this just in...

I am very anti-social. 

I think, actually, the term 'asocial', as in, 'without, or lacking in opportunity for, social interaction' may provide better insight to my current predicament.  I remember when it was a thrill to squeeze in a 45-min coffee date with a friend into my jam-packed college life schedule.  Now, I am excited to have dinner plans once in a week scheduled on my iCal, while the rest of the empty blank squares staring at me, the oblivion that constitutes their white nothingness mocking me for being so damn lame.  Friday night, by myself?  LAME.  

And this time ('cause I find that I am a creature of habit when it comes to asocial-ism), it's not because I am depressed or too exhausted or too overwhelmed with making sure the fundamentals of life are in line: I literally don't know what to do.  There are always the fail-safes of cable TV, internet, and helping the economy get all ship-shaped again with needless spending, of course, but I don't think I really need to elaborate on why those methods are inadequate, at best.  I think the culprit is a lack of imagination.  I don't know what to do with myself when the activity that accounts for most of my day does not spill over into its remaining hours.  This is why I have the urge to take another class: just to have something predictable enrichment activity to put in my calendar!  Deadlines, I need deadlines to be productive!  

Anyway, that's it.  The point of this post was most likely to take up some of my evening.  And I have successfully utlized...oh....10 minutes of my Friday night.  

Hmm.  

P.S.  I have done very well with my posting this year thus far!  I have already met and may likely surpass my last-year high of 8 posts in a month in the first month of 2009!  Well done, me, well done!

Impressive

I found this website that does some personality measurements through answering simple questions with pictures. I really enjoyed doing it, and I actually think that this is one of those tests that actually accurately assessed my approach to life and job skills and such. Whatya think?

Do the quiz yourself!


Your Core Skills
A natural academic, you have an extremely impressive capacity for deep analytical thinking. You are able to absorb and efficiently interpret extremely complex material. This is balanced with strong communications skills. You are confident about expressing yourself and feel most comfortable when channels of communication are open.

Potential Areas Of Weakness
You have a low tolerance for inefficiency or for muddled thinking and this may mean that you are reluctant to collaborate except with the most impressive minds you know. As a result, you may come across as arrogant and valuable contributions may be missed. Your need to think things through rigorously may mean that you fail to fulfill the potential of your dynamic creative mind.

Areas You Might Want To Work On
pay more attention to personal management tasks and time planning
make the effort to ensure that communication is two-way - actively encourage and listen to feedback from your colleagues
embrace your creative streak and allow yourself to make informed leaps of faith if required
Careers That May Suit You
SCIENTIFIC JOURNALIST UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR DETECTIVE FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST CONSULTANT
Your Detailed Personality Assessment
You clearly have an impressive and flexible intellect which you are able to apply successfully to whatever takes your fancy. You work best when you are energised by challenging ideas and concepts. You owe it to yourself to make sure that your work environment offers you maximum stimulation and satisfaction. By keeping things fresh you will find the buzz and intellectual reward that you need to keep you exhilarated. You have great potential when it comes to inspiring others so it would be really worthwhile to try to incorporate an element of this interaction into your daily work.

When it comes to leadership, you are a firm believer in conviviality. You like to be a friend as well as a boss. Job satisfaction lies in building strong relationships with the people you work with. But it's important to always be careful not to blur those boundaries.

You have a strong sense of wonder and enchantment at the world around you. You probably get a kick out of blue sky brainstorming.

You can sometimes be quite laid-back about achieving your goals. You tend to land on your feet and so you don't get too stressed about pushing too hard. You definitely have a good life-work balance. And it's true, sometimes success comes to those who don't seem too desperate. This healthy attitude is great so long as you don't come across as disinterested or lazy. It's important that you make sure your colleagues feel that you are pulling your weight.

You're feeling fairly laid-back about life right now. You're pretty content with the status quo. There's nothing major to stress you out so it makes sense just to take things gently and avoid any big dramas. It's not surprising that you're feeling upbeat. You seem to be getting a lot of satisfaction from your work. And this good feeling pervades the rest of your life.

The way you approach each day can have huge implications for your success in the workplace. Bouncing out of bed with a spring in your step doesn't exactly come naturally to you. You sometimes find it difficult to get moving in the mornings. It might be worth trying to reinvigorate your morning routine so that getting out of bed is more of a pleasure than a battle! That way you can face the day firing on all cylinders. If you haven't already, why not try exploring some evening relaxation techniques that might help you get the rest you need - whether it's yoga, a soak in the tub or even a full-on gym session. It could make all the difference.

The Future
You may not be looking for a new job right now but you're committed to understanding more about yourself and recognise how valuable this can be in terms of self-development. Life an feel like a bit of an endurance race sometimes. It's all about making sure that you have the stamina and commitment to go the distance. You seem to be quite pragmatic about the fact that work has its ups and downs, and this is a really healthy way to be, as long as this doesn't dampen your natural enthusiasm for life.

today

She saw that there was frost on the ground and knew she was in for an interesting day...

merrrp.

Found this in a journal.  Not very coherent, but yous gets the idea.

Also: I have an ideeeaaaaa?  For a boooook? (said with a crescendo-ed high-pitched voice).

 I wrote this day before I enrolled in Fuller Counseling (Nov 10 2008).

I have never been more drawn and repelled to a single item in my entire life...

I know the reality of fighting escapism with escapism--those days when the only time you know you are slightly tolerable is when you are severely alone.  Even then you clad yourself in anonymity, to cover your head from God and the world. On those days, the battle against your own body is so tempting. 

The understood sensual alluredness is right on, for the only way will fight so dirtily against ourselves is if we believe we look sexy doing it.  And, oh, do we look sexy: lips parted to shape our mouths into an O, exhibiting our superhuman ability to breathe in fire.  With every inhale we are tempting death, and  our every exhale is the aversion of fate, the victory of the chase, the high-five after getting laid.  We are the Ubermann, and we blow our smoke the face of the morality that pits itself as the  basis against our actions.  Our smoke creates rings that tighten around its neck, lassoing it to our back pockets.

Because we need that morality to smoke in the first place, to remind us that something is so despicably wrong inside of us that it can't be faced and must be smoked out of us into the open.  When the wrongness is so strong we find it can't possibly exist (and also find ourselves arguing that we shouldn't either), that drag is the only thing that's real--more real than the day you might live tomorrow, more real than the promise of something new and big, or small, more real than the fantastical dreams you might chase away with a warm breakfast the next morning...

Snap.

Without realizing, I had killed my possibility of existence.  Between my two fingers lay the two halves, innards exposing nothing but flaky earthy repetition, the pattern of humanity's moments of  defining their being.  I could not see the possibility of clarity but only death and ashes, flicked away on the ground beneath my feet, or blended an ashtray of all the thoughts of the generations that approach it.

I throw my promise away, and begin to think about cloud formations and what color scarf to wear the next morning...

Just putting this out there

This is something I might do in a year or so, if I don't go to graduate school at that time.  Or after.  Maybe just someday...

I might do it here.  Or even here?  We shall see.  I don't know when or if--all I can recognize is a small subtle whisper transpiring in what I perceive this little life to be.  

***

As I was typing this entry, my friend instant messaged me this excerpt from Alexander Schmemann's For the Life of the World: "The Eucharist is the entrance of the Church into the joy of its Lord. And to enter into that joy, so as to be a witness to it in the world, is indeed the vary calling of the Church, its essential leitourgia, the sacrament by which it "becomes what it is." The liturgy of the Eucharist is best understood as a journey or procession. it is the journey of the Church into the dimension of the Kingdom."

Sign from God?  Probably. :)

Needs

Frost/Nixon

Revolutionary Road

Rachel Getting Married

Milk

am I missing something?

ehhh

Wow, my last post was very...er, how you say--vulnerable?  I'm not sure whether I should apologize or not.  I guess that's what blogs are, though: they either feed the author's narcissism or give them a false sense of safety and security to practice the art of intimacy.   

What's left

My past counseling session was a little traumatic--not because of the subject matter discussed (which, mind you, often wades in the pool of dysfunction and tip-toes near the boundaries of neurosis), nor my tendency to burst into tears within five-minutes of sitting on my very nice intern-counselor's couch, but because of the following conversation.

Counselor: (After spending the duration of the session discussing how I don't feel that I deserve to take care of myself) "So...how are you right now?"

Me: (with tears welling up in my eyes, and wringing a messy mascara-stained tissue in my hand) "Um...ok..."

Counselor: (Sits back with a slight smile, that smirky, smirky smile). "I'm going to leave that for now..."

Me: (What??!! You bastard! How can you do this to me?) "Are we meeting next week?" (please please please please PLEASE)

Counselor: "Ho-hum...I guess I could make it out here on Monday..."

Me: "Uh, no, it's ok...we can meet after the New Year," (I'm only dying inside)

Counselor: (With a genuine smile) "Great! So, you remember what to make the check out to? And, also...just try to have fun."

I'm not sure if it was the insistence to plunge into the very depths of my murky soul and then cut me off with an clearly impossible answer to my unanswerable questions, or that frackin smile he had on his face the whole time that caused the emotional atom bomb. All I know is that I've had really bad heartburn ever since.

What is really disheartening is that after two weeks, I will fail to report back anything from my first and only homework assignment tomorrow. 11 days of genuine time spent with family, friendships caught up on, adventures in different cities, a beautiful and sacred union of two souls, breakthrough personal and spiritual conversations, laughs, tears, and more canine cuddling than I could ever want, yet I can't say I know joy. This is the first time in my life when I have seriously considered requesting a prescription for Prozac. And I definitely can't blame it on the weather.

I wonder if part of moving on is embracing the pain that is deterring you from doing so. I hurt. A lot. Because of various, often terrible things. And I need help. Many people in the mental health field would say that in that sentence, I've just fought half the battle. That it's brave to do what I've done. I think my bravery is very quiet; a small voice trapped amongst the schedules, duties and real, very real problems of others, and is often left between my two ears. As much as I hate to admit it, I think that with somethings, you have to be brave alone. And I'm not really sure I can do that right now.

So, I'm left popping extra-strength Tums, taking numerous pictures of my face on my MacBook so I remember that it's pretty, and listening to the same songs over and over again until they make me feel numb. They probably aren't paying Mr. Counselor enough for this...