I need to study.

I think about other people more than I think about myself. That's hardly out of kindness or compassion. It's just the way I'm wired, and it certainly doesn't mean I'm any less selfish. I imagine things, and I imagine people, and I love understanding.

There are times, though, when I have to step back and realize that I'm only living one life. And at times like that I find that I am always unsatisfied with who I am.

I really don't want to go into a long explanation of why I don't particularly like myself, because you are all my good friends and I know it's unnecessary whining in this context, but it's true that I wouldn't really want to be friends with myself. Because I have this strange ability to step outside of myself and look at me from that perspective, I tend to think of myself as a character in a book. I'm not really a personality worth pursuing: if I was writing myself, I'd probably give up and move on.

That said, this only bothers me from time to time. Often, I am thankful for my cold, distant exterior and unremarkable features, because I can watch people without fear of having to join them. I can be almost as happy watching people than if I were having fun myself.

Alrright, this post is beginning to scare me, poor sentence structure aside. Maybe I'm having a down period, and this is how it translates. Insightful and depressed are often similar, or at least in my case.

And here's how dreaming translates.

Idealism and a characteristic rant

Do you ever want a different life? I don't mean just changing a few things around, like your grades or a particular friend: we need to feel like we have something left to strive for, or our lives take on an unhealthy inertia. No, I'm talking about something on a slightly grander scale. Do you ever want to wake up in the morning and be completely different, and say completely different things and talk to completely different people?

And do you ever try to have a different life? Do you ever wake up in the morning and decide you're another person? Do you ever realise, halfway through the day, that there's no point in and no hope for changing?

If your image is one you dislike, if you find yourself constantly being restricted by the face by which others know you, then you no doubt understand what I mean. This is an entirely different kind of ambition, more of a desperate longing, and is no healthier than perfect, permanent satisfaction. Either you do change completely, and then, most likely, discover that this new facade allows for no more freedom than your previous one, or you fail miserably and are forced to continue in the same vein as always, a little more of your self-confidence shattered.

I am a dreamer. No one (except Noran...yeah, I don't understand it either) will accuse me of being a realist. I do not know if my dreams are what others might consider possible, feasible, and yet I have a strange confidence in many of them. One of my dreams is to be able to live at ease with the world, without worrying about a stupid, oversimple image. It sounds a lot easier than I believe it to be.

Thing is, we as a species are convinced that simplification is the key, because understanding complicated things is a lot more difficult. And sometimes this seems to be true -- no one takes the long way around on a math exam.

But there is a limit as to how simple something can be made. Politics often divides the world in two, allowing for subtle differences of opinion to be lost. And how often, when someone asks you a question, do you really listen and consider before spewing out a canned answer -- an incredibly simple answer already prepared that requires little actual brain activity?

Numbers are simple entities that can be used for complicated things. Humans are complicated creatures that cannot comprehend anything less simple than a novel of 200 pages.

I implied that I wanted to be different, but that was less accurate than either of us suspected at the time. I don't want to be different. I want to be free.

This one's for you.

Okay, this is a strange one.

"Yes, but there's a nasty side to her, too."

Multi-faceted. If we can all be considered polyhedrons, then some are cubes and some are dodecahedrons and some are irregular. Cubes are simple, regular people with few noticeable personality traits. Dodecahedrons might be sucessful people, people who are still rather normal but act differently around different people. I would be an irregular shape, with an unpredictable nature and, on occasions, a certain lack of control. Sometimes I slip and let an acquaintance perceive a face I should not.

I think, though, that I would like most to be a sphere. Only one side, but might be seen so differently from different angles.

THIS RECORD SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD.

-Emma, look how happy I am.
-I'm happy too.

I wish I was so different.

So right now I'm kind of looking for an easy way out of the hole I've been digging for myself for the past fifteen years. I think it's going to be my grave.

Apologizing doesn't help at this point, does it. *punches hand through wall*

So busy.

I've been trying to write a post ever since I came back from Vancouver. Sorry. Back on track soon, I hope.

And you can never know. And I can never tell you.

Gnarly.

The BEST stalk of celery I have ever seen. I instantly recognized it as a work of art, of course. I mean, come on:

Taking a spin at books-in-brief reviewer!

I told Kelsey one ITT class that I must have read about two good science fiction books in my lifetime. When she inquired of me the titles, I found myself incapable of listing them. I have since devoted a great deal of thought (not really, I swear) to this, and have come up with a list of my three favourite science fiction books in the whole wide world, or what I know of it.

1. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle
Kids' book? Who cares? Although I never considered this my favourite book, it certainly was one that had a surprising impact on me and what might be called my morals. Yes, I know that's a little odd. I have read this so many times that I could even now tell you the story from beginning to end, omitting no detail.

2. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
I was walking around in a daze for days after I read this. The highlight of my summer? Okay, not quite, but it's without a doubt one of the best books I've ever read. Very fast-moving, but hardly light reading. All the guys did it for summer reading in grade eight.

3. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
Okay, maybe I'm stretching the limits of the genre here. Hey, it is about some people (four torsos, five heads) who fly around in a spaceship with a robot and a talking computer. Hm. Hard to sum this one up. Maybe you should read the first one and a half of the five books in the trilogy, then let me know what you think. Disaster Area was based on Pink Floyd, by the way.

She's back.

And look at all those e-mails I have to answer. Sigh. I'm not sure whether to wish you all a happy new year or to inform you, eyes glistening and in a low voice, that it is now too late to rescue our decade.

We'll give the twenty-tens a shot, I guess. I'll repost soon.

It's not that different. I can do this.