Work, you make a mockery of my time management skills.

Computer, you make a mockery of my nerding abilities.

FECK!

I was going to go shopping in Burlington today, so I got up very early, but it's too snowy to go out. I don't even think the 505 is running! But now I'm awake and my hair looks nice, so I don't want to go back to bed. Instead I'm listening to the radio (O Psychedelic Psunday, my one true love) and nerding on my lovely computer with its new hardrive and new programmes that Gill put on it for me. Mostly uploading and downloading all kinds of albums in order to have maximum awesomeness in my iTunes. I am downloading a bunch of Soul Coughing and Pavement and uploading Talking Heads, Massive Attack and Erykah Badu. Fortunately a lot of music was on my iPod when the hard drive crashed, but not all of it, so I need to update. Then maybe I'll write, or read, for a while, and finish cleaning my room and putting clothes in my new armoire that came yesterday. And maybe go down to the Eaton Centre, if I'm feeling a bit crazy and the streetcar is running.

Have you wondered where I've been? My hard drive died! But I got a new one and I just got my computer back a few hours ago. Thank goodness! But I don't think I'll write too much just now. I'm so sleepy. I think I'll just read things and play all over the whole internet.

PS I'm going to Montreal for three days in January!!!

It seems like last friday was already only a few inches ago! The week passed quickly, thank goodness. This weekend I plan to bake bread, buy coffee and paint. Also, play guitar, sleep a little bit, read, tidy, write school entrance essays and sew. And do laundry.

I want to go here more than anything.

Choice and consequence

I did not go to class tonight. I didn't go last week either. I have a philosophy. Every day in our life is a series of choices, and every choice has consequences. As a thoughtful, engaged person, it it is one's own responsibility to consider those choices and consequences and whether you are willing to live with them. Not going to class might have some bad consequences, e.g. guilt feelings, doing poorly in the class and being embarrassed for myself, making my group partner angry, etc. However, I am prepared to live with those in exchange for not having to go sit through a marketing class on a cold cold rainy night. Instead I got to come home and change into warm clothes and eat a delicious dinner and hang out with my roommates and make some yummy kasha-eggplant-tomato wonder for lunch tomorrow and then watch the Office. See, those are good consequences.

I would like to take a moment to mention my giant hard-on for the Cars.

And I mean that quite literally.

Oh god!

I got no time for sorrow

I got a new armoire, dvd player and cd player today, with a jack for my iPod. My dad took me shopping, he's so so nice. It's his birthday next weekend so I got to get him something really nice. He also brought me back some face stuff from California, made with Dead Sea salt, and those make my skin sooo soft. It was really adorable. The armoire has big dark dark brown doors on it, and I'm going to paint it with beautiful designs.

Today was a really nice day. Why shouldn't they all be like this? I don't feel like myself anymore, I feel like I'm never in control of any situation, like some drunk girl spinning around on the edges of everything trying to get everyone's attention but not making any sense and losing respect every minute. I feel like I've gone so out of control and everyone can see it and that I'm not myself and pity me and like I'm embarrassing myself. So I talked to my new roommate about it because I felt like I had made an especially awful impression on her, made her think she had moved in with some hopeless aimless too-much noisy drunk losing her grip girl. And she reassured me that she didn't think that at all. So it would appear that I am just paranoid and a little nuts and probably much too dramatic, but I can stop all that. I am sure that I can go back to my normal self if I simply stop letting myself dwell on all these things and exaggerate them and let them blow up up and fill my head. That's all it is. I'm so tired of being angry and mean all the time. So I'll stop and let my normal, good warm calm cool and collected self back in.

It may help to change jobs, or at least try to do something to improve this one, so I'm working on it.

I just overheard my roommate's friend telling a story about someone they know who said "I'm over depression. I just don't have time for it". And that is exactly what I think. I just have no reason to deal with that shit, or put myself in that silly place. Why bother? I don't need that. I have tons of stuff I love to do, so screw you blues.

Angry Dawn

O!K! Today was much better. In the morning I got a bit angry. I was listening to Le Tigre, quite natural for an angry girl, and I realised that NOBODY is going to ruin all my every days like this. Especially not a stupid job in a stupid office full of brainless hens, goddamit. If I'm going to go nuts it will be on my own goddam terms so screw you you damn job! Screw you, damn office workers! And now I feel much better.

I had less than usual to do today, so I read, and looked at the internet. Well, if you are going to hire someone for a job that doesn't really exist, deal with it. Take that.

Anyway, that's it. I've had an angry awakening that I hope will last and I will stop being so dwelly about myself and my rotten job and rotten personality and move on to something else. Boys, maybe? I've missed those for the past year or so.

I can't believe I'm putting this on the internet.

I need to figure something out. I kind of went crazy at work today. I was so tense I felt like my skin was going to burn off and everything sounded five times louder. I couldn't handle the sound of people talking, or shuffling papers, or dialing the phone. I ended up taking my sweater off in the bathroom to calm down, thinking I might be about to cry, or scream. I thought I might go home, but after an hour or so it passed. What's wrong with me?!

Mentalness aside, I really need to speak to my boss and work something out. I might have less time to go crazy in if I hadn't had absolutely nothing to do between the hours of 2 and 6 pm. He's mentioned before that I work much more quickly than the people who held the job before me. Be that as it may, the truth is there just isn't enough work there to constitute a full time job. And when I was hired, I was under the impression that I would be given more responsibilities and so on, which I was at first, but there's been nothing of that nature over the past few months. I've hardly even seen my boss over the past few months. I'm not sure if he's just been really busy, or if I've fallen off his radar.

It's one thing to have boring work, or horrible co-workers, or minor mental problems, or frustrated ambitions, or not enough work, but to have them all in one package...

I just want to write things out all the time. Write so much nonsense until something appears out of it. Write the same damn things over and over and over again and listen to the same rotten miserable records.

I was reading my diary of two or so years ago. Then I was feeling rotten a lot of the time too, but then I was also very good at making plans and lists and goals and ideas and trying to work things out. I developed the Plan for Mental Health and stuck to it. Nowadays I seem to take all the helpful points of the plan and deliberately flaunt them.

Well, no more! From now on I am going to:

1) Get enough sleep
2) Get enough nourishing food to eat (no chips and dip dinners)
3) Not listen to the wrong music

Starting tonight! Tomorrow is a new day, one in which I am going to keep my chin up, think good thoughts, make helpful plans, and ask my boss for a meeting to discuss what I can do to have real work to do.

See you tomorrow!

Another Monday!

Holey moley! I need to discover a way to make days less horrible. I like them before I go out. And I like them when I get home. But I don't like them when I am at work, or on the streetcar. I just don't understand how to fix it. I mean, I used to hate my job, but at least I felt like I had a purpose. I felt needed there, and I felt good that I was working hard and going to school. I felt tough. Now I just feel like I am wasting my time and fizzing my brain out. Yikes. What to do? I really can't quit this job, I'm earning a lot of money. Also, I feel like my boss is able to tell I've lost the spark. He doesn't talk to me as much or give me responsibilities like he used to.

Aïe. It's all so frustrating. I just can't get out of this awful headspace, running back and forth in my mind trying to figure out what to do and how to feel better and wondering what's gone wrong and if I can improve it.

I do have a suspision that part of the solution might be to get full nights of sleep.

Mmm what a good weekend. I love Halowe'en and I love Lennoxville and I loved our Roommate Reunion. And I loved dressing up and drinking and dancing and dancing. It was definitely a lot of what I needed- that is to say, a lot of fun and wild abandon. And a lot of poutine. Not enough boys though.

I miss my lady love so much. I wish this summer could have lasted forever. I miss having that one best friend who you go to for everything and talk to on the phone all the time and want to tell everything to and do everything with. I don't really have that any more and I don't know that I will again.

Another thing that I miss is Montreal. We drove through it there and back and just to look at it is so nice. It looks to me like everything is in its just right place and that I have never left. In fact it's a year ago today that I moved. One year ago it was Saturday morning and I got up off the floor of my bedroom, where I had slept on my coat, and took my suitcase, my guitar and my cat and got in a cab to the train station. It was before six a.m. and I was taking the 6.55 train. I walked all through my apartment and locked the door for the last time (I still have the keys) and walked down the two sets of stairs and looked at myself in the hall mirrors and went out into the morning. I checked my cat and bought Paris Vogue and a Paolo Cohelo novel (Onze minutes) and got on the train. I felt very romantic getting out in Toronto with my guitar and french novel and black coat and little black rolling suitcase. I was met by Jody and Craig, which was really wonderful. I was so happy to see them and hugged them so so hard and then we left and got in the car and drove home. I think it was spitting rain in Toronto and Jody carried the cat. I was dragging my suitcase which was very heavy because it had my laptop in it.

I was really happy to be in Toronto. We went shopping at No Frills for fajita ingredients and cat food. I was so excited to be living near them both. That night Craig and I slept in Ashley's bed and felt so relieved to finally be together. On Monday morning the Globe & Mail came to my new door and I would read it standing on the porch in no pants, smoking. A few days later I went shopping for new Toronto clothes and started talking to my headhunter about job interviews. I just loved the headhunter.

I'm so glad I came to Toronto. This year has been so good. Given the chance I don't know if I will go back to Montreal. I just don't know how you can be so attached to a place. I might suppose most of my Montreal-love has to do more with the time that I spent there and the time in my life than with the city itself. And yet, I really do have such an attachment to the physicality of Montreal. I love everything about it. The mountain, the buildings, the metro, the rusty street signs. I got a bit tired because I felt like everyone that came to Montreal was in a certain mindset, looking for things that maybe I wasn't. But now I feel like I am in that place, too, again.

Imaginary Itineraries

Yesterday was a very rainy slow day and I spent a lot of time imagining what I hope a day might be like when I am a student again. This is what I think:

8.45 am: Wake up and it is pouring down rain. That's okay, because I don't have anywhere to go this morning. It is a tuesday and my class is in the afternoon. Sleep a little longer then lay in bed listening to the rain. Get up and get the paper, put on tea. Read the paper while listening to Van Morrison.
9.30 am: Get dressed, then decide I should practice guitar for a while.
10.30 am: I need to get some reading done. Put on Belle&Sebastian and read something very interesting for a while. Also daydream. After reading, do some writing until...
1 pm: Gosh I am hungry! Make a tasty lunch, using non-expensive ingredients. The rain has stopped by now. Brush hair and get ready to go to two-thirty class.
3.00 pm: My lecture is done now, and it was fascinating! A super lecture and lots of class discussion.
3.45 pm: Get home just as the rain is starting again. Do some knitting while watching a film for my very interesting film class.
In the evening, eat dinner with roommates. Work on a paper for a while, then work on a painting (for class or not, I haven't decided). We decide to go out for a drink in the evening because none of us have to get up early the next day.

Why am I not a student anymore?