So today I found at that, because I’m senior staff, I’m officially invited to the NYC Gala on Sunday. I get to put on a pretty dress and schmooze. I was going to bring Drew as my date, but he can’t go, which is probably for the better due to his habit of cursing loudly at the most inopportune moments. So Joe is taking me. It didn’t even take begging, I was just like “Hey Joe, I need a date for Sunday night. Do you have a suit?” And he said “Of course.” Joe is actually a better person to go with me than Drew, because despite our lack of keeping in touch over the years his tolerance of the nerves I’m sure to have is far closer to “unconditional” than Drew.
I’m excited! It will be a good chance to get to know the other girls at work better and the presentations are actually going to be really interesting.
It’s still humid and icky. I have to go do laundry but then I’m going to get some sushi and watch House & SVU with my roommate. Tomorrow after work I’m going dress shopping. I haven’t bought a dress in this manner since prom.
I also have a writing idea for either NaNo or in general. Year Eight may get written afterall.
“I’ve kept a journal, on and off, for about 6 years now. In those notebooks I was wholly uncensored. I never intended for anyone else to read them. This notebook is addressed to you, and written with your eyes in mind. And though I repeatedly strove for the same level of candor how was that possible when I knew all along that you were going to read it? Writing for an audience turns in into a form of performance art no matter ho guileless I claim — or even strive — to be. Can there ven be such a thing as an unmediated experience theses days? Every storyteller is biased, sure, and we both know I’ve been a bit of a show off for you (you want my stories? I’l give you some stories, buddy!) I didn’t try to create the illusion I’m a better or more compassionate person…”
-Forthcomings
Jon Stewart singing a line from Allentown = adorable
My midterm is about 90% done and no more energy or motivation to work on it tonight. It’s due at 3PM tomorrow, so I need to get up early, especially because I should put in a few hours at work tomorrow. (Not only do I have an office. My hours are completely flexible. ) But I took a nap today, so now I’m not going to be able to sleep.
I’ve given up on the idea of NaNo this year. I was going to do it, if only for the social aspect because it was a nice way to meet people in New York last year, but I don’t have the time or energy. Add to the mix that I don’t enjoy writing fiction, and..meh. It’s a disappointing conclusion, because I’d like a non-UChicago outlet; that’s why NaNo was such an awesome thing to do in 04′ because it was a non-Skidmore outlet. But that was undergrad with 15 credits at a small liberal arts school and I had a car. I would like to finish HTLAR eventually, but that is “fictionalized” and not fiction.
I feel like writing something eloquent. I usually write in my head. Walking to campus in the morning, I’m composing paragraphs in my head, and by the time I walk home at night, they’ve been edited a dozen times. It’s how my brain works. But my brain is busy with academic matters and so the eloquence will have to wait for free time and possibly infusion with alcohol.
I wasted nearly two full days at work going through all my LJ archives and tagging everything. I probably still missed a few, but I feel very organized now.
Conclusion reached from sorting my tags by “usage.”: Wow, I write about boys a lot. Luckily, I also write about politics a lot, which is what this LJ was intended for in the first place, so I don’t feel too bad.
So it occurred to me today that the State of the Union has not been given, and it’s usually right around this time, so I was wondering what was up. I have not bothered to verify this information, but I’ve been told it’s being held this coming Sunday, because it’s the weekend between the two major football things. Isn’t it usually on a Tuesday?
I don’t have TV in my apartment, so I’m trying to decide if I should ask someone if I can come over and watch the State of the Union, or if I should just avoid watching it, because it will annoy and/or anger me. It was fun to watch it in college, sitting in the lounges with everyone, but less fun to just sit at home and be depressed by it. Also, Bush is a TERRIBLE speaker.
I don’t see how Bush can spin things to make it seem like the State of the Union is anything short of “screwed up.” I can be mildly smug that the predictions I made circa January 2004 are a reality two years later, but it’s depressing that the “Dems are a dying party” is so true.
I don’t know. I’ve started to pay attention to politics again, somewhat. I really can’t tell anymore if Bush is surrounded by sycophants who keep telling him he’s doing a good job and that his policy is relevant, because it seems impossible that one man could be so delusional.
And right here, I hit the wall. I can’t write about politics. This is why I gave up my internship in D.C. to make lattes. This is why I’m not applying for every job on the I.H.S. job bank. This is why I will not concentrate on international politics at grad school.
I can’t write about anything that isn’t at least twenty year ago, apparently. Mentally review three-point-five years of paper topics…yeah, that’s about accurate.
I started my countdown-to-graduation journal right after Thanksgiving. (And had another countdown-to-SYMBOLIC-graduation last April/May) It was a good motivator to write, among other things.
It’s also a good way to force myself to get things done before the new year, because then I can write about it. Do you know Microsoft word marks “new year” as a grammatical error if you don’t capitalize it? I don’t think ‘new year’ needs to be capitalized unless you’re referring specifically to the holiday. But I digress.
Anyway. In 34 days it will be 2006. I will have survived my first year in The Real World and be more than half way through the experimental “time off.” My only goals are to finish the three applications that are due in December, and to not have a horrible New Years Eve. The latter will probably be accomplished by actually going to bed at 10 PM, as I should have done last year, instead of carousing through the city with HeWhoShallNotBeNamed. I mean, that was technically New Year’s Eve-Eve, and it was a really fun night, but obviously god agreed with…well all my friends who told me not to go, because that evening ended disastrously. Sebastian, the only one of my friends who is religious, must have made some kind of deal. But I digress.
I am currently at work, having just finished a project, and am tooling around until I get more work. I am worrying about a variety of things; my nails are bitten down to nothing. NaNo-ing has simply not happened as much as I would have liked this year. I meant to go to more meet-up things (and I miss the Capital District chats that Emily was always setting up last year) but grad school stuff, and other busyness got in the way. I actually have over 45,000 words of essaying and could easily make it to 50,000 if I threw myself into writing these next few nights, but it’s certainly not a novel, and it’s certainly not anything that’s near a finished product. The essay I really want to write is still not happening, but HTLAR has been progressing swimmingly. Regardless, I’m going to attend the TGIO gathering on Thursday. I suppose I could say once again that I digress, but then I would have to have had a point from which to digress.
I’m going to go back to crafting the perfect Chicago SOP. I should automatically be granted admission, because I think the reading group I was in Spring 2004 was kind of Straussian. Plus, it’s very U Chicago to spend a weekend night (and the weekend did indeed start on Thursday at Skidmore. It was Rule #1 according to my Comp. Politics professor) discussing bio-ethics, and freshman curriculum, and Genesis. Especially when it’s done over beer.
Did any of you ever read “Dear Mr. Henshaw” in elementary school? The premise of the book is this kid starts writing letters to this favorite author when he’s quite young, and as he gets older he writes more frequently. The kid is kind of a loner, so he’s writing this author about all his issues and finally Mr. Henshaw is like “Dude, stop stalking me.”
So Leigh (who is aware that he has a girls’ name. Leigh can be a boy’s name but then it should be “Lee,” like WTF was the point of that Beverly Clearly?) continues to write letters to Mr. Henshaw, but he doesn’t send them. About 2/3 through the book he starts a page “Dear Mr. Henshaw,” crosses it out and says “I have learned to put down my thoughts on a piece of paper.” The rest of the book the entries are just dated.
But the point is, Leigh couldn’t just write for himself. He had to have an intended audience, even though the audience wasn’t going to read what he wrote. That’s what I meant about writing for an audience, I think. There’s nothing worse than writing about writing, but I will write more on this when I am feeling more articulate.
**********
Instead of writing ANYTHING, I should be attempting to get things I order. I move in a week. My room here is a mess. I am making the painful decisions of what books to bring. I am anxiety-ridden because the girl who is moving out is being a pain, and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to move in on that Sunday anymore, and it will probably become a hassle of moving after work and my parents will be away that week, so I’ll have to con Brent into helping me.
But employment has certainly made me feel like I belong in New York. I like the walk from Port Authority and wandering around at lunch and such. I am amused that I can stand on Broadway between 52nd and 53rd and see three Starbucks. There are lots of cute boys. THERE IS A CREPE VENDOR THAT SELLS $3 CREPES!!! I was at my apartment on Thursday night to drop off my deposit, and the Newport area is so pretty at night (it was a particularly pretty sunset) and to get there you have to take the Pulaski Skyway which makes it cooler.
Since I have acquired a full-time “real” job and will soon be living “across the street” from NYC, I should practice saying, in an effected manner “I’m a writer, man, this is just my daaaaaay job.” Of course, then I’d have to slap myself for dropping into pretentious hipster mode. Anyway. My “day job” is nothing short of amazingly perfect.
Only eight more days of annoying commute!
If I ever get around to compiling and editing some political rants, I will combine them with my Honors Research paper to produce a book called “Confessions of a Conservative Mind: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love Being on the RIGHT Side of Politics”
Very close to being completed is “Three Point Five Years”
Going to work is like the opposite of opportunity cost. I can read and write and edit.
This is my final essay for my writing class. If I get an A on it, I get an A in the class. It’s due Tuesday. So…opinions would be welcome. And actually, I’m begging. C’mon people, I’m all alone in my Scribner House, I graduate on Tuesday and I’m going cross-eyed from staring at my computer screen. LJ is going to screw with the formatting, but ignore that.
You’re an Angst writer!
What kind of writer are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Back from break, and still unable to get much done.
I applied for five different summer jobs/internships. I could wind up in Boston, D.C., or I could live at home for another summer & commute to the city. All of this depends on if I get accepted to any of the new places I applied, of course. I don’t hold any illusions about publishing and such, but there’s a million things I could see myself doing within that field. It’s far more appealing to me than becoming a D.C. bureaucrat.
Am I crazy and immature for straying off my well-thought-out, responsible path? I’m serious. Someone really needs to tell me if I am, because I truly don’t know. I won’t get mad! Am I awful for disappearing for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon to write? (When I have an Honors Research paper to write…) And does that sound incredibly flaky?
Ok, I fully admit I’m against the concept of live journals. How can you be completely candid if you know a bunch of people will be reading it? But, alas, I am computer illiterate (and lazy) so I can’t very well create a web site. So I’m using Live Journal for the purpose of political thoughts/rants. And online volum-izing
And I’ve been sucked in. Whatever.
