The Situation
I've finally recovered from the horrible-ness of Winter Semester 2007, but I still feel like ranting a little. Since my favorite blogger, Charis M. Ellison, ranted about the terror of her semester, then it's ok for me too. How can I describe Charis? I've never met her but I have been reading glimpses of her life for four years, and since she is passionate, bitter, angry, a writer, an artist, a rebel, then well-I'm in love with her, so I internet-stalk her. I stalk all sorts of beautiful women online-usually artists and writers.
In fact, under my yahoo bookmarks, there's a category called “beautiful women.” Whenever I feel blue, I go down the whole list and check up on all my ladies, even if it's to stare at a page that hasn't been updated in months. Only a fifth are lesbians, but that's all cool, they're all beautiful anyway.
Oh Charis!
Now, Charis, sometimes, I want to contact her and write about how cool she is, because she's very hard on herself about her looks, about her not winning a writing award yet, not having a boyfriend yet, not making enough progress on her manuscript. I wanna tell her-chill, cool chick, it'll all come in its own time. "Cause, you know, sometimes, I worry myself too that I"ll end up as nothing. See, I'm not supposed to worry about that.
As a Taoist, I should see that being nothing has its own interesting aspects. I thought worrying itself is not bad, but it's been so unproductive to me during the winter semester. That's all I did-worked, went to some of my classes, worked, worried, watched Xena: Warrior Princess, worried, played video games, worked, worried. Worried so much I couldn't write my worries. I found it easy to worry about the environment and the state of the world.
So then, thank goodness, Jared told me that I could do nothing about the world, so it was no good worrying about it. So I stopped. If only I talked to him earlier, but no, I was a bitch for a few weeks, so it's a good thing I suffered, "cause then I realized how much I love him and value his friendship.
I actually like that the semester was so horrible, because I know what changes I need to me, so here"s my new summer resolutions (that I hope I'll live with for a while):
1: Stop working so much!
Addicted to money?! You bet!
Ok, I confess, I've been working so much because I've been addicted to money. Well, I've been addicted to the power that money brings. I'm a thrifty person usually, the only vices I have being books, video games, books, pens, books, Smirnoff(sp), books, hot wings, Vietnamese food, spaghetti, books. (Nope, not addicted to Magic Cards yet, but if Aaron and Jared keeps teaching me, I'll be.)
However, I really enjoy buying food and nice things for my family, especially food. Why, I still fondly remember the first few months after I started working at Plaza and I would take my dad and sisters grocery shopping. Oh boy, I loved throwing food in our cart and knowing I could afford it all. It hurt my mother. See, she only has Sundays off, and she usually takes us all shopping and it's like a treat, because we would ask her for some delight and she would agree, and it was nice because she's our mother and we're her children, and she's taking care of us.
I've stopped buying food for the family except on one or two occasion because she wants me to save my money. Even though I love working at Plaza (most of the time), it's been tiring me out because I work too much.
Fears and hiding
Another thing is, I work to hide away from my fears. Whenever I feel down, a good few hours of work lifted me. I meet all kinds of people at work, and I have learned so much from my daily interaction with customers and my own dear workers.
My resolution is that I should learn to have a healthier attitude towards money. I suppose I don't need to go to Boulder, Colorado this summer, but I'm glad the plan is there. I should learn that my poverty does not make me worthless. This brings me to my next resolution. (Continued in Part 2).
