21 IX 2003 - 04:56 - paene mensis

It's been a while, hasn't it?

I can't really justify myself. I haven't been particularly busy, but then again, I've been using all that time I have in order not to do the outline of my paper on Ahern and Machiavelli coming due on Tuesday. Then again, I'm in (more or less) good company; as of Friday, I think one would have been hard pressed to find any member of my class who'd done research since the day the project was assigned to us. I should, however, get started if I don't want to be the only person without something to turn in (and oh, the shame! the shame!)

Nothing seems important enough to be writing for extended periods about, so far -- I tend currently to either the intensely personal, in which case the sentiment is shunted off via e-mail or the post (no time for the post right now, though), or the incredibly banal, in which case it goes to my other home. Most of the people I want to have the link already do, and I've got to be careful because I'm linked to friends who wish to be rather more discriminating about who gets to read them -- and technically, I have no obligation to humor them, but then what kind of friend would I be if I didn't? Truth, of course, that it's not humoring them, it's humoring myself: another wall I have some control over, a chance (I think) to give myself a little more room to breathe. Yes.

For a while, I was under the illusion that what I wrote here went out into a void, and it's become uncomfortably close of late -- not that I've had any rows or anything over what I've written, and what I write tends to be about myself and to have much less bearing upon those that matter to me (say, my friends) anyway --

but that I am likely read by people I wouldn't feel comfortable holding a conversation with during the school day, and who very likely would not feel comfortable holding a conversation with me -- it's that brings a miserable sense of the walls (what walls? this is a computer!) crashing down on me. Erk. Lovely time for that to kick in, isn't it?

Incidentally, I'm sick of being told that I don't need to study for any tests anyway, so why bother, and by the way could I help the other person study? It gets old, and I do work for the grades I get, and every time it happens, I feel like crap. Actually, I feel like spearing people through the midsection immediately after it happens, but the urge passes and then I just start feeling terrible.

Another reason I haven't found anything worth writing about is that suddenly, everything looks very small in comparison to the applications I (and nearly every other person in my grade this year) am faced with. This personal statement business -- I wish it would just go away. I can write coherently, I can sound intelligent and prepared, and dear God am I convinced that I won't, in this essay that probably isn't so terribly important in the scheme of things, anyway. But there's the feeling that I'm bound to screw something up, am I not? and so everything from here until November is poisoned, definitely, that from November to January only a little less so (and if I hear well in December -- but that doesn't bear thinking about).

Anyway, this is still my first online home, and I'm fond of it and all -- met lovely people, after all, but the neglect, with only occasional updates, is likely to continue. Updates on the state of my mental health, seating audition, and MEH paper to be found on the other home, or (if one wishes) through email at right, although I may take a little time to respond to the latter. Writing for Alchera, when and if it revives itself, will of course continue to appear here.

And now, to research.