wake up and smell the coffee.

i just dont think im cut out for college.

it must just be me.

thats my new theorem.

but if it is me, then it must not be here, and it must not be there. it is me.

which means changes in tides come from changes within.

not of place but of me.

my experience is proportional to my willingness to receive it.

therefore:

this gets good iff (sic) i let it.

i wish i didnt feel so paralyzed all the time. why do i feel this way when ive really never been freer in my life? ive fallen into a place where i feel like i dont have much to offer other people, besides perhaps wedding photography packages. but ive got to find some good in myself. i dont even really know what its going to be, but surely God has blessed me with some other assets besides photography skills, flaming hair and intermediate-level baking skills, surely right? if i let this stay, it only gets worse, i already know this.

how is it that i just got here and ive already got to start thinking about next semester, and the next semester and the rest of my life? don't you think this is all a little quick for a person? i hate the fact that in this area i am not allowed to choose my own destiny. this means giving up control. i dont like that. somehow the rest of my career is dictated by what someone else thinks of me and my work. believe me, if you had to do this, youd be freaking out too. i just dont understand why one of the least practical, lowest salary-making and least prestigious of all majors on campus is also probably one of the most pretentious and haughty. its like the art program knows it has a small dick so it just makes up for it by being a complete ass to everyone to make itself feel better.

i probably shouldnt say that about my institute of higher education.

i dont really want to go to drawing right now. hopefully we will draw the whole time, but i doubt we will. i just cant stand sitting through hours of critique, perhaps its because im insecure myself.

to do list:
grocery shopping
buy a plane ticket
clean the apartment
figure out what im doing with my life

so people have been asking me, did i survive my first week in athens?

suffices to say that i did indeed. despite missing every bus i needed to be on, the runaround with the book store, the horrible self portrait im hopefully going to finish tomorrow (obviously ink is not my medium), a scary doctors appointment, and scoping out all the much more beautiful girls downtown on friday and feeling the ever-pressing need to go shopping, lose weight and plastic surgerize myself until i look like someone else, i am still alive.

and all in all it has been pretty good. i think my classes are manageable and im happy with my living situation. if i could just curb these chocolate cravings without satiating them, id be good to go.

being here is just...easier. perhaps easier is wrong, perhaps easier means lazy or unresponsive to challenges. the way i see it, theres not much sense in putting yourself through hell if you dont have to.

im stronger for my experiences, now its time for a break.

i had a wonderful weekend. i worked on my drawings, did a little, but not too much, homework. went out and listened to music with some of my friends, and spend saturday evening eating tapas and passing out early with jordan. i have a feeling this is supposed to be more what college is about. this is what ive been missing.

meanwhile, ive been thinking hard about what comes next for me. its time i produced some personal work, so im wracking my brain trying to come up with something cohesive. id like to produce some gallery quality work sometime soon. maybe even get it up in a gallery somewhere around here. im finally starting to feel like things like this are not an impossible dream.

its nice.

ps. my first announcement to the world of my latest venture, a photography blog. i have already signed on to shoot a web designer's wedding in january, so i should have a real working awesome website in a few months. this photo blog will be attached to the website, so consider it a business, rather than a personal, venture. excuse the corny entries, as i said, its a business site therefore it is much more grammatically and politically correct than this internet insanity here. lmk what you think. for your consideration: my photo blog

Takeoffs and Landings

This whole going to school thing five days a week kinda sucks haha. Or perhaps its just that pretty much all of my classes don't interest me. I get asked if I'm a freshman all the time because I'm constantly looking at my bus map. I'm sure one day I'll appreciate this blunder of others thinking I am younger than I am. Not today though. I get much more sleep now. At least eight hours every night. I wake up early because my body cant sleep anymore and the bags under my eyes that have been there for what seems like forever are gone. I crave chocolate all the time. I see people I know around from high school and its always awkward unless i really know them. Some guy yelled at me at walmart for wearing a ut hat. i come home from class to my "office" and work on stuff for clients, ive become a productive little mother fucker. my roomates probably think im a hermit. i probably am. as the weekend approaches i get that same anxious feeling i used to get in tennessee. that what the fuck am i going to do with myself for two point five days feeling. i have no desire to wander through some random person's house party in order to make contacts here.

im probably just being too cynical. its what i do best.

Well I am here. Tomorrow is the first day of class and I just wanted to write a bit to document all this. So far is has been good, if nothing else I've had peers around which is a change for me. A little boring. I think I need to get used to the college life again. Everything up until now has been going going going until you can't anymore, I'm not accustomed to this slowness, makes me feel a little lazy even. I wish I could just push all my anxieties aside. Not just the ones about being here or starting anew, I'm talking about everything. I have a phone interview with a groom in ten minutes and with that and everything else that is going on I'm starting to feel that claustrophobic feeling.

I can do this. All of it.

Breathe Me.

Let me just start by saying that Michael Phelps is awesome, and I have felt this way longer than most adoring "Phelps Phans." I love the Olympics, the idea is fascinating to me. To think that the whole world is coming together for a few weeks to share these moments is just such an interesting concept. At the same time it's a little scary, I've always found any sort of globalization a little unnerving. Perhaps I'm too much of a fundamentalist, but to have so many people from so many different nations together in one place seems like a volatile situation. I visited one of my favorite pastimes the other night and wikipedia'd the Olympics. Somewhere along the way via links here and there I found myself reading articles about the Unibomber and the apocalypse and gray goo and black holes. Interesting connections, I'd say.

I have spent the past few weeks being very happy and enjoying not working, but being extremely exhausted and sometimes even overwhelmed with everything that's going on. The moving/transferring process has proved to be stressful of course, but stress isn't always such a bad thing.

Ultimately, I am just ready to move on. I am ready to stop talking so much and start actually doing. I am ready to start fulfilling the promises I made to myself and I'm ready to enjoy myself without so much worry. This has been an interesting year to say the least, but I don't think I would really change anything. Sure, I could switch things around such that they were easier for me, or so that I didn't have to go through difficult situations, or live a somewhat different life than my peers for awhile, but those things all made me stronger. Everything has taught me something and everything has played some kind of important role. I overcame big emotional barriers, I attended commuter college, I lived at home with no peers around, I worked and went to school and that was about it, I moved back in with my parents, I'm still alive haha. These are all things I can add to the repertoire of my experiences. I feel that the larger collection of experiences you have, the better off you are. Did you really think I was going to take the conventional route to get where I needed to be anyway? If so, you must not know me very well. Perhaps for me that was the conventional route, perhaps it's just my nature to be a bit of a wanderer.

I'm okay with it, that's the first step.