struggles

there's a lot of stuff i could be writing about- there's a huge battle going on at cornell to save the redbud woods: yesterday 8 students locked themselves in the president's office and then day hall (the administration building) was taken over. i could/should be posting pictures of my niece from my trip home last weekend for passover. but i'm writing about this article i found in the ny times. after reading about how the albany legislators are sitting around resting on their laurels and eating leisurely lunches because they actually passed the state budget on time, i became even more dismayed reading about this example of the horrible processes i'm constantly learning about in my sociology of food systems class. an only-somewhat-ragtag ethnic food market in the bronx is being pushed out by developers trying to put in big box chain stores. so it's not only walmart in rural iowa and new york. crap. i have nothing practical or insightful to write about this right now. maybe later.

cycles

i was reading a book a few months ago called Listening to Prozac, and it was talking about how apparently when people are coming out of a depression is when they are at the highest risk of killing themselves.

now let me preface this by saying that: that particular thought has not crossed my mind, nor do i expect it to and i'm not actually saying i'm at risk for it, but--

i think i can understand why now. i think i'm at somewhat of a similar point now, and it's almost worse, or more frustrating, because i can see the potential happy, busy life i can lead, but you get so angry at yourself when you think about how much time you wasted on sleep and self-pity.
if i had only spent that time looking for a job, or reading, or being outside or talking to people or cooking, etc.
i think that it's perhaps the most difficult time and the time when you're most disturbed by your own actions (or lack thereof) and therefore might be a time which would cause someone to actually go through with killing themselves. i do actually feel this change in energy levels and willingness to do things that they describe.

when you're actually IN the depression, you're so deep in the self-pity and tiredness, etc, that it's just beyond... (although obviously not for everyone)
but at this point you can really feel how the rest of the world is, and you want that, and it's just the most frustrating thing in the world. and your self-pity turns to self-hatred and a feeling that clocks are ticking and you've just wasted so much time.
oh dear.

stalking

i was just "googling"/stalking my spanish teacher and had a (MILDLY) profound realization:

this whole thing of stalking/researching/googling/etc., has become a much less social activity with the advent and widespread use of the internet. i just saw the box cover of the vhs of "now and then" at someone's apt the other night (i LOVED that movie when i was but a pre-teen), and i just now thought of that scene where they are all going through the newspaper clippings looking for her mother's death, and then they find all that other stuff about the creepy guy's son having died, or whatever- and it's this whole social thing and they provide each other with amusement and support in turn.
and now.... we sit alone starting at a screen wasting time learning more useless facts in a day than i can count.

i think i always loved that movie so much because it seemed like the childhood/pre-teenhood i wished i'd had. maybe that's why everyone liked it?

my love/hate relationship with weekends

i think my love/hate relationship with weekends much resembles my love/hate relationship with time.

actually...i think i just have a hate relationship with time- except that i love that i can do certain very specific things in very short amounts of time. but other than that...ya

i think it's time for another one of my "reasons why i suck" posts or rather, "why i'm letting everyone down, including myself" posts.

if i'm alone, i never get anything done, but if there are people around i never get anythign done either. if there's no IMMEDIATE (and i mean immediate) deadline, i think i have to wake up and immediately go to a place where there are other peop;le, just not people that i know and really want to talk to....i keep trying to change my life and it never works. i supose i could try again from here on...

i have a problem.

NYC Grassroots Media Coalition

i'd much rather be at this conference in new york, that my best friend's organization is putting on- she's chairing a panel tomorrow on how ethnic media can access gov. info and she's on the speaker's list! i'm kvelling!!

but seriously, this whole conference sounds amazing- i miss new york, and large cities, and actually enjoying life, a lot. what happened? maybe i should be looking for jobs in ny? someone help me.

ugh!!

i think the blog gods are conspiring against me. they do- the gods conspire against me.

but seriously, i wrote a really long post on thursday night about a speaker i had heard and the israeli-palestiian conflict, and how theories about that fit into an even larger paradigm/world-view. and then i kept getting a "document contains no data" error- and it kept doing that even after i copied all the text so i could later paste it.

well, of course, since thursday night, other things have entered the clipboard, displacing my very well-thought out blog post and now it's gone!! :(
boo. and i'm getting a cold. and thus missed the farm tour i was supposed to be at all day today for one of my classes.