I bought a new "designer sketchbook" journal

so suck on that.
btdubs alison bechedel is such an artists
btdubs italo calvino breaks my heart
btdubs sometimes I know it's not as good as it could be and I like it that way
btdubs I don't believe in good anyways
ok
whatever

during a whippit trip

something about whether or not i'm an addictive personality
and if I was a drug addict, would i get help?
and some catch 22 where whatever I did would mean something either way
not only that, but one choice would mean that it was going to go one way or the other
I would be a drug addict and not ask for help
or that I ask for help when things get bad/have a support network
then i got overwhelmed and froze and my hands looked spindly

Pro-tip: even if what happens on whippits is also terrifying, nitrous is a great escape from a panic attack.
Really just ritual helps. I lit a candle, picked out 5 canisters (only did 3)

The whole addiction thing was triggered because I said "not now" instead of talking to the friend who had triggered me, and finished a whippit.
Overreactions.

the downside

As I think more about writing the lists of tips for being a writer that pop up on the internet are suddenly addressed to me. I don't like them. I disagree. Stop talking to me like I need your help.

I think that's another reason why I would rather be a scientist than an artist. Surprisingly, I feel like there is less societal baggage around what it means to be the former, even though the latter is so much broader. I think it's because of the myth that scientific authority is not contingent. As if artistic authority is any more or less so.

Another convenient aspect of identifying as a scientist is that most of the world knows that they are unsure of what a scientist is. Everyone knows what an artist is, of course.

I love it when artists turn out to be ~something else~ like an engineer or whatever. Because then it proves that the category is open. Though I also tend to hold them to a higher standard. How dare you branch out unless you truly deserve to be two things!?!

I got sick yesterday and I'm sicker today and these are the musings that come from a slouched frame and a heavy head in chair the color of incense.

No, future, you don't get to hear about the important stuff like events and what my life actually is

I'll only know what the important stuff is in retrospect anyways.

So, instead, I write about little feelings that make me want to write. Who remembers how to chronicle adventures? Not this girl. I could write about yesterday's drive I suppose, but...

I've been looking through a Reed-dropout's comic-drawing blog while I procrastinate on starting my thesis programs. I notice two main things: the fluctuations in quality and the metacontent. The first interests me because of the way that I do things with my writing. This collection is largely unedited, unplanned, and therefore really not my best work. Hell, it's technically my worst work, since I don't put anything I do for school or work on here in case someone checks for plagiarism and finds the blog. I guess I put a few things up from previous years, and I'll definitely let my creative writing assignments join the diary since they are really just polished versions of the same exercise. Back to the point: some of the pieces she put up were very polished, some were sketches, and I wondered if they belong in the same place. When I graduate I expect to start a new online presence. My plan is: I'll get a website, and attach a professional blog to that, and I'll start a new personal blog that I expect my friends will read for a few weeks and get bored of (like this one). Maybe I'll write a newsletter that I can put on a password protected part of my professional blog? Anyways, I think I'll reorganize my internet presence.

Wow, I really derailed. Basically, the quality differential reminded me of the power of really polished pieces. I've been reminded of that by sharing my creative writing assignments too. I want to figure out a way to keep writing polished work after the class is over.

Part two: metacontent. I love metacontent. All content is really about the form, about writing, anyways. But metacontent makes me dig that out of the parts that aren't direct.

The way that her blog had metacontent was very tumblr, of course. The content is picture posts, the meta is text posts, but it still flowed very naturally. I was never surprised by her feelings in contrast to her work. I like that her work exhibited her trepidation and excitement to be trying to turn her passion into her life.

I wonder how I would do it. I don't think that this blog always shows what I feel about writing. Maybe I've been feeling more than usual. Do I take it too seriously? Not seriously enough?

I don't think anyone knows how much I like to write. I don't think I do. Why do I hide this from people? I guess I worry that it's presumptuous to share it.

Generated

I had dinner with some of my dad's friends from Reed, plus my uncle (also a reedie), plus a daughter, plus a husband. The daughter is sitting across from me in the thesis tower studying for a bio exam. She's a junior in high school, staying at my house, and might apply here. She's doing the College Tour.

I just read my first David Foster Wallace story, even though I checked out his Lobster book from the library in high school. It was good. I guess I had been prepped for the bad, but even that wasn't bad so much as amusing. What does he really mean by being so pretentious? His descriptions are really beautiful, and his themes are subtle. It was about the Illinois state fair, I think. Or Indiana. I hope it's Indiana, because of Justin, but I think it's Illinois, because there were Lincoln references.

I wanted to write about generations of Reedies but my not-pregnant uterus is cramping and I think I will go to bed now.

I need a word for this feeling, because it's been going on for so long and people are asking me how I am

Ever since Dramagate2k15 blew over, I've had a bizarre feeling. I have definitely been overstretching my time and energy. TI've also felt fulfilled and rewarded, with a surprising nagging guilt about half-assing things that I would love to give my all: my thesis, my friendships, my boyfriend. Adding up all of these feelings... how am I? Good, I guess.

My writing has been going well, but I'm noticing that I hang on the reaction to the piece more than the piece itself. On the one hand it makes sense because by the time I'm anywhere near finished with a piece I hate it, but I wish that my feelings didn't depend so strongly on whether I'm appreciated. I should be proud of the piece whether or not someone tells me it's good.

I had a nightmare that two professors, Morgan and Sonia, thought that I was a bad writer. I haven't even had either of them for a real class. It gave me a tight stomach for hours. I also read most of a really lovely piece on N+1 that made me think I'll never write this well, and I think that's what triggered the bad dream.

Then my friend read both of the essays that I wrote for my Personal Narrative class and was really impressed. Now I think that I'm a good writer again. You see? This is why I studied physics. At least I'm consistently mediocre at that. Or, consistently good at some parts and bad at others. Writing, it seems like it's all or nothing.

It's not even about how good I am now. When I read something really incredible I think could I ever be that good?

That's really a false question, because I could never have imagined when I started this diary how much more fluid my writing would become. But then I wonder: is it neutered? Is it disingenuous? Is there an objective better? Have I stopped writing narratives and started writing scenes? Is everything I write somewhere in between?

These are productive wonderings, not because the answers matter, but because I ask these questions without realizing it in little turns of stomach, in stutters of anxiety; now they're finding words. They matter now in my head instead of my gut, and that means that I can disassemble them.

I guess I see a future in my writing now, not just a present. That's what this writing class has given me. Physics classes have faded my future in science.

The future: murky forever.
Right now: also pretty murky.

A scholarship essay I won't send

I wrote this for a scholarship yesterday as I was coming up, but I will need to redo it to fit the question a little better. But, in case I forget, this is what my writing is like on Adderall. Also, I feel like it was good for my emotional processing.

It’s important for me to distinguish what I learned in school from what I learned because of school. I hold them in equal esteem, but they do not cohabitate easily.

My learning in school arrived in the form of equations and theorems, but has been digested into a more general training to accept information. I have learned to learn, and do distinguish real understanding from superficial knowledge. It began at the physics seminar. I started attending the weekly talks in my freshman year, usually as the only student my age in the room. I considered it a good talk if I was completely lost fifteen minutes in, but my average was closer to ten. I went anyways because I didn’t think that my classes were teaching me science, rather they were teaching me a body of knowledge that would be useful one day when it was finally time to be a scientist. In retrospect, I think that I knew subconsciously that I was learning a very important skill: understanding where my understanding stops, and to try to push it further.

Now in my last year I understand all of the seminars, and my academic work deserves credit for that. Fourier analysis is often the key to a complicated plot, and my basic backgrounds in optics, quantum mechanics, and programming give me the tools and vocabulary to support more advanced ideas. I often hear words that I learned in my summer research in microelectronic fabrication, fluid dynamics, and electrochemistry. If I make a low-ball estimate and say that I attended 80 percent of seminars (accounting for illness and serendipity, and augmented by extra chemistry, bio, summer seminars, and conferences) I have gone to about 200 scientific talks. Some were well-presented, and some were laughably unclear, but now I can tell the difference and that is a valuable skill. It also means that even in the tiny field of adaptive optics, I’ve heard two independent research summaries. My education has given me access to a world of incredible learning, and a broad sense for how science advances and where it is going. I have trained myself to listen to something I don’t understand and gain as much as possible from the experience.

I learned harder lessons from school. It took almost as long for me to see why I felt rejected by science as it did for me to understand seminars. The sexism that I witnessed from peers, teachers, mentors, or even invited speakers was invisible to me for years, only gradually accumulating as unlocalized resentment.

Not too long ago, science and philosophy were the same field of study. I think that science should again turn a critical eye to its very form. I have watched sensitive, quiet thinkers consistently pushed to the outskirts because the harsh “you get it or you don’t” attitude that exists in every discussion, in every textbook, in every classroom. It is a luxury to sit quietly for four years on Wednesday afternoons, to have given myself this safe space to understand or to not understand, to recognize whether my knowledge was lacking or whether the presentation was flawed.

My education will enable me to listen and learn, critically, within the scientific community and outside of it. My eyes are open to the technical minutiae of thermodynamics, and the microaggressions of classroom dynamics. I look forward to rejoining the academic world in a few years to see what I can fix, where I can teach, and what I can learn.

Herriser

As usual, the title is the space given to a concept to interesting to write about: the French verb for to make a surface or object pointy or sharp, or to provoke a defensive reaction. Lovely little overlap.

I finished looking up all of the words in the Ponge poems for Tuesday. Having so much time to do my work I often think that I will be able to do it slowly. Actually, I can't just look up words and then understand their meanings, I need to think about them. My conspicuous aversion to thinking has not mellowed out. I made it through, reading the french dictionary and at the end of the sentence thinking "why didn't they just say that it means to weld, instead of all that bullshit about joining metals, physically or chemically, by melting them with flux etc etc." Then remembering that google translate never was a dictionary, and words are not actually defined by how they are said in other languages. Thinking.

But now I am prepared to really read them next time. I'm definitely intrigued by La Bougie, and now that I know all of the words I'm sure it will be even better.

Well, I don't know all of the words. I have them written out with definitions, but it's not enough. I think that reading from a real dictionary will help. A one-to-one correspondence with an English word is not enough, because the French one will not replace it or even join it in my brain. I'll have a moment of recognition, and then forget.

Of course, the will to expand my vocabulary is not so great, until I find a gem with strange imagery like herisser. Accent aigu on the first e.

I think that I am done working for today.

Midway through Saturday

I'm about to pack up my school work for the evening. I'm going to a play, then hopefully I'll find something to eat or I'll just head somewhere to watch a movie, or I'll talk to people. We'll see where the Adderall takes me. I've started feeling a little dizzy and nauseous, but that makes sense since the only food I had today was at 11 am and now it's 7. I wrote some thesis, and did the bulk of my student consulting work, and wrote an essay for a scholarship, so productivity was decent. I think that sober productivity might have been higher, but I enjoyed writing thesis and scholarship so much that it's kind of irrelevant. It was just fun. Exciting. Not pleasurable in the normal sense of getting work done, or thinking and finding ideas, but I was just thrilled to be concentrating. Adderall is such a weird drug.

I'm worried that the thesis writing I did wasn't super useful, but it can probably be edited into good material.

I never showered after all.

I'm not sure if I want to see the boyf tonight. Maybe I should figure out what's been a little off lately. I think it's mostly that some parts of our relationship feel like they're being taken for granted. Or at least they could be made more special. Sex, obviously, but also our connection in general. For the first few weeks it was like we were so impressed with each other and ourselves and now it's like "of course." Also, we need to talk about opening up the relationship or at least what we're going to do once Stop Making Sense comes around.
I don't know why I'm worried about these conversations when our past real-talks have gone so well. I think it's because of the herpes scare (which I don't have, let it be known). Things were tense for a week and now it's hard to remember that they don't have to be. I also didn't want to talk about opening up the relationship when something as slut-transmitted as herpes was on his mind.

Welp, I feel like I didn't say anything of substance here and I mostly just wanted to be typing, but maybe this will jog my memory pleasantly some day. I'm glad to be writing here at all really. I want my last semester of college to be documented, but it's hard to synthesize. Hopefully social media will provide a good history.

I wonder idly about spending this summer building something with more artistic integrity around my journals. I hadn't thought of using social media to augment it. Huh.

Starting Saturday

It's been a while, huh.

I'm trying to start work on my thesis, on my homework, on my job, on my life, but I'm looking at pages without really seeing words. Maybe if I make some words I'll believe in them, and see them. That's how ghosts work, why not words. 

I would rather be writing than reading, so maybe that's what I should do. Yes, I'll write today. I wrote all week: a long essay about my house for creative writing, a short essay about a lovely poem for French. It goes:

Nudité de la vérité

“Je le sais bien.”

Le désespoir n’a pas d’ailes,

L’amour non plus,

Pas de visage,

Ne parlent pas,

Je ne bouge pas,

Je ne les regarde pas,

Je ne leur parle pas

Mais je suis bien aussi vivant que mon amour et que mon désespoir.

But my very favorite is:

L’aube je t’aime j’ai toute la nuit dans les veines

Toute la nuit je t’ai regardée

J’ai tout à deviner je suis sûr des ténèbres

Elles me donnent le pouvoir

De t’envelopper

De t’agiter désir de vivre

Au sein de mon immobilité

Le pouvoir de te révéler

De te libérer de te perdre

Flamme invisible dans le jour.

Si tu t’en vas la porte s’ouvre sur le jour

Si tu t’en vas la porte s’ouvre sur moi-même.

But now I'm supposed to read Ponge, and I can't dig my eyes into it. Even rereading these two was hard. Yes, I am supposed to write today. Not so bad.

I want to summarize how my life has changed since last I wrote, but it's unclear. I'm dating someone, not sleeping alone, not sleeping around, I don't have herpes, and I might get a job in the Bay.

It's all a dream, and I thought of a beautiful summary on Twitter last night:

It's like I'm daring someone to make me pay for my sins, but they keep throwing money at me.

It's sad that I've stopped thinking about morality as something I can have, but I still think of sin as something I can have. Essentially, I can never do right but I can very easily do wrong. My life's philosophy needs some work. We've encountered an error.

I should have showered. But I know that I will later, and probably enjoy it more. Oh, maybe I'll watch one of the films I barely have the attention span for. Oh.

OH! The scholarship essay. I will write that.

L'aube je t'aime j'ai tout la nuit dans les veins

in greek there was a word for
“rejoicing or saying goodbye”
and in french we read
"I love you at dawn I have the whole night in my veins"

but we can't spend a day apart.

there's also a greek word for "swells like a quince"

thinking about "emotional wilderness"