with you, its always midnight.

im getting restless. im pretty sure soon ill start doing that thing i do where toward the end of the semester i just kind of check out and spend time rebelling against whatever im supposed to be doing at the time. im just asking for some direction, some light, a glimmer of understanding in this maze of a future i currently find myself in. i just want to know...something...something for certain.

double life

what a perfect weekend. these kinds of weekends are the ones you dont mind going through killer weeks to get to. amanda drove all the way from kentucky to come see us which was awesome of her. then i drove to atlanta to celebrate my two year anniversary with jordan...still hard to believe its been two years since that awkward at best dinner date freshman year followed by scurried visits to each other's schools with uncomfortable dorm room living situations all of which led to where we are today. we had the most fabulous dinner downtown then stayed in what will probably be the coolest place ill ever stay with a double window view of the city...amazing. naturally, i didnt want to leave. jordan enjoyed his stratocaster thank God. i know not too much about guitars but it worked out well. i was really thankful to have work right now and be able to get him a nice gift like that.

of course all good things must come to an end, so im back at school with seriously a truckload of work to do. i keep telling myself the semester is almost over only to remember that it actually isn't almost over at all. six weeks is hardly almost over. so i trudge forward with my double life. the weekends offer a calm solace and break from everything that's going on, and its a wonderful neccesary break for me, but im so strung out on school right now that i plunge myself into these weekends and breaks, abandoning everything i know about athens. all that is fine, its what i need because i hate worrying about work all the time, but then when sunday rolls around its like dragging a pig to slaughter. its impossible for me to get that drive and motivation back. im not all here anymore. a little bit of me is at the beach, a little bit of me is at home, a little bit of me is in midtown. im a robot here, a person everywhere else. other places i get to have feelings and emotions, free time, dreams, food and sleep. here i am mechanical. i dont eat sleep or laugh. i mostly just worry about the future and stare in shock at the people around me and their often ludicrous behavior. i wish i could stop living for those breaks so much and just find myself in my daily life. but that cant happen so long as im living a double life.

return.

so nothing too terribly notable happened last week during our trip to the beach. and that is one of the many reasons why it was absolutely fabulous. i can honestly say that is the first time in a very very long while where i was able to COMPLETELY forget about graphic design, school, anxiety, drama, etc. etc. etc. etc. for more than a few hours. i almost felt like i was lying to myself during that time, but it was there all along i was just able to forget about it for once, thank God. we ate, we drank drinks from all ends of the spectrum (crystal light a whole tube of it, awkward tasting sangria and some high class shit at the restaurant that gave us poor service because we weren't over 65) we tanned and burned and burned again, we walked miles of beach without realizing it, we gawked at houses, scoffed at one or two oglers, yelled at my insane gps lady, made fun of people on tv, made up stories about john gosling, and youll never know if we really funneled orange juice naked upside down or not.

im finding it increasingly difficult to deal with returning from all this. its such a rare commodity for me to really feel at peace, when i get it i dont want to let it go. everyone keeps telling me only eight or whatever weeks left to go like thats some kind of solace. i was running on my last leg before spring break, im not so sure what more i have to give. i wish i was one of those optomistic people. i really feel like im trying but it just doesnt seem to work so hot for me. trying is the important part i suppose. things are going well in my personal life right now, but im having trouble at this moment looking toward my future professional life with optimism. ive always seen myself as a motivated and hardworking individual, sometimes more than most my age, but lately the curtain of reality has fallen over my face and im finding it hard to see much good for me professionally. i question whether or not ill be able to support myself when i get out of school. then some videographer tells me about how his wife has terminal cancer and after that we're all fucked anyway because our parents are going to die because theyre not going to be able to get the medical treatments they need because now the government gets to decide and five seconds into this convo im looking for a way out because dude i am already such a mess inside without having to hear your ominous predictions for the future. listen dude, where the past and the future meet, thats where youll find me, worrying about both on the regular.

i cant.

i cant keep feeling this way all the time and i cant do anything to stop it. im beginning to think that junior year ranks right up there with freshman year in the confusion department. sophomore year brings the trembling earthquake that breaks it all down and brings you right back where you started from. im not so sure we ever really escape from it.

this is me gritting my teeth and digging my heels into the sand as they drag me back to classes.

i can tell you bout the little things, so you dont think about the big things for awhile

sorry for the horrible image quality. i know that as a photographer i should do better than that, but ive got so many projects on my computer right now, no more room for pictures! these are the two latest thorns in my side, graphic survey projects. in case youre wondering hand painting these at computer-like precision does suck a nut...quite hard actually. im still trucking but the outlook is dim. practically every time i work on a project for that class i cry alligator tears. there is most certainly still hope, but knowing my lack of painting skills and craftsmanship in the area and knowing thats the only thing they judge on doesnt make me feel so warm and fuzzy about the program. its never easy to realize that a dream is fleeting. i dont know what im going to do if i dont make it. probably shed some more alligator tears, then get a good deal of flack from my parents who probably think im in athens sitting on my ass and doing mad crazy fun shit on the regular. they dont realize how sick ive made myself worrying about what the hell im going to do with my future.

i just want everyone to be happy. that includes me too in this case.

i guess i feel like this is my way in the world and theres not much else im good at. im not a stellar designer, but im decent. im not the type of person who is just full of talents, i have a few and thats it. so if this doesnt work well then...i dont know.

and not knowing is like totally the worst thing ever that you can do to a virgo.

in my heart of hearts it really wouldnt bother me all that much if i didnt get in, its more about being scared about what becomes of me if i dont that gets me. i feel like there are a good number of things ive failed at recently, major failures, id prefer not to add another to the list.

i just want everyone to be happy. ill never be satisfied so perhaps it doesnt include me in this case.

ugh here come the alligator tears.

ultimately id like to stop trying to come up with strategies and ways to fix things and instead just fix them. or not fix them. or just calm down or something.

i would really like to spend some time painting this summer. i need to play and perhaps i need to get out of photography in order to do it. id love to go back to a time when i could just play and not worry about what people thought or how it made me look or what kind of image i was portraying or who i was embarrising or what it meant or who i was. i would love to have that back.

more than i could say.

just to be able to mess around and stop judging myself so harshly. to stop feeling like everything i do fails in one way or another. to stop feeling like my thoughts and ideas are worthless. to just let it go. its hard for me to even imagine at this point how that would feel. i feel pretty worthless most days, i feel like im working but never enough, never good enough.
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I leave you with the quote i selected for my photography project. not sold on it yet since im not sure i can create the photography to go with it which is obviously the most important part. i never found a song that hit me right so i decided to go with a [long] quote from literature. if i havent blogged about this short story yet, then shame on me. im not an english buff by any means, but in my narrow experience i believe it to have one of the best opening hooks of any story ive read. i wish i had the book it came from here at school, but i dont so i can only quote from the beginning of the story and the very very end because i memorized the end haha.

"We didn't in the light; we didn't in the darkness. We didn't in the fresh cut summer grass or in the mounds of autumn leaves or the snow where moon light threw down our shadows. We didn't in your room on the canopy bed you slept in as a child, or in the backseat of your father's rusted Rambler, which smelled of the smoked chubs and kielbasa he delivered on weekends from my Uncle Vincent's meat market. We didn't in your mother's Buick Eight, where rosary twined the rearview mirror like a beaded black snake with silver cruciform fangs...We didn't..."

Story ensues for a few pages and the end:

"We didn't. We didn't. We never did."

-Stuart Dybek, We Didn't

My question is: what is more important, what you did do or what you didn't?