What if...
Okay, the criteria said "8 to 12 double-spaced well-written pages". Officially, I have 8 pages (okay, the eighth page is technically still blank, but the page count reads eight!) and it's...more or less...uh...it's written. So, I shouldn't be beating myself up for blogging right now, right? Man, my energy is shot. I fell asleep on the bus today, then on the van home and then on the way in, on the most uncomfortable ride in the country, the "songtaew" (think pickup with two benches in the back facing each other, crammed full of people) - you guessed it! - I dozed off. My biological clock is most definitely out of sync. I get hungry at weird times, I get sleepy at weird times, I even get cranky at odd times (that used to be reserved for early mornings). I try to get to bed earlier but this endeavor usually fails because a) I have a ton of work to do and b) my mind gets filled up with all sorts of crazy thoughts which serve to keep me wide awake. Lately, I've been having these weird moments when I just start playing "What if...?"
What if I can't finish my assignments?
What if I've forgotten to do an assignment?
What if I can't understand the material?
What if I decide to make that call?
What if I lose some of my sources?
What if I fail?
Can you see why I'm messed up?
Final thought: I blame it on lack of sleep. :shock:
Talking about my religion
I've never been particularly religious; on the other hand, I've never been particularly agnostic. I believe that there's something out there that's greater than all of us and whether you want to call that something God, Buddha, the universe or Happy Camper Joe, it doesn't really bother me any which way. I respect all religions. It's how I was raised. In the end, I think whatever works for you, works. Period. I'm not interested in talking about religion beyond that. I've never been particularly religious, but I do feel that whoever's out there has a plan for me, and if I just stay strong, it'll all work out. On that note, I'd like to put here one of my favorite passages from the Bible. I'm not being very anti-establishment here, because it's the 23rd psalm, a perennial favorite, but hey, it's beloved for a reason. You don't have to be very religious to agree that it's beautiful in its own right, that it has a strong message. I don't know it by heart, but that's a fault I'm going to remedy. I find that more and more often, when I feel like I can't go on, I look to the Big Guy Upstairs. Like my father always says, when all is said and done, He's the only person who can stay with you to the end.
The 23rd Psalm
The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.
Final thought: Whatever works, works. :idea:
Not complaining, just loving the miniatures
I'm tired of complaining. I do a lot of it and I realized, as my paper for linguistics just happens to be on complaints, that the type of complaining I do - direct complaining - is highly frowned upon and quite frankly, boring. Oh, that doesn't mean I'll never complain again. I am, at heart, a complainer, someone who loves to vent, to share her disapproval and frustration. But not today. I will not, for instance, make a big fuss over the fact that I got practically no work (aside from a measly summary paragraph) done because my mom wanted to go down to Central World Plaza and check out the miniatures exhibit. I won't because a) she's my mom and I love her, b) I wholeheartedly took her and c) I had a lot of fun. I love miniature stuff. They had this traditional Thai temple fair, all in miniature. It was adorable. They had a dunking booth, one of those shooting ranges where you win all sorts of silly prizes and of course, lots of food stalls (because Thais love to eat). My favorite display was a little shop selling grilled chicken - when you blew on the grill, smoke came out! :o Boggled my mind how they accomplished that. The amount of detail was astonishing - the fair even featured a one-legged beggar (more common in Thailand than you think) and a ten-baht note someone had dropped. I was wholly impressed. So, I won't feel (overly) bad that I have another ton of work to do. I'll just get on it tomorrow. That's all right, right? :?
Final thought: Stop wasting time! :evil:
Good Advice?
What is wrong with me? Aside from the general craziness that comprises my personality, what is up with me? My emotions have been on the proverbial rollercoaster, true, owing from the fact that my workload rises exponentially every second I'm at school. I'm suffering from 1) lack of sleep, 2) lack of healthy foodstuffs and 3) lack of interest/motivation. But I have never turned away from giving good advice. I have never fobbed someone off when they genuinely needed help. I live for helping people; I love it. It's the one area that I feel I can give 110% and not care about the outcome. I have my own advice column (okay, on an advice website, but still)! And yet...ugh, do men cry? I mean, I'm not prejudiced or sexist or anything, but should I advise a man not to cry? I didn't tell him not to cry because it wasn't manly; I told him it was a waste of time. Now I'm wondering if I couldn't have come up with something better to say. Okay, I'm going to call and rectify my mistake...(15 minutes later)...Whew. Okay, that worked out. I wish everything in my life took such minimal effort. Must get back to work now, but it was driving me nuts thinking about this.
Final thought: My advice is: have faith in yourself! :)
The elusive thing called "motivation"
Oh, man, my life has been one huge episode of craziness for so long. I've had my head stuck in some many books and journal articles, I'm beginning to feel like a library. Literally, a library. I just semi-finished one of three term papers I have to hand in (first due date for 2 papers is at the end of the month) and I still have a ton of reading to catch up on. The thing is, I just have amazingly low motivation. It's plagued me ever since I began grad school and it's killing me inside because I've always been highly self-motivated. I pride myself on it. But the fact is, everytime I get online to start doing research, I inevitably veer off to check out stupid things like Wil Wheaton's weblog http://www.wilwheaton.net" title="http://www.wilwheaton.net" target="_blank"http://www.wilwheaton.net (not that Wil Wheaton is stupid, it's just stupid that I'm wasting my time on it when I should be working) or giving out at advice at Advicenators (see sidebar. Yes, I've become an advice columnist, coz somehow, despite my own life spinning out of control, I can still manage to dish out suggestions to other people. Go figure.) I haven't talked to any of my friends, except my best friend and my guy friend who has too much free time on his hands. I know that soon most of us will be too busy to talk, but it seems like I've gotten a head start on that and to all you guys, I'm sorry. It just seems like the only free time I have is right now, right in a lull in my writing capabilities, at a pretty bad hour - not an appropriate time to be calling anyone up for a chat. Ugh. Okay, that's enough for now. I feel like I'm such a downer. Back to work, silly girl...uh, maybe after one last piece of advice. :)
Final thought: Nose to the grind, everything will be fine. :P