Sleepless rantings...

I wasn't able to sleep at all last night. It's currently 5:36 AM and I finally just decided to get up and take a shower because I couldn't stand laying there and thinking anymore. I'm thinking and worrying myself into a panic lately and I need to stop.

I had so much fun last night and I'm so glad to have such amazing friends. And I keep thinking about how much I'm going to miss them. And then I just kept staring around my empty apartment getting sad, and then thinking about the fact that my apartment is empty reminded me that all my shit is in my van about 3 blocks away and I hope to god nobody decides to break into it. Not that there's anything all that valuable in there, but it would definitely suck. And then I realized that it snowed overnight while I was laying there staring at the ceiling, and that today is an even number day and I parked on the odd side of the road and I don't know if they need to plow or not. Meanwhile, as I'm needlessly worrying, my next door neighbor is blasting her TV all night again and the people across the alley from me apparently don't feel the need to sleep either and would rather play blaring music with the bass cranked up to 11 until about 5 AM.

I literally haven't slept. It's going to be a treacherous drive back, with me being barely conscious and with a van filled so much crap that I can't see out any of the windows. If the roads are icy, it'll probably take all day to get home. But I'm glad that by the end of the day I'll be back in EP and I can take a nap and bake cookies with my mom or watch TV with my dad or something. Sounds so nice. Finals are over, the semester is over, and I can finally go home and veg.

I just wish I could get maybe even like a half an hour of sleep. But I tried that earlier when I got out of the shower and was just disturbed again by some truck-backing-up-noise directly outside my window for about  five minutes straight. Typical. One plus of not living in this apartment anymore will be not having to deal with all the stupid trucks and their annoying backing up noises that drive through this alleyway all the time. And at ungodly hours of the morning. It's just evil.

Sorry for all this ranting. I'm just anxious and kind of cranky and a little lonely and sad, and I want to go home so I can sleep and eat normal food again. Mom food that's free and actually tastes good...

Jarreth Merz: Filming democracy in Ghana | Video on TED.com

This was just something interesting I found on TEDtalks while trying to find a video to do my global health homework on. I saw Ghana mentioned, got excited and decided to procrastinate a bit longer...

Jarreth Merz: Filming democracy in Ghana | Video on TED.com:

'via Blog this'

All of my children were accidents.

I wish the temperature in my apartment would hover somewhere around normal for once. It's either 90 degrees in here, or about 35, and never anything in between. I think if the thermostat knobby thingy worked on my heater, I wouldn't have this problem. I'm super cold because my window's open and I took all the blankets off my bed to wash them, but if I close the window, in about 5 minutes I'll be sweating. This is super interesting, I know.

Anyway, today was one of those awkward days where I didn't get out of bed until noon, and then despite the fact that it wasn't morning anymore, I still ate 2 breakfasts because....I can?

And then I went to class, where my crazy professor tried to defend her controversial lecture on Tuesday that was kind of offensive because she was hardcore stereotyping poor people and everyone got really mad about it. I kind of just sat back, slightly entertained, as I watched her dig herself into a deeper hole with everything she said. I kind of felt bad for her though, because I know she had good intentions about her lecture. It just kind of backfired on her. Like a lot of things she says. She's one of those awkward professors who I'm not sure if she really knows how to teach...she kind of just walks around telling us about her personal life for an hour and a half and ends up sharing WAY more than she needs to. Examples?

"The FIRST TIME I had sex, I got pregnant. We used all kinds of birth control, they all just failed."

"All of my children were accidents."

"My sisters interact with each other in a different way than they interact with me. Because I figured out how to get out of poverty." (ouch?)

"My sister wasted all of her money on a new car, and now can't afford to put gas in it or pay her rent." (So I'm sure she's thrilled you're sharing this with a 250-person lecture hall)

"I am considered upper class. I make more in a month than my father made in a year. So why do I take the bus to work instead of driving one of my five cars?"

She's kind of the reason I skip that class a lot. Because I think I've learned more about her personal life over the course of the semester than I have about global health. Any time I do go, I just end up doing a crossword puzzle, only looking up to listen to the person who's bitching her out for something unintentionally offensive she said.

My other class today was pretty uneventful. And now I'm using laundry and cleaning to put off homework, even though I should be memorizing a presentation I have to give tomorrow. Kind of important... but I'll get to it eventually.

Appreciating normalcy

I've decided I'm going to start appreciating the boring in my life before I decide I want it back. I suddenly realized today that in a little over a month, I'm going to be living a completely different life. And I'm going to realize how much I take for granted on a day to day basis. Instead of the normal problems I have now, like not getting my homework done, or not having enough time to clean my apartment, or (insert boring/stupid problem here), I'm going to be feeling my way around in the dark, trying to understand a culture that is not remotely close to anything I've experienced before. It is both really exciting and pretty terrifying, to say the least.

I'm going to be honest and say that at this point I'm probably more scared than I am excited to leave. When I think about all the things there are to worry about, and all the things that could go wrong, I kind of want to cry a little bit and wonder why I decided that this is what I wanted. Luckily, everyone who has done the program that I've heard from so far has loved it, so I know I'll realize there isn't all that much to worry about, but I'm still freaking out. I'm just trying to remember how I felt on my trip to China in high school, when I left with my Chinese host family and separated from the group, and how terrified I was to be in such a different place with people who only spoke broken english, and everything was so unfamiliar. It took me a little while to adjust, but once I did it was an amazing experience. And I only stayed with them for about 5 days.

This time I won't have a host family, so it'll be a different situation to get used to, but the fact that I've had to adjust before will only help me.

I think the biggest thing that's freaking me out right now is how long I'll be away. 5 months is a pretty decent chunk of time...

Anyway, other than freaking out, not much exciting has happened in my life since last I updated this, which was probably a super long time ago and I don't remember what was happening then. Probably also nothing.

School continues to be a burden on my life, as I continue to pretend that I have a life outside of school. The truth is, I don't, unless you count watching netflix, playing guitar, and other miscellaneous distractions a "life". Ha, I just remembered this post was supposed to be about APPRECIATION OF BORINGNESS and I've already forgotten. Now appreciating....and I'm happy again.

It'll be nice to be not-bored for a long time. I'm sure there's nothing boring in Africa. That's what I'm going to assume. I mean, kind of the whole idea of studying abroad is not to be bored.

Another thing I've been thinking a lot about is what it's going to be like when I get back. A lot of people are going a lot of places, and there's a lot of possibilities for lots of things to change. Lots of people are going abroad, or will be leaving to go abroad when I get back, or are just doing super exciting things with their lives in general, and it'll be interesting to see what changes when it's all over. I'm thinking in terms of friendships, and relationships, and what have you.

I'm going to try to start writing in this more often before I go, just to get used to the whole blogging on a regular basis thing... My mom wants me to blog while I'm gone and won't be happy with anything less than hearing about my life in excruciating detail. Just a warning. Everyone else, please feel free to skim or just not read this altogether. I won't be offended.

But that won't be for a while. I still have like 40ish days or so before I leave.

A Shambles.

Looking around my apartment, I am disgusted with myself. How did I let it get this bad? I usually see the condition of my living space as a pretty good indication of how my life is going at the moment, and right now it isn't too pretty.

Clothes all over the place, dishes in the sink, overflowing recycling, stale coffee, garbage on the table, unpaid bills scattered everywhere...I'm embarrassed to even be talking about it, but then maybe I'll get the motivation to clean so that no one actually has to see it in this condition.

My life isn't actually going horribly as my apartment would suggest, but I do need to do some straightening up. I feel behind on everything in school already, and I'm pretty sick, and a few other stupid little things here and there are stressing me out, but other than that I guess I can't complain. Everything that I have to complain about right now is a result of my own actions. So yay.

Buuuut Aarushi and I went to see the Shins over the last weekend! In Philly! And it was incredible. Despite our failure to meet James Mercer. But hey, we tried.

I was glad we did that, even though it was expensive. It was worth the adventure. I'll admit, on the way there I was kind of freaking out about what might go wrong and whether or not it would be worth it in the end, but after a while you just have to tell yourself to stop worrying and just enjoy it. It's one of those things that stops being okay to do once you hit like, age 25 or something. Then if you drive 900 miles to go see a concert, people might question your sanity a little more than if you're just 20 years old and an irresponsible college student. I feel like you need to fit in as many of these stupid things in as you can before you get too old to have an excuse. And that's why we did it. Besides the fact that the Shins will always be worth a 900 mile drive to us. :)

So now, one parking ticket, one speeding ticket, and one stolen iPod later, we are at least still alive, and have a lot of great memories.

But I really need to clean my apartment and get my life back on track (and my finances...). I feel like the better energy flow of having a clean place to come home to just makes everything feel so much better, even if it isn't.

And poor Kilgore has a dirty bowl. I've been kind of neglecting his habitat as well. Sorry, buddy :(

You're full of hope as you begin re-arranging

It's officially the last day of summer. Despite the fact that I only have one class tomorrow and then a three day weekend. I doubt it'll start to feel like school's begun for at least another few days for me. Which is good, because I'm in such hard-core denial about it. I've had such a wonderful and eventful summer that I've (somewhat purposefully) refused to acknowledge the coming changes until now. I haven't figured out my schedule yet, I haven't bought my books, I haven't even looked at what buildings I'll need to get to; you name it, I've ignored it up until this point. And now school starts tomorrow and I haven't studied German in months and I can almost feel the shame and embarrassment already that will surely come my way tomorrow when I'll no doubt have to speak in front of people or answer a question and will have no idea what was said.
Oh, well.

Despite all those worries, I suppose it will be sort of refreshing to have a regular routine again. The only thing that's been kind of irritating about this summer is the lack of a consistent schedule. My work schedule being all over the place made it kind of difficult to plan things, but now I'll be able to know weeks ahead of time whether or not I'll be able to do something or not. It'll be nice to have that stability again.

But I'm afraid of change. This year is weird already. A good weird, but weird is always uncomfortable. Not knowing what changes the school year will bring is kind of unnerving. And thinking about the fact that in less than 5 months, I'm planning on being in Africa for a whole semester is super scary. And really intensely exciting at the same time. I guess this year scares me because I know how life-changing it may end up being, and anticipating that change is freaking me out.

But I'm planning on taking everything one day at a time. I mean, that's obviously the only thing you can really do, but when I get stuck thinking so far ahead like this, it gets me in this mindset that tons of things are happening at once and it's just this big giant snowball of events that you can't stop. And that's not even what's really happening. Really, things will probably be pretty uneventful for a while. But in my head I'll still be panicking.  I need to take some time to slow down my thoughts and just relax about everything.
Change is usually a good thing, after all.

Long time no...write

Oh hey there blog.

It's been a long time, I think. I didn't go back and read the last thing I wrote about, but I know it wasn't recent.

My life has been pretty eventful as of late, or at least eventful in comparison to the monotonous blur it was during the school year. I'm enjoying summer. But I see it could be going back to normal pretty soon, now that I'm back in Madison from home and don't have many exciting plans in the near future. Walgreens takes up most of my time, and soon I have a job interview for UCP Dane County, so that may also give me more to do.

Other than my major responsibilities, I've been trying to use my extra time to do things that are more fun. I've been teaching myself to play guitar, which was actually going pretty well for a while, but I haven't picked it up in at least a week so I obviously need to start kicking my own ass about practicing. It's been fun though, I'm hoping that I can actually stick with it this time. I've tried to start teaching myself before, and ended up giving up after only about a week, but this time it's been easier to get motivated because I now have the time and more interest in learning. I've also been trying to read more this summer, but besides the first few weeks after school ended, I haven't been doing all that much of it. Once we got internet in the apartment, the reading started to become less interesting. Which makes me hate the internet a little, but I know it's my own fault for letting it distract me so much.

I don't have much else that I really want to write about. My life is just a whole lot of Walgreens, and boringness, and trying to make myself look busy so I don't have to do that much actual work. Although I am enjoying the promotion to photo I got, because not only do I get paid more, but it makes work a whole lot more entertaining when I get to creep on peoples' pictures of weddings and kittens and new babies. It's brought a whole new level of interesting to that place. The only thing I hate about being there all the time is that now I see how dramatic all of my coworkers actually are. When I used to work only 1 or 2 shifts a week, I didn't pay attention all that much. But now that I'm there most of the week, I've realized how they all just bitch about each other all the time. It's like a weird dysfunctional family. Because they're all oddly close at the same time. Except for me. But I'm slowly working my way in. I don't know if I want to though, because of all the bitchiness. I might as well just keep my distance.

But anyway, none of that is all that interesting.

I'm going to try to start using this regularly though. I'll try to talk about more interesting things in the future. But for now, I'm just tired and sleepy from work, and have little else to talk about. And I think it's time for a nap.