25 posts tagged “school”

It's raining.
I'm awake.
I very well shouldn't be.
I slept a bit earlier, but I'm wide awake now.

I really want to leave school.
These courses are not what I want to learn and I do not do well with busy work.
These courses are not preparing me for what I want to do.

I would like to have a degree.
Sure, it would be nice to have something to go on the wall next to my ordination credentials.
However, it was never my desire to head into college.
I started going mainly at the behest of my father.
While he has been only a minor help in helping me with the costs associated with college, he insists I need a degree.
Even though he hates the fact that I am in an English program.
Even though he despises the fact I want to be a writer.

I want to create worlds.
I want to imagine.

There is the excellent possibility that even if I do force myself to complete this semester that I will not return in the fall.
I am looking at an A.S. program that I fulfill all the criteria for.
All I'd have to do is enroll in the program for a semester and then have a piece of paper the next.

I need out.
I need an environment conducive to my mental health.
I need people who make me smile, make me laugh.

I need to be a man about this.
There is no shame in admitting that I am in over my head.
There is no fault to be had.
My focus is not here, and my heart is not in it.
It was my own money spent, my own loss.
My own lesson purchased.

The past two nights I've had apocalyptic dreams.
One dream each night, continuing after the brief periods where the oddity of them woke me.
The first was the beginning of a zombie outbreak, where the wounded and dying were slowly going mad and attacking those around them.
The second was true, actual war, where nuclear payloads had been dropped stateside and I was trying to survive afterwards.
They were extremely jarring, in that I was hopeful in both, rather than terrified.
I tried to lead groups of people into action.
In the zombie dream, one particular scene stands out.
I was talking with the people I'd saved so far and we were making a list of the places we needed to loot/rob.
It was very tactical and thrilling.

The waking world has not been so exciting.
My English professor made an accusation of plagarism against me.
Today, after she had marked my essay and mid-term, she admitted to me that she was wrong and that I am, in her own words, "[...] a brilliant writer".
Vindication is bitter, but I'll take it.
I still hate the course.

I'm bored and lonely and my lips are in dire need of being used for fleshly pleasures.
It's raining outside and I'm watching the street go from gray to black with the moisture.
It's 2:30am and I should have been in bed hours ago.
I have no reason for being up.
I simply can't sleep.

Just finished bullshitting my way through a 4 page essay.
It's titled The Essential State of Man in The Second Shepherd's Pageant.
It's focused on how medieval pageants portrayed most everyone in a negative light.
Everyone was "fallen" and had to seek redemption through the Christ.

As someone who's not a Christian I take umbrage when having to play Devil's advocate in this argument.
However, I muddled through.
I think the essay makes sense.
I've proofread it several times and I can find no glaring flaws.

Tomorrow and Thursday at school, and Friday I'm out for a "Winter Break".
Yay. I get to spend the morning after Valentine's Day bored out of my mind.
Just like I'll spend Valentine's Night.
Eh.

Recall, I was without a vehicle from Tuesday evening to Saturday, so I missed a few classes.

Walked into my English Drama class yesterday morning and had to give a cold reading of a 100 line passage from a play translated from Latin to Old English.

Walked into my Math class this morning and we had a test on probabilities and logic problems.

Eh, such is my luck.

My laptop's screen continues to fail intermittently, so soon it will have to be shipped off yet again. If it's not fixed this time it's a replacement. I wish I could just replace it with a MacBook Pro, as a lot of the work I'm doing presently would benefit from a few Mac-Only applications.

I updated my resume and my Monster.com account. I picked a few spots out of the country as my 'highlighted' areas of interest (re: relocation). Anyone have suggestions?

"Comment allez-vous ce soir?  Je suis comme ci comme ça. Yes, a penguin taught me French back in Antarctica."

I've been without a vehicle since Tuesday evening. I've missed all of my classes since then and I've been walking the 4 blocks to work each day in the 30 degree weather. It's not terrible, but it's irritating. Tomorrow I'm going to see if I can actually jump-start the truck and get the battery to hold a charge long enough for me to work on it.

I've been feeling the loneliness creep in more and more each day.
It's near-palpable.
I can feel it in the air.

This morning the girl called me. We talked for well over an hour about a little bit of everything. How she's been sick, how her clinic patients have been doing, and just about life in general. It was good to spend some time just talking to her. Regardless of the past or what may (never) come, she is someone that I want in my life.

Really, I all I can think about today is how much I'd like to withdraw from university and move.
Just pick up the refund for my tuition and head out West.

I hate math (I am taking a math course this semester)
I dislike my English course (far too full of busy work and very light on the discussion).

This is not what I want out of life.
This is not where I want to be.
This is not who I want to be.

I've been incommunicado for a bit.

Spent quite a bit of time thinking and some avoiding thought.

Saw the girl, briefly, when she dropped by on her way out of town last weekend.
We talked about a lot of things, great and small.
I really do miss her in my everyday life.

I don't want to be here.
Here, as in, my present life situation, not necessarily my location.
Although I am quite certain the location does nothing to help my disposition.

I keep telling myself to stick it out and keep scrapping away at that degree, one half-time semester after another.
I'm just tired of postponing my future because of the present.

I started classes again this morning, the first being English Drama.

I'm lonely, cranky, and frustrated.
This is not a good look for me.

So, one benefit to living in a loft apartment in the middle of downtown is that I get to hear all of the conversations people have underneath my windows (my huge, gigantic 8' tall windows) as they walk away from the bar downstairs. They must not realize that I can still hear their "secrets" up here at my desk.

I really need to start work on another manuscript. A serious, working manuscript and not one of the 9 unfinished treatments that are sitting on my thumb drive at the moment. A majority of my creative thought is spur of the moment, and quite often I talk to myself about ideas, attempting to get them to stay in my head long enough for me to get somewhere to jot them down. I'm thinking of investing in a small hand-held digital recorder for personal dictation... but that just means I'll either have to transcribe my maniacal ramblings at a later time (Will hates transcribing) or hire myself a lovely, nubile secretary in touch with her sexuality and possessing a sense of loyalty.

So, yes. I've been thinking about the past a lot lately, about old relationship and jobs and lost opportunities and things left unsaid. I've made great strides in saying what is on my mind at a given moment and revealing my feelings. No longer playing my cards so close to my chest and bluffing far less than I formerly did. Ante up; there's no need for an early call on these hands.

This is the longest span of time that I have been "single" in recent memory. I've not been one half of a couple since April 2005. Thirty-two months without a significant other though I've dated a handful of people in that time (though I use the term "dated" lightly). I've been used by others for jealously and pleasure. I've been led on and left cold. I've seen numerous friends exchange vows. At the moment I am the ever-present third wheel no matter which group of friends I am out with. All of the contemplation of this has been quite trying.

There's also the part of me that is trying to figure out a plan for the future. Where is it I want to be next year? In five years? Ten? Presently I'm working to finish this degree I started ages ago in the hope it will give me time to bide and plot and scheme. Honestly, though, were another opportunity presented to me (a la Baton Rouge) I think I'd like to displace myself on the map again for another 6 months to a year. Portland's been offered and considered and has yet to be ruled out. Long Beach is additionally an offer made and restated each Spring and Fall and there are also the mountains of Georgia where my friend is teaching now. There's no excuse not to go except my own anxiety about having not finished a university program at my age.

I've experienced more in life than a school program could teach me and I've proven time and again that I am more than capable of performing any job (be it IT administration of vehicle repossession) I'm thrown in to. I'm not worried about ever being able to make a living as my both my hands and mind are keen tools. I'm simply curious as to what it is that will capture my attention and hold it for the long haul.

Also, kissing the ladies. I miss it. To quote T-Rex, "Feelings are boring. Kissing is awesome."

No sleep tonight.

Got home around 7. Read 6 chapters of History. Twice. Just to make sure I got it all down.
Then I knocked out the last 200 pages of my newest personal reading selection, Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis.
The book pleased me, the history left me wanting.

Class in less than 4 hours now.
Work in 8.
I'll be free in 14 1/2 hours, so maybe I'll sleep then.

"My friends have wives and families and a daily routine that will make them live long, but that's not me right now." - Mike Birbiglia

There are a myriad of statements I could make at this time in an attempt to describe what lies just below the rippling surface of my self. I could break the surface tension with words and plummet to the depths, down down down into the murky darkness where the creatures that know not light make their home. However, neither of these is a balanced action on my part.

First to point out that I am not angry. I am hurt, obviously, but I do not feel anger at the given situation. Disappointment rides high in the saddle but alone; there is no companion to him in my heart of hearts at this time. There exists an absence where hope once stood but that dais now stands stained and empty, free and waiting for whatever will come to be sacrificed on it next.

I feel an emptiness inside. The simple act of waking up draws far too much from me for this to be healthy in any stretch of imagination. This ennui with existence is exacerbated by all facets of my life coming to tumultuous heads at the same time. I am tempest-tossed by my own life and the hull did not hold. I now float amongst the wreckage of the ship of self struggling to keep myself adrift by my own power.

Pretty prose to say something so simple; I understand why she made her decision, and I can respect it. Understanding does not confer nor rebuke my own unhappiness with the result, or the future that it implies. I will make the best of it, though I am now staving off a depressive relapse. I am dropping my math course, which at this time I am in no state to complete (caring little for math before only means that in my present mind I will cease to care at all) and will continue with my History course until it's completion this Winter. I have little else planned except for the extended process of regaining my composure and attempting to re-establish a friendship I hope is not lost.