Paper
Who knew that I'd finally manage to start up and keep a journal on paper? I've always been a typer, and in personal matters I've especially been beholden to typing since I started my first Open Diary sophomore year of high school. I think Open Diary was a precursor to Livejournal, no? If so, I'm cooler than all you kids who hopped on to the Livejournal bandwagon. Hey, I've got to get my cooler points where I can--which is not many places, and I bet someone with Livejournal knowledge, like Ange, will inform me that Livejournal's been around decades longer than Open Diary.
Anyway, the paper journal is part of the reason I haven't been wasting time--as I usually do--writing in this thing here. What do you know, this morning my bookbag with my notebook is in the other room.
A lot has changed here in Chicago. I'm not sure when the last time I updated was, but I recall complaining about my job. Maybe that was when I first found out that we were shutting down during the week for the rest of the summer. Well, that decision stands, so I've been doing a whole lot of nothing--well, nothing structured--for a while now. I do have good coloring, though, and my musculature is starting to look like it's old, small but semi-defined self. Meaning I work out excessively and luxuriously, taking lots of time between exercises. Being here this summer has definitely shown me that the volunteery spirit within, though it does exist, is not powerful enough to overcome my uncanny ability to be engrossed in whatever mundane thing I'm doing at any given moment. I spend whole days in the apartment. I feel guilty, sure, but not this animal drive to get out of the house and find something to do, per se. I'm sure this comes from years of spending summers alone at home while my mom worked, eating junk food that made me sugar-sick and lethargic, later insomniac, but always engaging myself in whatever was on TV or going on outside my bedroom window. Of course I used to write more back then, too--horrible, sappy poems about paralysis and people who grew wings and flew away.
Mostly now I read and plan for things--for my jobs at school next year, for classes, for how life will be in the apartment. I guess my time has been spent dealing with my relationship with Terrance recently, too. I guess we haven't officially changed its status back to "together" or whatever, and I'm sure that will be an awkward, probably contentious conversation, but more or less we're no longer acting like strangers at a party, which is good. I think he just needed to yell at me about some things for a while, and I needed to yell back. I've always believed in fighting.
You know they say it's great to be in cities because there's so much to do, and there's some truth to that, and Chicago is a particularly good (American) city I'd say, but when you get right down to it the majority of things to do are expensive, somewhat exclusive, far away and geared toward parties of two or more, which I am not this summer. So I spend way more time in cafes than I feel comfortable with, or I buy stuff.
Wow, I just left this for a minute to go to the kitchen, and now whatever voice I had going in my head, whatever push I had to babble on and on like this, is gone. Somewhere in this mix, though, I was planning to plug the latest editition of The Atlantic Monthly--the 2005 fiction issue--because George has a pretty good story in it and there are some other good stories, etc. So there's that. Um, sorry to those people who expect something more well-done than this/my livejournal entry(ies). Yeah.
Anyway, the paper journal is part of the reason I haven't been wasting time--as I usually do--writing in this thing here. What do you know, this morning my bookbag with my notebook is in the other room.
A lot has changed here in Chicago. I'm not sure when the last time I updated was, but I recall complaining about my job. Maybe that was when I first found out that we were shutting down during the week for the rest of the summer. Well, that decision stands, so I've been doing a whole lot of nothing--well, nothing structured--for a while now. I do have good coloring, though, and my musculature is starting to look like it's old, small but semi-defined self. Meaning I work out excessively and luxuriously, taking lots of time between exercises. Being here this summer has definitely shown me that the volunteery spirit within, though it does exist, is not powerful enough to overcome my uncanny ability to be engrossed in whatever mundane thing I'm doing at any given moment. I spend whole days in the apartment. I feel guilty, sure, but not this animal drive to get out of the house and find something to do, per se. I'm sure this comes from years of spending summers alone at home while my mom worked, eating junk food that made me sugar-sick and lethargic, later insomniac, but always engaging myself in whatever was on TV or going on outside my bedroom window. Of course I used to write more back then, too--horrible, sappy poems about paralysis and people who grew wings and flew away.
Mostly now I read and plan for things--for my jobs at school next year, for classes, for how life will be in the apartment. I guess my time has been spent dealing with my relationship with Terrance recently, too. I guess we haven't officially changed its status back to "together" or whatever, and I'm sure that will be an awkward, probably contentious conversation, but more or less we're no longer acting like strangers at a party, which is good. I think he just needed to yell at me about some things for a while, and I needed to yell back. I've always believed in fighting.
You know they say it's great to be in cities because there's so much to do, and there's some truth to that, and Chicago is a particularly good (American) city I'd say, but when you get right down to it the majority of things to do are expensive, somewhat exclusive, far away and geared toward parties of two or more, which I am not this summer. So I spend way more time in cafes than I feel comfortable with, or I buy stuff.
Wow, I just left this for a minute to go to the kitchen, and now whatever voice I had going in my head, whatever push I had to babble on and on like this, is gone. Somewhere in this mix, though, I was planning to plug the latest editition of The Atlantic Monthly--the 2005 fiction issue--because George has a pretty good story in it and there are some other good stories, etc. So there's that. Um, sorry to those people who expect something more well-done than this/my livejournal entry(ies). Yeah.