The idea that I can't share my problems with other people makes me not give a shit about their problems.

-Chuck Palahniuk

Enter Stephanie Kate, standing in all her glory; five foot two and three quarter inches tall, pajama pants a size too big, no shirt, a bottle of water in her hand and the light smell of cigarettes in her hair that you would only be able to smell if you were to hug her. Too much black make up on for a sunny day and a disheveled ponytail that sits oddly well on her head. She opens her mouth to speak but quickly stops herself and turns around to walk away. You read "Imagine" on her back and let your mind wander to John Lennon instead of thinking about what she's not saying.

Exit Stephanie Kate.

My mind, which seems to be a usual topic of my three minute monologues on this thing, is doing that thing it always ends up doing. Consider this a world-wide warning; I'm fixing to get rid of just about everything. Luckily for just about everything I change my mind more than I speak. I've ended friendships, destroyed relationships, run away, made new friends, made good decisions, made bad decisions and made no decisions at all at least seventeen times within every hour of every day this week, and every time I fixed them all over again and un-did my damage.

It's on repeat in my fickle little mind.

It's on every billboard I drive past.

I read it in every word on every page of every book I read.

I hear it in everything.

But I don't do anything which, as I said before, is lucky for just about everything.

I'm not a fan of having things on repeat; it's boring. And the only way to take what's boring me and make it intertesting is to do something unexpected.

Really though, none of it should be unexpected. If I act on anything I'm thinking I hope it doesn't come off as too unexpected because if it does than clearly people do not know me.

That heartless feeling I've grown apart from is returning.

I'm starting to feel complete indifference again, but this time with more consistency.

I wake up indifferent; I go to sleep indifferent.

Even my dreams have found new ways of entertaining my bored and fickle mind.

don't read this.

My fingers are typing faster than I'm thinking. I type and type and type and end up with long paragraphs and run-on sentences about everything imagineable (but somehow nothing at all) and when my mind finally catches up with my fingers I delete everything I've typed.
Nothing I'm saying is good enough.
Nothing I'm saying belongs here; it's all misplaced.

But then I'm presented with the problem of where to put it. Where the fuck am I supposed to say things? And who the fuck is going to listen?

Sure, sure; everyone says "call me" and "tell me" and "I want to know these things" but the truth is these are the people who have no idea what they're talking about. You only think you want to know because you have no idea what I have to say. You don't know what I'm not saying, what I'm thinking, what I'm doing. You think you want to know, but I think I would rather you didn't.

And this is where I circle back around and say "why do I even bring this shit up then?"
I make absolutely no sense.
Nothing makes sense right now, actually.

There are things, in my mind, that say one thing and then jump ship and say the exact opposite this.

I want this, but I really don't.
I know this, but I really don't.
I'm going to do this, but I'm really not.
I like this, but I really don't.

It's really annoying. Most of the time I'm tempted to just wipe everything away and start all over again. I get the feeling if I did that, I wouldn't really "start all over" again.


Ugh.


Delete
Ctrl+Z
Delete
Ctrl+Z
Delete
Ctrl+Z

Marcela took pictures of me today.

I also took pictures of her but I have yet to edit any of them because I don't like using the desktop computer. When I get on my laptop I will edit the pictures I took of her and share them.

OH!

Someone buy me August Rush. Please.

"I know I scare you, Mom.

I'm sorry I scare you. But I want to write and I want to see. And what would I write about if I only stayed within the doll's house, the flower-world I grew up in?

You gave me a potential.

I love you but I'm growing out of what you gave me. I'm saving it inside me and growing outwards. Let me fight my monsters. You made me. You made me."

-Rachel Corrie

I loathe people for putting things to words that I simply can't. But I suppose someone has to do it, huh?

With that being said, I don't have much to talk about today considering it's not even 11 in the morning and all I've done today is work and read the play "My Name is Rachel Corrie." 

Wait.

That actually gives me plenty to write about.

So, Rachel Corrie. 

I'm willing to bet that you don't know who she is, but if you do that's pretty awesome. To put her in a nutshell, she was a non-violent activist who spent time in the Middle East and was ultimately murdered there. Her story, no matter how sad it really is, instilled some semblance of hope in me. I haven't completely deciphered this sense of hope just yet, but I get the feeling it's more of a hope for myself than it is for the world. She seemed to struggle with grasping more of what was (and still is) going on in the world outside of our country, city, and home limits. I like to think I know her struggle with that knowledge; it presents the problem of what to do. Do you deal with yourself and the things around you? Or do you turn your back on them, if only for a second, to deal with things much bigger than you realize?

It's a tough situation, and I'm not saying I'm in it at this moment but I do know what it feels like. 

And that's about it.

I encourage you to explore Rachel's story. I'm not saying she's a martyr or genius or anything. I'm just saying she's one of those people who is worth talking about.

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone,

but they've always worked for me.”

-Hunter S. Thompson

Safe, safe, safe. All this routine is way too safe for me. I'm not saying I'm going to call in sick to work so I can go base jumping off waterfalls or ditch school to shoot up with homeless men, but I'm not saying I wouldn't. (Okay, maybe not homeless men but you get the idea.) I'm just so sick of this routine; wake up, rush to school, sit through class, rush home, do what little homework I can, get ready for work, go to work, get off work around eleven, come home, do some more homework, sleep horribly for a few hours and then wake up only to wash, rinse, and repeat. It's so tedious, and as I have said many times, I really miss my friends. But aside from that, I miss being uncomfortable. All of this is too fucking comfortable for me to handle. It's all so routine and usual and normal, all of which are, in my opinion, synonymous to boring. 

And when things get boring and routine I start looking at plane tickets, train schedules, far away places, and of course those other kinds of things that would allow me to get away without actually having to get away. I look for things I've never done, places I've never been, things I've never tried; dangerous things, dangerous places. 

I crave uncomfortable.

I crave new. 

I crave unusual.

You know what really tipped me over about all this though? Today, at work, I realized I know a lot more customer's orders by heart than I originally thought. I understand that when working at a coffee shop it is nearly impossible to avoid knowing certain people's drinks, but think of what these people are called: regulars. Some of them even know me by name. It's too comfortable and routine and I don't care if I sound like a brat, I really just don't like it. I would be okay with it if, you know, I had some variety in my life. But no. All I have is this god damned routine.

I'm not going to lie, over the past week or so I realized (and came to terms with the fact) that I like attention (in moderation of course). And what's more than that, I am sick of the attention I am getting; the attention a student gets from a professor, a daughter from her parents. Hell, I'll even go so far as to say that I'm growing antsy with the attention a friend receives from a friend. I hate when things get to a point where they just sort of stop because everyone involved is comfortable or okay with routine or whatever.

Things get boring, and I get antsy. I want some spice.

Call me a brat.

Call me selfish.

Call me an attention whore.

I want something different and unusual and abnormal.

I want a different kind of attention.

I want out-of-the-norm, unhealthy, adrenaline pumping, mind boggling whatever that's going to make me blush and make it hard to sit still.

...all of which is otherwise known as fun.

I am in the purest of good moods right now!
I say that because I am genuinely happy at the moment but for no particular reason! It's the purest form of happiness to me because since there is nothing and no one responsible for my current happiness that means nothing and no one can disappoint me and turn that mood around, hypothetically speaking. It's lovely.

In other news, I learned more about No Child Left Behind in my Educational Psychology class yesterday. Can I just say what the fuck are we still doing this bullshit for?

Apparently Rod Paige, the man who is credited with creating NCLB, tested his little plan in Texas before being made the Secretary of Education in his state. Unfortunately, much of us are kept unaware of the fact that when he "tested" his plan and showed it to be useful, he prevented the lowest achieving students from participating in this testing.

Now, in case you don't know, NCLB is supposed to close the gap between higher achieving students and lower achieving students by improving the performances of those lower achieving students. I guess Mr. Paige felt that by ostracizing those students who have the highest need for improvement from his little test was the best way to prove that he could improve their test scores. Now, I'm going to step away from this before I start saying inappropriate things about this man. On to the way NCLB is regulated by the Federal Government.

Oh, that's right. It's not.

You see, all the Federal Government does with NCLB is looks at state test scores and if there is a 10% improvement in those scores from year to year, the state get's their money from the program. Sounds good enough, right; proof of improvement equals monetary reward. Again what much of us are unaware of, is the way these tests work (or if you ask me, don't work). Every state is responsible for creating these tests for students. The states are the ones who set the levels of Basic, Proficient, and Advanced. Stupidly, none of these tests are double-checked by the Federal Government, or even given any beneficial standards to go by. So not only is there a lack of similar standards across the state, but there is no way to show that these tests are even legitimate.

Let me put this plainly:
Because the states create their own tests with their own levels of proficiency, there is a huge opportunity for those levels to be manipulated (probably lowered) so that the state gets their money, regardless of whether or not the students in that state are really improving.

But something as shady and wrong as that would never happen here in America, right!? We're all moral citizens with only the best interest of everyone in mind, right?
Especially our politicians, too. They're always good people.
(For those of you lame in the mind, that was sarcasm.)


This is America; land of the fat, home of the brainless. And this stupid No Child Left Behind program is only encouraging that. It would be foolish to say that we have a good educational system here, and this NCLB does nothing but masks politics in such a way that parents and students are decieved into thinking the government has our student's best interests in mind. They don't, neither the federal or state governments. All they're concerned with is their money and keeping the rest of us under the impression that they're actually accomplishing something in the realm of education.

It amazes me to think that no one has stopped No Child Left Behind yet.

I have a lot I probably should talk about, but I seem to be short of time.

And if I'm not short of time, I'm short of breath.

If I'm not short of breath, I'm short of patience.

If I'm not short of patience, I'm short of words.

It's all so annoying and I really just want to say everything without having to say anything at all.

Wouldn't that be nice?

But anyway, here's something else to chew on. 

My therapist and I were talking about my tendency to polarize things, you know, idealize and devalue people. Then we were talking about how I play devil's advocate with everything in my head, but despite seeing the multiple sides of every situation I still end up taking things out on myself, no matter what the situation. Of course, he reached some conclusion to fix this that I disagreed with and I left therapy feeling like shit.

The point of that was to arrive at the subject of being selfish in relationships versus successfully communicating expectations and needs, but I left a lot out and failed to reach that subject.

So I'm not going to continue. 

I think I'll just do some homework or something.

"I don't have a girlfriend. 

But I do know a woman who'd be mad at me for saying that."

-Mitch Hedberg

I had something to write about today but then I decided against it.

Instead, I leave you with this.

THIS.

M. I. A.

There is point of no return with some things; it's the point where no matter what you want to do, you're stuck doing what you've started doing.

I don't want to get there.

You can blame it on being a control-freak or delusioned or whatever you want, but what it all really comes down to is self-worth. Right now, I'm stuck dealing with something I let happen. Something I did, or do, or might do again. As much as I hate myself for it, and as much as I swore I never would, I did it. It's scary as hell. I'm ashamed. I'm terrified. But I'm hell-bent on not letting myself sink so low that it becomes acceptable.

It's not acceptable.
It's not acceptable.
It's not acceptable.

I'm a little nervous; this is something I feel like I should keep to myself and brave alone. I don't know that I can tell anyone, at least not right now. Maybe a couple people, but definitely not everyone. I really have no shame about other things I do (or don't do) but this- this is an entirely different thing. This is something I don't stand for. Something I don't want to be.