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Saturday, April 13, 2002

weird thing
Northern Ireland, Survivor-style: The television program will take "four Catholics and four Protestants from the North, put them in an isolated activities centre on the Isle of Man for a week, and film everything that happens."

22:00

reminder
Time to stop thinking myself in circles. Eliina reminded me today that although the term "personal growth" sounds like self-help jargony nonsense, it's cool to do new things and observe the world more closely so that you learn stuff, both about the world and how you react to the world. (For example, traveling, even to a new part of your own town, forces you to do that.) Doing things actually *gets* you somewhere, and angsting is just paralyzing. What shall I do with all of this free time... homework?

21:40

Friday, April 12, 2002

give me a j-o-b
Yesterday my school held a job fair for journalism majors. Few employers came and fewer had jobs that interested me. So I left after making a few laps around the room and talking to three employers sitting at their tables all alone (I felt bad for them). Then I walked out into the beautiful 70-degree day and pulled off my name tag. For one instant, it came to symbolize all the cold, frustrating aspects of selling yourself. I ripped the tag into sections, so my name was now an abstract bunch of sticky letters, and stuck them on things all the way home, thinking I was being an awful environmentalist but oh well. I stuck pieces on railings, benches, lamposts and the emergency call box in the ever-tranquil Shakespeare Garden.

12:54

deli story
So last week, I was having a particularly bad day. I'd just gotten out of a frustrating meeting for the campus weekly magazine, and was walking home trying to cheer myself up and failing miserably. I walked by the deli, and it was four o'clock, closing time. Bob was in the window, lifting a tray of cookies out to be put away for the day. I smiled and kept walking, but suddenly I heard the screen door creak open. "Excuse me," he said, poking his head out the door. I spun around, feeling something good was about to happen. And it was. "I have one spice cookie left," he said, "and it's the last one of the season." They only make spice cookies in the cold months, or else the icing melts when they leave them in the window. I usually ordered a spice cookie about twice a week, so the last one of the season was a big deal. I followed Bob inside.

"I'll give it to you for free," he said. "Otherwise I'd have to eat it myself."

"You're wonderful!" I said, in my cookie-induced glee.

"I wouldn't go that far," he said. "I'm nice, but I'm not wonderful."

12:45

then again...
Of course the ideal would be to stop feeling sorry for myself, but that's, um, a more long-term goal.

12:29

realization
Sometimes when I'm going through a rocky time, it's hard to have sympathy for a close friend who may be going through an equally rocky time, but whose life looks like cake to me. It's hard to be a giver when I need to be a taker. It's hard to be like woe-is-you, when I'm really thinking woe-is-me.

12:27

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

fun with multiple personalities
I have not heard a peep about the latest megaphone. So, instead I will debate it with myself.

Lindsay. This is not a radical notion you've presented here... the idea of enjoying life and damning the man is, well, a throwback to when our parents wore bell-bottoms and something that many people take for granted. Why do you insist on pretending you're saying something new?

My response: Dude. I never said I was saying anything new. It's just a new idea for me, that maybe I don't want to play the mind game of ladder-climbing with myself when I'm only 21 years old.

Lindsay. Are you telling me that you went to college with the specific goal of "changing the world" -- I know you did, I read it in your freshman-year journalism class profile -- and now you're saying forget it? Screw that? Plant a raspberry bush on my grave and I'll be happy? Come on.

My response: I've recently re-thought my notions of how to effect change. I used to think that power was something you could grab for from the outset. But that's not necessarily true... the word "power" doesn't mean anything unless there's specific actions and responsibilities and duties behind it. And how do you get those concrete duties? Well, you work toward them... but not by stepping on a million toes to get there. You gotta build a million bridges. Or something like that. I think people who have their own, clear-headed visions of a beautiful life have the best chance of doing something meaningful. They're not caught up in petty gossipy in-fighting or paralyzed by put-downs from those on top. They're not doing it for their egoes. Wouldn't that be great? To get beyond my own ego? Big dreams... big dreams.

Lindsay. You don't really know what you're going to do with your life, do you? This is all just a big rationalization for having no plans and no direction. Isn't it?

My response: Yes, yes it is. You are very astute.