The List

So I've started The List. You can see it on the right-hand panel just under my profile. The List of Things I Really Really Really Want To Do At Least Once Before I Die is a little cumbersome, and I'm pretty sure that The Bucket List is copyrighted... so I'll just call it The List. 11 p.m. last night seemed like a good time to start thinking about it.

I've been incredibly lucky so far, in that I've already done some things that are on a lot of people's lists. I've had plenty of opportunities. But I've always wondered: how many once-in-a-lifetime experiences can you fit into one lifetime? I don't know the answer to that question. Like so many other questions. But I intend to find out how many I can fit into mine. And I'm pretty sure that's the important part anyways. The practical rather than the theoretical. I have lots of theories, about lots of things, but this is about experiences. This is about where I'm going, and what I'm doing along the way. The difference between the destination and the journey. It's going to be a long road, I think, and I expect I'm going to be navigating it alone, at least mostly. It seems like a good time to start figuring out what I want. Yeah, yeah, like that wasn't what I was doing before. Oh well, the future just seems a little bit more immediate all of a sudden.

Keep Dreaming
Daydream Believer

Merry Merry

I keep going to bed with too much on my mind. That or it's too early, and I don't have the effective sedative of sheer exhaustion to knock me out before my what ifs can keep me awake. Having been exiled from the tree-room while the final preparations are made, I sit up here, cramped, in one of the few places in the house I can have any privacy, and believe me, there were points today where I considered announcing I was going to have a bath just so I could have half an hour's peace.

My wish list gets less material every year. And this year it's full of things no one can give me. Lately I've been the kind of person who'd be thrilled to get a coupon book full of coupons like "one hour of free kvetching without even having to buy me a coffee to do it" and "one get out of dishes free card". This year they're a little less optimistic, a little more cynical.

I want to not be ditched. Maybe it doesn't really count if there were no definite plans, so maybe you don't think you ditched me, but I feel ditched, and it's starting to piss me off because it's a recurring event.

I want to be important to those who are important to me. This is me being selfish again, but I think it neither unreasonable nor entirely unexpected.

I want to be powerful. I want to understand why people do things. The definition of leadership is getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it. I want to be a leader, rather than be manipulated by them.

If I don't get any of the above, I want to be able to let them go so that one or a combination don't make me cry anymore. I don't really care why. Desensitization, greater strength, or just no longer caring, any of them would do the trick.

Thanks for listening Santa... hope you've got a computer on that sleigh... since I'm pretty sure you're scheduled to be on the roof at the moment. But then, it's pretty windy out there, maybe you're a little delayed.

Merry Christmachannukwanzikas/Non-denominational, non-exclusive, non-offensive, politically correct consumerist materialist gift-giving day
Daydream Believer

What Tastes Like Blue?

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. I took this quiz over 2 years ago, and posted the result here. This is a more recent version of the same quiz. If they're at all accurate, and they sure sound it, yikes. I guess it was an eventful two years.

DDB took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Her need to feel more causative and to have a wide..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

Looking forward to hitting the trails with Loud in the not too distant future. As long as we don't have to sing "Happy Trails".

Daydream Believer

Blinded By the Light At the End of the Tunnel

I'm not a real big TV watcher, really. Y'know how nearly everyone has their show? The one (or ten) they watch religiously to the detriment of homework, housework, and the other demands of being a contributing member of society? I don't. I couldn't tell you what channel most of my shows are on, to be honest, since I usually watch them long after the fact on DVD. Case in point: Dexter, The Tudors, Bones, Criminal Minds, Charmed, Veronica Mars. Don't get me wrong, there are shows I enjoy, shows I'll occasionally go out of my way to watch. The last show I watched with any regularity on purpose was Charmed, which had its last season, what, 3 years ago? But I only recently acquired regular access to one of those little talking boxes they call a TV, and I've never had one to call my own. As such, even in this time of papers, projects, and take-home exam questions, I find myself sucked into the tube.

Most of the TV I watch is either a) on a disc or b) something that somebody else in the room was watching already/wants to watch. Fortunately my tastes generally run parallel to those of the people I tend to regularly share living room space with, and if they don't, they've all got TV's in their rooms so this one's mine nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.

Ahem. So long story short, in the combination of the end of class and the good corporal's only occasionally aggravating habit of watching TV while studying/writing papers, I've watched more TV in the last week than I did in the previous month combined. (Sidenote: And somehow wound up watching reruns in that time? What gives, man!) I can almost feel my brain cells melting/dying/combusting.

But now that I have a screen larger than 11 inches or whatever my laptop screen is, attached to a player that is all but guaranteed to play north american DVDs (don't even get me started, my lappy is a retired financial workhorse, so it's a powerhouse, but it's getting on in years, hence the non-compatible DVD player) I'm even more excited about my TV on DVD that I'm looking to catch up on. Or maybe will be looking to catch up on after the holidays, if Santa manages to overlook my missteps. Not to mention the movies on the ever-growing list. Yes, I know I'm the worst Film student in the world. I'm also the worst English student in the world and the worst Theatre student in the world. Seriously folks, if I endeavored to watch half the movies someone has told me are "hands-down the best movie ever made" I would have 16-hour days for a month full of just that. Add that to reading "hands-down the best book ever written" and seeing "hands-down the best play ever written" or "ever performed", and you'll see why I don't watch too much TV. That said, I can say with confidence that I'm a fan of the cinematography in The Tudors. I've been told it's because Showtime gives their shows a film-calibre budget, which would certainly explain the beautiful lighting.

Anyways, somehow I've managed to make it a good two-thirds of the way through the woods. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now if only it wasn't blinding me. Four down, one to go.

Daydream Believer

Mr. Polish Streetcar

I didn't go far enough. I couldn't, and now I'm sorry about it. Now I realize what he meant about not revisiting traumatic events. And I thought I didn't have any trauma in my life. Apparently it makes no difference that the trauma was more or less my own creation. I didn't get the sense of release that I was hoping for. Hm, there's an interesting parallel. At least I pulled up before I broke down. That could have gotten pretty ugly.

It's not my fault. This isn't about him, or her, or them, or me, it's about you. It's your fault and you do this because you want to see me suffer, you want me to break down, you fucking sadist. I hate you.
That's as far as I could go. I wish now that I'd gone farther, or taken a different route. It made everyone else feel better, but it just made me feel worse.

I've been remarkably lucky. Maybe I'm a little more masochistic than I thought I was, and a little more sadistic. I wonder which is worse for me.

It's the same key. A duality, because the same key opens two doors, the same words bring down two masks.
It's like the political spectrum, which is an odd but fitting analogy. There are two axis, not just "good" and "bad" emotions, but the strength of them figures in as well. Love and hate are like authoritarianism and communism. Not mutually exclusive in any sense. Anybody ever heard of Stalin or Robert Mugabe?

Duality and balance. Scales of justice, yin and yang, there's a lot of symbols I could reference here.

I said I hate you already. And I do, to a point. But the love's there too.

Keep Dreaming,
Daydream Believer