit me.

OR it could be because I've been reading Thomas Merton. Apparently I am Thomas Merton. I'm sure many teenagers/adults go through a similar spiritual loss and preoccupation with other things, but I'm getting worried if I'll be able to find my way back into some sort of spirituality. Because I can say that line, "I'm not religious, but I am spiritual," but it's bullshit. I'm not even spiritual. I don't pray to anything, or feel like anyone is looking out for me. What scares me is that I've been perfectly complacent in that. I think more about papers I'm writing and people I'm with than the existence of God, something infinitely more important. I think what I need is a redefinition of God, but that's so much easier said than done. I don't know where to start. I guess with throwing out all that freaking rationalism that I can't let go of.

There's too much on my mind.

So Sufjan Stevens songs are religious. It took me some time to realize this. It was unexpected. I love his blend of all these different elements.

"In the morning, in the window shade, where the light pressed up, against your shoulderblade, I could see what you were reading.
All the glory that the Lord has made, and the complications you could do without, when I kissed you on the mouth."
-Casimir Pulaski Day