Dear memory... Over the past week I have been largely idle, as I mentioned before.
On that Monday, I came into school and was unnerved and confused that the front doors were locked on a Monday morning. I had not remembered the short Family Day holiday; Monday and Tuesday classes were cancelled. The gym was not open either, and I would be unable to work out for my third time that week. I returned home, and slept long and through the day, and at some point, I scratched and pulled at some rough edges of the thick soles of my right foot, and restless, I pulled skin away that tore bloody at the end, and wound up with a patch that was thin and bare and painful to walk on.
I have not been to the gym for the past week, while I was being idle, and part of the reason is that I have been waiting for my foot to heal, and for the slight stiffness in my calf to recover after walking with a limp which puts more stress on different places. It seems to me as though my restless picking may have corresponded to a subconscious need for rest, and winds up working out quite nicely, although the fact that the way it works out involves temporarily hobbling myself is not ideal.
On Friday and Saturday, I turned my sights to work again, as the finished version of an important assignment in my Finance course was coming due. I worked for three and a half hours solid on Saturday morning before 6 AM in that special zen state I get into when I am under pressure to finish a document, in which the hours seem not to matter, as the document forms. Large pieces of writing produced, and then whittled and perfected and formatted step by step; like a drawing, increasing by stages, but not in a particular order. Just switching to adding or refining in some other place where additions or refinement can be made, and then coming back and adding to or refining the part I had just left behind to do so.
It is strange and beautiful and trance-like, and I think I always worry, as a deadline draws near, that I might not manage to fall into that alien and productive state of mind again, it is so different. But then I do. One of my team mates started out working on the wrong part, one that had already been done, and adjustments needed to be made at the last minute. I volunteered to take on part of his work and adapt the project to include the extra work he had done even though it had not been necessary, and it all worked out. I believe so, anyway. Our grades aren't in yet.
I have to say, I have been delighted with my team for this assignment. I think it's fair to say I have done the lion's share of the work on the project, but if so, I have determined lynxes pulling beside me. They show solidarity, they rowl in support and pride when we make a leap forward, and we make that leap together. My teammates have had my back and contributed resources I did not have by conferring with their friends in other sections to figure out segments of the assignment that I did not know how to proceed on. Their written segments showed effort and contained genuinely useful material, despite a few inaccuracies and some poor English. I don't blame them. For two of my groupmates, it is not their first language, and in any case some peoples' skills are not oriented towards writing well.
Mine are, and I spent some of those hazy, focused hours of vaguely happy-ish just-do-it-ive-ness stroking my chin and carefully rephrasing, reducing redundant statements, correcting spelling mistakes and structuring the flow of sentence to sentence.
I also made the report pretty, putting the original phrasing of each assigned question in italics at the beginning of the section that addressed it. It had a pretty header with all of our last names in it and collapsible headings, and I uploaded my current state of progress for my teammates to look at several times. They expressed appreciation for how pretty and comprehensible I had made it.
After the three and a half hours of solid work on the assignment report, I continued on to finish two quizzes for other subjects before sleeping, because they were there to be done and at the time, I didn't mind the expenditure of time in the way I normally do. I scored 100% marks on both, despite being so tired that words occasionally swam before my eyes. I think the difficulty and doubt made me focus and double-check myself more, and the fatigue to the point of feeling uncommon silence and stillness within my mind helped prevent restless distraction or overthinking.
I went back to my games on Sunday, but felt less engaged with them. I think I have had the rest I needed. But, even if this level of strange, zen productiveness were entirely sustainable, I don't think I have a task before me that demands it. Until the next time to crunch on school affairs, I mean.
My foot has healed to a point that the pain is minor and of a different kind. Only the slight pain of touch on scab. It barely hurts to walk. I think I will go to the gym again today.
I listen to another episode of Welcome to Night Vale while walking through the halls, feeling friendly and zazen. The weather comes on, and the gentle, romantic sound of strumming guitar greets my ear, and I experience a strong mental vision of myself laying in a field of swaying yellow grass, half feeling as though you were with me, and half wishing that you were. My heart yearns gently like the satisfying ache of a well-exercised muscle. I pause, and look out of a window, and gently touch the glass as I continue towards my Intermediate Accounting class after the weather is over. I want to go for a long, long walk to nowhere in particular, to be walking. The temptation is extremely appealing. I decide that to do so would neglect my duties at this time, and I continue on to class.
The class is review. I do not focus on it. I sit and write this blog, and listen to the gentle, comfortably familiar sound of my professor going through example problems in the background. I occasionally look up and acknowledge the subject matter. I occasionally hear the input of one of my classmates, and once or twice there is a little chuckle of laughter across the class. I am not focused on the lesson, but I am happy and feel a gentle, abstracted affection for my classmates and my professor and the community that we are together, in the context in which we operate together. Various things seem vaguely and peacefully right about the world around me. This may be partly attributable to my having consumed a Monster energy drink this morning. Those things don't just make me alert; even when I remain sleepy and tired, they tend to make me bizarrely happy.
And I continue to miss you. This, too, seems vaguely and peacefully right. I miss you, Eoin. I love you. Cecil's deep, pleasant voice during part of this episode of Welcome to Night Vale had said... You are never the same twice. You are different at every moment. Continue to do what is important to the you that you are now, until you are not that person anymore. I smiled. I appreciated that part. I feel it is very much what I am doing, and a vital part of the perspective that has been what I am doing since the original light of determined decision in November. This is what is important to me now, and it is true to myself to act upon it. What happens later will wait for later. My priorities will someday be different. I doubt I will regret this, though. How could I regret taking calm, gradual strides toward being as I wish to be? Being where I wish to be. Being with someone I wish to see again.
Monday, February 26, 2018
Thursday, February 22, 2018
Dear Memory: Night Vale and Daytime Dreams
Dear memory...
I have been bingeing on Welcome to Night Vale, as well as the Sims, lately, as I have shifted into a state of rest and reluctance to apply myself to anything. However, and perhaps unusually, I am mostly enjoying the rest, and the opportunity to let my mind and body be comparatively still. Perhaps, I have been overextending myself recently, and it is important to allow myself a time to pull in on myself.
I think of you often. Night Vale reminds me of you... since, of course, you were the person who originally showed it to me. I am up to episode 74 now, and when I heard the announcement describing the dog park, repeated almost exactly word for word from the pilot, I went back and listened to part of the pilot again to confirm that it actually was almost exactly word for word.
I remembered hanging out in your bedroom. I remembered commenting that the segment featuring advice to parents while bringing their children to play in the scrublands had some very genuinely sensible advice in it. It felt strange to remember so vividly a thing that happened about three quarters of a year ago, but then... My memories of my time with you are vivid. More vivid than usual, and my memories and imaginings are usually... vivid. Emotional intensity, I am sure, has a significant amount to do with memory formation and retention. That which a person feels strongly about, in any way, their brain will register as important, and reinforce.
You have always been important to me.
I think of you much, recently.
I have had strange dreams, the past couple of days (I had four days off of school in a row, and started sleeping during the day again; I have been unable yet to stop sleeping during the day, and this has contributed to my recent retreat into myself). Twice in a row... I think... My dreams involved getting to know a person, and winding up lying with that person and kissing them. The person was not you. The person was different in each dream, and represented a real person that I recognize, and sort of know, and have sort of liked, but not someone at all close to me. A YouTuber I occasionally watch, and a classmate I never really talked to much, but had a slight crush on for a time.
It feels strange to have my dreams repeat themes so strongly like that. I miss kissing you. I miss kissing anyone, really. It's been quite some time since I have. None of the people I know that I would want to kiss and feel comfortable trying to do so are here in London with me. Perhaps the dreams are simply an expression of desiring that kind of physical contact again. And yet, there was something about both of them that seemed as though they were trying to retell the story of my meeting you, and becoming involved with you. In one case, I asked the dream-partner to let me have a moment to process my feelings, after I had somewhat unexpectedly wound up kissing him, and I thought about you. In my dream. And whether I was okay with this, given how much I still miss you.
I have been very passive lately, but aside from a sense of slightly concerned pressure about an assignment which is due in two days, I'm not worried or upset about it. I was working hard for the first few weeks of the term, and we really didn't get much of a winter break at all this year. It's been very tense and active at school since the strike ended three months ago. It seems I am well able to forgive and tolerate myself taking time off to just relax for a while. I believe with some quiet, non-dramatic confidence that I will be able to pick up and start working again, once it becomes necessary for me to do so to keep pace with the course and continue to perform at my high standards for myself.
When I listen to Welcome to Night Vale recently, I snarl and giggle more often and with slightly less care to ensure no-one is close by to notice. I feel fairly peaceful with my own acknowledged, adopted, personally delighted in creepiness. I feel happy about my friends, who know that it is part of me, and love me no less. I have one person in particular who tells me that they really value the fact that when they talk to me, some of the things I say reflect a darker side to the world that they don't notice until I point it out. But he appreciates being able to see it, like a shape on the other side of the water, behind the clearer reflection of his own light, his own experience, his own face. Enlightening, endarkening, as he says.
It is... beautiful... to have contexts available to me in which this tendency of mine; although it arises quite naturally out of my perspective, and simply sharing the way I see the world and what things mean to me; is acknowledged and appreciated as a service.
I miss you. I hope that you are well. I look forward hopefully and with quiet, distant excitement to the time when I can speak to you again.
I have been bingeing on Welcome to Night Vale, as well as the Sims, lately, as I have shifted into a state of rest and reluctance to apply myself to anything. However, and perhaps unusually, I am mostly enjoying the rest, and the opportunity to let my mind and body be comparatively still. Perhaps, I have been overextending myself recently, and it is important to allow myself a time to pull in on myself.
I think of you often. Night Vale reminds me of you... since, of course, you were the person who originally showed it to me. I am up to episode 74 now, and when I heard the announcement describing the dog park, repeated almost exactly word for word from the pilot, I went back and listened to part of the pilot again to confirm that it actually was almost exactly word for word.
I remembered hanging out in your bedroom. I remembered commenting that the segment featuring advice to parents while bringing their children to play in the scrublands had some very genuinely sensible advice in it. It felt strange to remember so vividly a thing that happened about three quarters of a year ago, but then... My memories of my time with you are vivid. More vivid than usual, and my memories and imaginings are usually... vivid. Emotional intensity, I am sure, has a significant amount to do with memory formation and retention. That which a person feels strongly about, in any way, their brain will register as important, and reinforce.
You have always been important to me.
I think of you much, recently.
I have had strange dreams, the past couple of days (I had four days off of school in a row, and started sleeping during the day again; I have been unable yet to stop sleeping during the day, and this has contributed to my recent retreat into myself). Twice in a row... I think... My dreams involved getting to know a person, and winding up lying with that person and kissing them. The person was not you. The person was different in each dream, and represented a real person that I recognize, and sort of know, and have sort of liked, but not someone at all close to me. A YouTuber I occasionally watch, and a classmate I never really talked to much, but had a slight crush on for a time.
It feels strange to have my dreams repeat themes so strongly like that. I miss kissing you. I miss kissing anyone, really. It's been quite some time since I have. None of the people I know that I would want to kiss and feel comfortable trying to do so are here in London with me. Perhaps the dreams are simply an expression of desiring that kind of physical contact again. And yet, there was something about both of them that seemed as though they were trying to retell the story of my meeting you, and becoming involved with you. In one case, I asked the dream-partner to let me have a moment to process my feelings, after I had somewhat unexpectedly wound up kissing him, and I thought about you. In my dream. And whether I was okay with this, given how much I still miss you.
I have been very passive lately, but aside from a sense of slightly concerned pressure about an assignment which is due in two days, I'm not worried or upset about it. I was working hard for the first few weeks of the term, and we really didn't get much of a winter break at all this year. It's been very tense and active at school since the strike ended three months ago. It seems I am well able to forgive and tolerate myself taking time off to just relax for a while. I believe with some quiet, non-dramatic confidence that I will be able to pick up and start working again, once it becomes necessary for me to do so to keep pace with the course and continue to perform at my high standards for myself.
When I listen to Welcome to Night Vale recently, I snarl and giggle more often and with slightly less care to ensure no-one is close by to notice. I feel fairly peaceful with my own acknowledged, adopted, personally delighted in creepiness. I feel happy about my friends, who know that it is part of me, and love me no less. I have one person in particular who tells me that they really value the fact that when they talk to me, some of the things I say reflect a darker side to the world that they don't notice until I point it out. But he appreciates being able to see it, like a shape on the other side of the water, behind the clearer reflection of his own light, his own experience, his own face. Enlightening, endarkening, as he says.
It is... beautiful... to have contexts available to me in which this tendency of mine; although it arises quite naturally out of my perspective, and simply sharing the way I see the world and what things mean to me; is acknowledged and appreciated as a service.
I miss you. I hope that you are well. I look forward hopefully and with quiet, distant excitement to the time when I can speak to you again.
Monday, February 19, 2018
Dear Memory: Tempted Closer
My plan to beast through my Cost Accounting quizzes has been met by an unexpected obstacle. When I logged onto the publisher website to study again, I discovered it. Access to quizzes five through ten had been taken down unexpectedly, while apparently the course administrator adjusted which questions from the question bank would be on them.
I had not been confident I would do well charging ahead anyway, and it was taking a lot out of me to try. After all the recent stress I had been under, I was not altogether unhappy to surrender to this sudden enforced change of plans. Instead of working on Cost Accounting quizzes, I worked with my team on the finance project in a more relaxed state, knowing I could give as much time to it as the task might take, and enjoyed laughing with them while working.
Again I feel the strange sense of suddenly being surrounded by more reasonable people. In this case, people I can work with, who are willing to work with me. Even though I do wind up doing a lot of the primary processing, having company who are making useful comments makes a great difference. We sent one of our number home, because he was too sleep-deprived to be of much use and had only insisted on dragging his body to our meeting out of a sense of duty. He blessed us quietly for being so understanding when we insisted he should go sleep instead.
I have also spent long hours and majorities of days playing The Sims 3, and have been quite surprised that I continue to find it so engrossing despite bugs that make it through ErrorTrap, a mod which fixes most known glitches. I am not sure I'm done on my stint of it. But, yesterday (I suppose; I am writing at 1:30 or so in the morning after waking up feeling restless and alert after only a couple of hours of sleep) I took time out to do productive things; a bit of shopping, put away the laundry I'd done the day before, and pushed myself back to the gym.
I re-listened to Irish podcasts about the federal budget, and found myself thinking so much of you that I stopped focusing on them entirely, so I switched to listening to The Seldom Seen Kid again instead. My heart whirled and I felt and fantasized many different things, and snarled a little to myself while I thought no-one close enough to notice at the almost painful intensity of my want for you, and of how it might feel, when I see you again, to fear that that meeting may be the only one I ever get, if I present myself poorly...
As I thought might be the case, I performed better at the gym for taking a bit of a longer break, particularly on the strength elements. I upped my weights on several exercises and powered through them happily enough after willingly jogging (or something) my cardio for 20 minutes with more resistance than before. For the first time yet, every exercise I did, I did for three sets (I started with two sets each, and have started going on to three when I felt able on some particular one). By the end, my shoulders and arms felt gently stiff with muscle soreness.
I also listened to Savant while working out, and I thought of you, and showing off my strength to you. Also to Coda; I remember with a little crafty smile that he has a particular attraction to strongly-built women, and I feel it would be fun to meet him again with some confidence I may look sexier to him.
...The question of how to manage polyamory is one of those that I imagine could be a bit of a problem for us, dear Eoin. I put it off while I was there last time; the temporary nature of our relationship then offered its own answer. I was unlikely to find someone else during that time to get romantic with anyway, and was too much enthralled in infatuation and new relationship energy with you to have wanted any such distraction, so beyond my offering not to see anyone else for that period, and the mention of it as something that would need to be talked over if we were ever to want to have a longer term relationship, it was not really discussed.
It is kind of nice to feel so dizzied by thoughts of you again, although it seems to contradict my theory that the time of it were over. Perhaps my quest in Cost Accounting and the various stresses of becoming acclimatized to a new term had suppressed the phenomenon? Perhaps blogging stirs it up more than I generally acknowledge, and having spoken of other things without getting to you led the way for my mental habits?
Perhaps that thought of six months made it seem so much closer, so much more real, that I began to feel about it again. I almost wonder if I should after all break the silence far ahead of schedule to tell you, so that you can help me plan. So that you can weigh in on the question of whether I should come to Athlone IT again, or rather go to one of the other colleges. I don't know.
Changing such an integral part of the plan is unsavory to me, and the thought of breaking my silence to you when I had promised it far more so. Although... Whether I were to talk to you a couple of weeks before I expect to be there, or a few months... Perhaps the heart of it would be much the same..? Perhaps the factor that makes a difference is whether it is already set up that I will come back to Ireland? In that case... I should not, at any rate, until I have bought my plane ticket, I think. But that may be much sooner than anticipated, if I decide to make it my constraint.
I had not been confident I would do well charging ahead anyway, and it was taking a lot out of me to try. After all the recent stress I had been under, I was not altogether unhappy to surrender to this sudden enforced change of plans. Instead of working on Cost Accounting quizzes, I worked with my team on the finance project in a more relaxed state, knowing I could give as much time to it as the task might take, and enjoyed laughing with them while working.
Again I feel the strange sense of suddenly being surrounded by more reasonable people. In this case, people I can work with, who are willing to work with me. Even though I do wind up doing a lot of the primary processing, having company who are making useful comments makes a great difference. We sent one of our number home, because he was too sleep-deprived to be of much use and had only insisted on dragging his body to our meeting out of a sense of duty. He blessed us quietly for being so understanding when we insisted he should go sleep instead.
I have also spent long hours and majorities of days playing The Sims 3, and have been quite surprised that I continue to find it so engrossing despite bugs that make it through ErrorTrap, a mod which fixes most known glitches. I am not sure I'm done on my stint of it. But, yesterday (I suppose; I am writing at 1:30 or so in the morning after waking up feeling restless and alert after only a couple of hours of sleep) I took time out to do productive things; a bit of shopping, put away the laundry I'd done the day before, and pushed myself back to the gym.
I re-listened to Irish podcasts about the federal budget, and found myself thinking so much of you that I stopped focusing on them entirely, so I switched to listening to The Seldom Seen Kid again instead. My heart whirled and I felt and fantasized many different things, and snarled a little to myself while I thought no-one close enough to notice at the almost painful intensity of my want for you, and of how it might feel, when I see you again, to fear that that meeting may be the only one I ever get, if I present myself poorly...
As I thought might be the case, I performed better at the gym for taking a bit of a longer break, particularly on the strength elements. I upped my weights on several exercises and powered through them happily enough after willingly jogging (or something) my cardio for 20 minutes with more resistance than before. For the first time yet, every exercise I did, I did for three sets (I started with two sets each, and have started going on to three when I felt able on some particular one). By the end, my shoulders and arms felt gently stiff with muscle soreness.
I also listened to Savant while working out, and I thought of you, and showing off my strength to you. Also to Coda; I remember with a little crafty smile that he has a particular attraction to strongly-built women, and I feel it would be fun to meet him again with some confidence I may look sexier to him.
...The question of how to manage polyamory is one of those that I imagine could be a bit of a problem for us, dear Eoin. I put it off while I was there last time; the temporary nature of our relationship then offered its own answer. I was unlikely to find someone else during that time to get romantic with anyway, and was too much enthralled in infatuation and new relationship energy with you to have wanted any such distraction, so beyond my offering not to see anyone else for that period, and the mention of it as something that would need to be talked over if we were ever to want to have a longer term relationship, it was not really discussed.
It is kind of nice to feel so dizzied by thoughts of you again, although it seems to contradict my theory that the time of it were over. Perhaps my quest in Cost Accounting and the various stresses of becoming acclimatized to a new term had suppressed the phenomenon? Perhaps blogging stirs it up more than I generally acknowledge, and having spoken of other things without getting to you led the way for my mental habits?
Perhaps that thought of six months made it seem so much closer, so much more real, that I began to feel about it again. I almost wonder if I should after all break the silence far ahead of schedule to tell you, so that you can help me plan. So that you can weigh in on the question of whether I should come to Athlone IT again, or rather go to one of the other colleges. I don't know.
Changing such an integral part of the plan is unsavory to me, and the thought of breaking my silence to you when I had promised it far more so. Although... Whether I were to talk to you a couple of weeks before I expect to be there, or a few months... Perhaps the heart of it would be much the same..? Perhaps the factor that makes a difference is whether it is already set up that I will come back to Ireland? In that case... I should not, at any rate, until I have bought my plane ticket, I think. But that may be much sooner than anticipated, if I decide to make it my constraint.
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Dear Memory: Difficult Day in Stride
(after Unsupportive and Dance-X, same day)
I have had a lot to tell today. Yet there is more. It seemed sensible to divide it into these pieces. This piece is for you, Eoin. I feel as though you may have been on my mind a little more this past little while that the previous similarly sized while.
I'm glad to have been going steadily through school, trying to balance homework and classes and fitness and the process of trying to bring myself back to Ireland. I keep thinking back to something my friend Ampersand said, the last time I had him visit me. I was talking about my plans, and something about how I intended to arrange things so that they would work out well for me even if it turns out that you don't want me back. He said, that seems pretty unlikely.
It stuck in my mind. I think he may have been the only person who ventured to assess the chance. It was certainly something I appreciated hearing, and I wonder what this judgement is based on.
I can't say. But although the intensity and inability to control my tendency to think of you has faded over time, I certainly do think of you from time to time, and smile, usually. I want to see you again. I look forward to seeing you again. While I was getting out of the shower today, I thought to myself... Well, it's half-way through February now. March, April, May, June, July, August... September.
It could be as little as six months. It could be as little as six months that I actually see you again.
It's sensible to leave early. One of the college reps suggested I give myself a couple of weeks before school starts in order to have time to find a part-time job. So really, arriving half-way through August is entirely plausible, and if you are amenable to it at that time... it really could be as little as six months. Something about that just strikes as though it's unreal and also more real, both at the same time.
I recently took photos of some of my books, to add to my list of things to try to sell on Kijiji. I delete and replace the sale listings once a week. They get pushed down the list very fast, but there's only so much time I have to spare for it just now. Perhaps after my trial period quiz challenge. I think casually about what things are important enough or difficult enough to replace that I will want to bring them with me. My knife set, probably. My few issues of Transmetropolitan, likely. My cool old-fashioned pepper grinder, maybe. That would be it for kitchen things, though. The rest, better to find new ones as I settle wherever I wind up settling.
It's... exciting. And despite the difficulty today, and the uncomfortable coughing and watery feeling in my stomach and tightness in my calves after Dance-X, I note that I have stuck to my initiative of working out three times a week for three weeks and still counting. This is the most consistent with exercising I've ever been for an extended period. I feel my abdomen and my shoulders with curious, interested fingertips from time to time. I feel as though it's making a difference... and hoping that you will see that difference when you see me again may be almost all the motivation I need to keep it up...
I wonder at my determination, and the way my confidence has held strong. There must, I suppose, be something special about the way I love you, that it makes me stronger like this.
I need to eat, and I need to work on quizzes. But Eoin... I love you. And I am coming. Six months from now... I hope you're ready.
I have had a lot to tell today. Yet there is more. It seemed sensible to divide it into these pieces. This piece is for you, Eoin. I feel as though you may have been on my mind a little more this past little while that the previous similarly sized while.
I'm glad to have been going steadily through school, trying to balance homework and classes and fitness and the process of trying to bring myself back to Ireland. I keep thinking back to something my friend Ampersand said, the last time I had him visit me. I was talking about my plans, and something about how I intended to arrange things so that they would work out well for me even if it turns out that you don't want me back. He said, that seems pretty unlikely.
It stuck in my mind. I think he may have been the only person who ventured to assess the chance. It was certainly something I appreciated hearing, and I wonder what this judgement is based on.
I can't say. But although the intensity and inability to control my tendency to think of you has faded over time, I certainly do think of you from time to time, and smile, usually. I want to see you again. I look forward to seeing you again. While I was getting out of the shower today, I thought to myself... Well, it's half-way through February now. March, April, May, June, July, August... September.
It could be as little as six months. It could be as little as six months that I actually see you again.
It's sensible to leave early. One of the college reps suggested I give myself a couple of weeks before school starts in order to have time to find a part-time job. So really, arriving half-way through August is entirely plausible, and if you are amenable to it at that time... it really could be as little as six months. Something about that just strikes as though it's unreal and also more real, both at the same time.
I recently took photos of some of my books, to add to my list of things to try to sell on Kijiji. I delete and replace the sale listings once a week. They get pushed down the list very fast, but there's only so much time I have to spare for it just now. Perhaps after my trial period quiz challenge. I think casually about what things are important enough or difficult enough to replace that I will want to bring them with me. My knife set, probably. My few issues of Transmetropolitan, likely. My cool old-fashioned pepper grinder, maybe. That would be it for kitchen things, though. The rest, better to find new ones as I settle wherever I wind up settling.
It's... exciting. And despite the difficulty today, and the uncomfortable coughing and watery feeling in my stomach and tightness in my calves after Dance-X, I note that I have stuck to my initiative of working out three times a week for three weeks and still counting. This is the most consistent with exercising I've ever been for an extended period. I feel my abdomen and my shoulders with curious, interested fingertips from time to time. I feel as though it's making a difference... and hoping that you will see that difference when you see me again may be almost all the motivation I need to keep it up...
I wonder at my determination, and the way my confidence has held strong. There must, I suppose, be something special about the way I love you, that it makes me stronger like this.
I need to eat, and I need to work on quizzes. But Eoin... I love you. And I am coming. Six months from now... I hope you're ready.
Dance-X
(after Unsupportive, same day)
I had registered in advance to try out a Dance-X class at the gym today. In the state of anger I was still in when I left for it, I had a sense of dread about the whole affair, worrying about the factors that led to my dropping out of the dance club at AIT. I was determined to push through it and give it a good honest try, though, despite feeling that I was in a mood in which I might not be capable of fair judgement.
I left at fifteen to and got to the class on time, introduced myself to one other person who was also new to it and waited, in some nervous excitement, for the class to start. I wasn't sure what to expect. The instructor is a small, bouncy woman who wore a single, long braid and seemed very cheerful. There was no practice at slow speed, she simply set a playlist to going and launched into energetic dance, with a lot of quick cross-stepping and jumping about. The first song and dance on the list was Gangnam Style. That dance takes a hell of a lot of energy. I think I tried too hard. I could feel the roughness in my lungs at the end of it. I sat down, but was encouraged to remain standing even if I was tired.
Songs continued. They were mostly recognizable pop hip-hop, including Timber and Put a Ring on It. I continued. I tried to figure out what the moves were and get in step, but it was extremely difficult to register and try to learn the steps at such a fast pace, and difficult in an entirely different way to perform them even when I did have a sense of them. If I was standing, though, I felt pressured to dance if I were at all capable of it.
25 minutes into the 45 minute class, I left, deciding that I was at my limit and needed to stop. I had leaned on myself up next to the fan and the instructor called out a bit to me asking if I was alright. I said nothing, but walked slowly and unsteadily to the door and quietly let myself out. Tears were leaking out of my eyes as I changed my shoes. The slick of sweat across my shoulders meeting my synthetic jacket felt greater than it had ever been before. Before heading home, I walked across a little hill, still covered in snow, and carefully and intentionally fell over onto my side. I lay there for a minute or two, occasionally coughing somewhat raggedly, feeling the cold and wet seep into the side of my pants, thinking very little.
The main thing I was thinking, and have been thinking, seems a carefully audited stream of thought:
I am trying to do a set of online quizzes within a trial period again. I might end up trying it for two different classes, one having been activated later than the other. My Information Systems class has simple SAM Cengage labs for learning Access and if I get the chance to access all of them within the trial period, I think I can ace them easily. The more challenging and more serious one is Managerial Accounting. I've already worked ahead, and have finished four of the quizzes. One of them, I didn't actually study for. I had mistaken which one it actually was, but having started it without preparation, I did my best, and my best without studying earned me a tiny fraction over 80%, a little better than a similar quiz I had studied for. I think I'm probably losing some marks on rounding. I find the instructions on which numbers to round obtuse and confusing.
There are six more quizzes. It is currently Thursday evening. I will need to finish them by Saturday evening to complete them during the trial access. I have a class tomorrow, and a project actually due on Saturday evening to contribute work towards. I am not sure I can do it, but I'm certainly going to try.
I had registered in advance to try out a Dance-X class at the gym today. In the state of anger I was still in when I left for it, I had a sense of dread about the whole affair, worrying about the factors that led to my dropping out of the dance club at AIT. I was determined to push through it and give it a good honest try, though, despite feeling that I was in a mood in which I might not be capable of fair judgement.
I left at fifteen to and got to the class on time, introduced myself to one other person who was also new to it and waited, in some nervous excitement, for the class to start. I wasn't sure what to expect. The instructor is a small, bouncy woman who wore a single, long braid and seemed very cheerful. There was no practice at slow speed, she simply set a playlist to going and launched into energetic dance, with a lot of quick cross-stepping and jumping about. The first song and dance on the list was Gangnam Style. That dance takes a hell of a lot of energy. I think I tried too hard. I could feel the roughness in my lungs at the end of it. I sat down, but was encouraged to remain standing even if I was tired.
Songs continued. They were mostly recognizable pop hip-hop, including Timber and Put a Ring on It. I continued. I tried to figure out what the moves were and get in step, but it was extremely difficult to register and try to learn the steps at such a fast pace, and difficult in an entirely different way to perform them even when I did have a sense of them. If I was standing, though, I felt pressured to dance if I were at all capable of it.
25 minutes into the 45 minute class, I left, deciding that I was at my limit and needed to stop. I had leaned on myself up next to the fan and the instructor called out a bit to me asking if I was alright. I said nothing, but walked slowly and unsteadily to the door and quietly let myself out. Tears were leaking out of my eyes as I changed my shoes. The slick of sweat across my shoulders meeting my synthetic jacket felt greater than it had ever been before. Before heading home, I walked across a little hill, still covered in snow, and carefully and intentionally fell over onto my side. I lay there for a minute or two, occasionally coughing somewhat raggedly, feeling the cold and wet seep into the side of my pants, thinking very little.
The main thing I was thinking, and have been thinking, seems a carefully audited stream of thought:
Yes, it was sort of fun. Stopping part-way through is not failure. Showing up and putting effort into it is a success. Perhaps my weight-based workouts will go better the next time I come to the gym for my giving those muscles a little more chance to recover than usual. This definitely counts as having worked out today. It's been a hard couple of days. Perhaps it was time to cry. I should try this again next week, but pace myself more conservatively.I brought myself home and showered. I brushed away the most recent accumulation of sand and fine gravel which accumulates by the door, and thence gets in my bedroom, and thence into my sheets; and I lay down, and I began writing this.
I am trying to do a set of online quizzes within a trial period again. I might end up trying it for two different classes, one having been activated later than the other. My Information Systems class has simple SAM Cengage labs for learning Access and if I get the chance to access all of them within the trial period, I think I can ace them easily. The more challenging and more serious one is Managerial Accounting. I've already worked ahead, and have finished four of the quizzes. One of them, I didn't actually study for. I had mistaken which one it actually was, but having started it without preparation, I did my best, and my best without studying earned me a tiny fraction over 80%, a little better than a similar quiz I had studied for. I think I'm probably losing some marks on rounding. I find the instructions on which numbers to round obtuse and confusing.
There are six more quizzes. It is currently Thursday evening. I will need to finish them by Saturday evening to complete them during the trial access. I have a class tomorrow, and a project actually due on Saturday evening to contribute work towards. I am not sure I can do it, but I'm certainly going to try.
Unsupportive
This has not been a good day for me so far. I stayed up last night playing The Sims again. I'm kind of worried that I'm not sick of it yet. I have a lot of other things to do, but it remains compelling and distracting.
I was so tired that I slept through my first class. Now I almost wish I had missed my second one as well, because I got so angry. The first tax quiz was exceptionally low-scoring, and a bunch of my classmates were concerned about it, as was I. I felt I had not made the same mistake I did last term, when I also scored low on my first tax quiz. I had checked the slides over, and the textbook, on almost every question. One of my classmates told me he had been sure he should have gotten 100% after studying hard for it, but only got 70%.
This in itself is not such a big deal, although it may feel like one at the time, and a quiz is worth 5% of our final mark in this course. The professor's response in class can make all the difference, and here it definitely did. She went through the questions, quick-firing off references to what specific paragraph the answer was supposedly in for each one, leaving no time for analysis of what the paragraph or the question actually said, and ending by cheerfully telling us we need to read the book.
I spoke up one last time saying I didn't have time to follow her through this supposed explanation and still thought some of the questions were wrong, and was told it didn't matter, she was giving the important point of reading the textbook and that it was all there. I did not speak up for the rest of the class. I quietly did the exercises, and thanked the student next to me for sharing his textbook, but despite having questions to ask and answers to give, and despite the professor's probing comments that the class was quiet today, or that everyone was 'asleep', I stayed quiet and barely even made eye contact. I was fuming, and no longer willing to speak to her.
I have sent an email to my tax professor from last term to ask if there is still room for another student in his classes. I may request to transfer over. I had some concerns and complaints and found some things difficult in his class too, but I don't think he ever insulted us like that. I'm not going to make that choice now. My head is not cool enough for important decisions, and anyway I have other things I need to do.
I was so tired that I slept through my first class. Now I almost wish I had missed my second one as well, because I got so angry. The first tax quiz was exceptionally low-scoring, and a bunch of my classmates were concerned about it, as was I. I felt I had not made the same mistake I did last term, when I also scored low on my first tax quiz. I had checked the slides over, and the textbook, on almost every question. One of my classmates told me he had been sure he should have gotten 100% after studying hard for it, but only got 70%.
This in itself is not such a big deal, although it may feel like one at the time, and a quiz is worth 5% of our final mark in this course. The professor's response in class can make all the difference, and here it definitely did. She went through the questions, quick-firing off references to what specific paragraph the answer was supposedly in for each one, leaving no time for analysis of what the paragraph or the question actually said, and ending by cheerfully telling us we need to read the book.
I spoke up one last time saying I didn't have time to follow her through this supposed explanation and still thought some of the questions were wrong, and was told it didn't matter, she was giving the important point of reading the textbook and that it was all there. I did not speak up for the rest of the class. I quietly did the exercises, and thanked the student next to me for sharing his textbook, but despite having questions to ask and answers to give, and despite the professor's probing comments that the class was quiet today, or that everyone was 'asleep', I stayed quiet and barely even made eye contact. I was fuming, and no longer willing to speak to her.
I have sent an email to my tax professor from last term to ask if there is still room for another student in his classes. I may request to transfer over. I had some concerns and complaints and found some things difficult in his class too, but I don't think he ever insulted us like that. I'm not going to make that choice now. My head is not cool enough for important decisions, and anyway I have other things I need to do.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Dear Memory: Still Working On It
Dear Eoin...
I have been writing less often, and directing my thoughts here toward you less often when I do. I think the period of intense heartbreak and missing you since the last time I heard your voice in October is pretty much done.
However, my peace lies twined with my plans. I have unpacked the things I call my "shrine", symbols and trinkets that I like to keep together and revere as little treasures. The red bull, the antique horn, a musical jewelry box which holds some stones and jewelry... And my skull candle, my oath candle. I have contemplated it with happiness. A few years ago, I burned this candle hollow, so that a pillar's worth of wax ran out and left its eye sockets and nose hollow, just as a skull is meant to be, and stared intently at it for hours as it burned, making a promise to myself, in a desperate and unhappy circumstance, that if I continued to be unhappy where I was, I would move. Put another way, that same promise could be phrased, "follow your dreams".
It gives me peace and happiness to look on it, because I know I have not forgotten the promise. I keep my oath to myself. For my joy, and my health, if I find I am not content with where I am, I will change it.
I think the wax shell is probably too delicate in its hollowness to bring across the sea. I am thinking that before I go, I will seek an opportunity to burn the rest of it in a fire, and re-confirm with the destruction of my oath candle the same promise that made it what it is.
I am still planning to come to you, although you come into my thoughts less often. The intent to go back to Ireland is always close at hand there. I am committed to it so thoroughly that the idea no longer seems at all unusual to me. The processes are perhaps a bit daunting, and of course it will cost me more than studying in Canada, but there is much at Fanshawe to help prepare me. I will probably need to work part-time while studying. It's something I have made a point of avoiding in my studies in Canada, but when it comes to bringing myself to Ireland... If this must be a part of my plan, for it to work out financially, it will be, and that is that.
I was so excited to meet the representatives of Limerick, Sligo, Carlow and Tralee. One of them was named Eoin, too. I must have suppressed a sad smile when I recognised the name and was able to pronounce it at a glance. There is a little workshop next week as well about procedures related to studying at a foreign college.
This morning, I came in to the school library and sat down to read and study my Cost Accounting material. I put on music from TouHou and wrote down many phrases and sentences from the material in my schoolwork related cardcast decks. It was a bit of a distraction, and no doubt slowed my reading. However, the music was so appropriate for background music while focusing that as I was packing up to get some breakfast, it was with some odd surprise that I realized turning off my laptop would require me to stop listening to it (since that is what I had playing the music). It was as though the TouHou tracks had been accepted as just what life sounded like on some level.
From that early morning on to late evening, I have been busily tending to one thing and then another... I was exhausted and barely taking anything in by the time my last class ended (it is the latest in the day of any of my classes). However, there were some fun highlights. The professor makes Google Documents and shares an editing link with the students; we pour in, over a dozen of us, and start building something there. Seeing it come together in several pieces at once like that, some formatting, some writing... It reminds me a bit of ants, in a good way.
If you were to wonder of me, I wish I could tell you that I still love you, and with this strength of mine, I will come to find you. I will be healthy and hearty as I can be.
You never read the Discworld books, I think, but... There's one character in them, a Mr. Carrot who has been in various books corporal, sergeant and eventually I think captain in the nightwatch. He is an immigrant, a human (by blood) who had been raised by dwarves, and his defining characteristic is that he believes so strongly in the good nature of people that they can't bring themselves to disappoint him and act more nobly and honestly than they do around anyone else.
At one point, he and a bunch of the other watchmen are aboard a ship in a storm at sea, chasing after someone who has kidnapped Angua, the woman he loves, also a member of the watch. The others had expected that he would be sick and restless worrying about her, but in the hours before they expected to land, Carrot was soundly sleeping with such determination that even the fierce tossing of the storm could not wake him. Since, as he had said, if he arrived in an exhausted state he'd be useless to actually help the woman he loved.
I feel kind of like that about you. Not that you are in need of rescue of course. Just... I want to be stronger for you and not weaker. I want to be better for every influence you have on me and not worse. You deserve that.
I have been writing less often, and directing my thoughts here toward you less often when I do. I think the period of intense heartbreak and missing you since the last time I heard your voice in October is pretty much done.
However, my peace lies twined with my plans. I have unpacked the things I call my "shrine", symbols and trinkets that I like to keep together and revere as little treasures. The red bull, the antique horn, a musical jewelry box which holds some stones and jewelry... And my skull candle, my oath candle. I have contemplated it with happiness. A few years ago, I burned this candle hollow, so that a pillar's worth of wax ran out and left its eye sockets and nose hollow, just as a skull is meant to be, and stared intently at it for hours as it burned, making a promise to myself, in a desperate and unhappy circumstance, that if I continued to be unhappy where I was, I would move. Put another way, that same promise could be phrased, "follow your dreams".
It gives me peace and happiness to look on it, because I know I have not forgotten the promise. I keep my oath to myself. For my joy, and my health, if I find I am not content with where I am, I will change it.
I think the wax shell is probably too delicate in its hollowness to bring across the sea. I am thinking that before I go, I will seek an opportunity to burn the rest of it in a fire, and re-confirm with the destruction of my oath candle the same promise that made it what it is.
I am still planning to come to you, although you come into my thoughts less often. The intent to go back to Ireland is always close at hand there. I am committed to it so thoroughly that the idea no longer seems at all unusual to me. The processes are perhaps a bit daunting, and of course it will cost me more than studying in Canada, but there is much at Fanshawe to help prepare me. I will probably need to work part-time while studying. It's something I have made a point of avoiding in my studies in Canada, but when it comes to bringing myself to Ireland... If this must be a part of my plan, for it to work out financially, it will be, and that is that.
I was so excited to meet the representatives of Limerick, Sligo, Carlow and Tralee. One of them was named Eoin, too. I must have suppressed a sad smile when I recognised the name and was able to pronounce it at a glance. There is a little workshop next week as well about procedures related to studying at a foreign college.
This morning, I came in to the school library and sat down to read and study my Cost Accounting material. I put on music from TouHou and wrote down many phrases and sentences from the material in my schoolwork related cardcast decks. It was a bit of a distraction, and no doubt slowed my reading. However, the music was so appropriate for background music while focusing that as I was packing up to get some breakfast, it was with some odd surprise that I realized turning off my laptop would require me to stop listening to it (since that is what I had playing the music). It was as though the TouHou tracks had been accepted as just what life sounded like on some level.
From that early morning on to late evening, I have been busily tending to one thing and then another... I was exhausted and barely taking anything in by the time my last class ended (it is the latest in the day of any of my classes). However, there were some fun highlights. The professor makes Google Documents and shares an editing link with the students; we pour in, over a dozen of us, and start building something there. Seeing it come together in several pieces at once like that, some formatting, some writing... It reminds me a bit of ants, in a good way.
If you were to wonder of me, I wish I could tell you that I still love you, and with this strength of mine, I will come to find you. I will be healthy and hearty as I can be.
You never read the Discworld books, I think, but... There's one character in them, a Mr. Carrot who has been in various books corporal, sergeant and eventually I think captain in the nightwatch. He is an immigrant, a human (by blood) who had been raised by dwarves, and his defining characteristic is that he believes so strongly in the good nature of people that they can't bring themselves to disappoint him and act more nobly and honestly than they do around anyone else.
At one point, he and a bunch of the other watchmen are aboard a ship in a storm at sea, chasing after someone who has kidnapped Angua, the woman he loves, also a member of the watch. The others had expected that he would be sick and restless worrying about her, but in the hours before they expected to land, Carrot was soundly sleeping with such determination that even the fierce tossing of the storm could not wake him. Since, as he had said, if he arrived in an exhausted state he'd be useless to actually help the woman he loved.
I feel kind of like that about you. Not that you are in need of rescue of course. Just... I want to be stronger for you and not weaker. I want to be better for every influence you have on me and not worse. You deserve that.
Friday, February 2, 2018
Feeling Small
Perhaps things have come to a head. I do not want to write at this moment. I do not feel as though I want much to do anything, but I will write. So as to reduce the burden on my friends, or any anxiety I feel about their being unavailable, I will write. Because it has been a few days, and because there are a number of things on my checklist that I am leaving fallow, I will write.
Yesterday was some kind of homecoming party. My roommates went out to party around nine or ten and came back around midnight, boisterous and chattering with a party of friends as guests.
I had been excited nearly to trembling to meet the representatives of the Limerick, Sligo, Carlow and Tralee Institutes of Technology. The meeting had come, had been carried out, had passed. I was tired from early evening, but did not expect to be able to sleep while others in my house were preparing to go celebrate. I spent my time watching YouTube, my mind tired and my current goal met, not feeling up to doing much of anything that was not restful.
Come midnight and the return of my roommates, I asked them if they could arrange for everything to be quiet by 2, and left for the college. There was something I could do that would not require much presence of mind; scan textbook pages which had problems for practice.
I came back slightly past 2 to find my roommates and their friends still (or again) around the kitchen table, chatting happily, but asked them immediately to bring it to quiet, and went into my room and came out again a few times in quick succession to repeat myself when they continued talking at a conversational volume.
After twenty minutes or so they had gone and there was quiet. I watched and listened to some more YouTube and played a little bit of Binding of Isaac while I calmed and relaxed toward sleep.
In the morning between 8 and 9, I was woken by my other roommate's car having been started to warm and make ready to leave. Its muffler is cracked and nonfunctional; my room becomes a chamber full of pressure and low-pitched car noise when it is idling out front. I caught the roommate whose car it was on the way out and told her so. After she left and after laying down a while, turning this way and that way, I slept again, until I was woken by talk between some of the first set of roommates again, and went out to tell them that even at the volume they were at, it was enough to wake me when I were already asleep.
Here, I had some comeuppance for my complaints. There was confrontation, politely spoken, and they told me that some of the sounds I had thought quiet enough not to be heard outside were room were not, that they needed more co-operation and consideration and forgiveness from me; and somewhere in there that it was normal to have little disruptions like this, and that they were entirely willing to take themselves downstairs at night when it was only them, but their friends had thought it was weird of me to be so insistent at them.
I think something in that struck at me somewhere; although of course, I had not been sleeping well and was not at my most stable. I began to leak a few tears, silently. One of my roommates did see, and was alarmed and apologetic, said she was only trying to have a normal conversation about it. I said that I cry easily, and not to worry about it, that it was important to talk about it if there were problems with anything I were doing, too, and I thanked her for doing so.
I have not had the will to write my follow-up emails to the representatives from Ireland today, though. I have not been willing to do homework or work out, or even really to go back out into the cold (it is quite cold and windy today) to buy bread. I am feeling weak, and sad, and small. I have returned several times to crying.
I miss Eoin. I feel conflicted. I feel guilty and self-conscious and yet still slightly, in some ways, indignant. I think some part of things is that I had been so focused on the meeting with the reps, and I suspect some stresses I had been putting off processing are out now that it's done. I decompress. I feel sadness. I remember all the things recently associated with sadness, and I feel a little helpless, listening again to voices talking in a language I do not understand, through the very slight muffling of the wall, and I miss Eoin.
I will pick it all back up again later. For now, I remain small and curled inside myself, hiding from the conflict I do not know how to deal with gracefully, hiding a little from the responsibilities I must return to in time. There is time, there is time.
Yesterday was some kind of homecoming party. My roommates went out to party around nine or ten and came back around midnight, boisterous and chattering with a party of friends as guests.
I had been excited nearly to trembling to meet the representatives of the Limerick, Sligo, Carlow and Tralee Institutes of Technology. The meeting had come, had been carried out, had passed. I was tired from early evening, but did not expect to be able to sleep while others in my house were preparing to go celebrate. I spent my time watching YouTube, my mind tired and my current goal met, not feeling up to doing much of anything that was not restful.
Come midnight and the return of my roommates, I asked them if they could arrange for everything to be quiet by 2, and left for the college. There was something I could do that would not require much presence of mind; scan textbook pages which had problems for practice.
I came back slightly past 2 to find my roommates and their friends still (or again) around the kitchen table, chatting happily, but asked them immediately to bring it to quiet, and went into my room and came out again a few times in quick succession to repeat myself when they continued talking at a conversational volume.
After twenty minutes or so they had gone and there was quiet. I watched and listened to some more YouTube and played a little bit of Binding of Isaac while I calmed and relaxed toward sleep.
In the morning between 8 and 9, I was woken by my other roommate's car having been started to warm and make ready to leave. Its muffler is cracked and nonfunctional; my room becomes a chamber full of pressure and low-pitched car noise when it is idling out front. I caught the roommate whose car it was on the way out and told her so. After she left and after laying down a while, turning this way and that way, I slept again, until I was woken by talk between some of the first set of roommates again, and went out to tell them that even at the volume they were at, it was enough to wake me when I were already asleep.
Here, I had some comeuppance for my complaints. There was confrontation, politely spoken, and they told me that some of the sounds I had thought quiet enough not to be heard outside were room were not, that they needed more co-operation and consideration and forgiveness from me; and somewhere in there that it was normal to have little disruptions like this, and that they were entirely willing to take themselves downstairs at night when it was only them, but their friends had thought it was weird of me to be so insistent at them.
I think something in that struck at me somewhere; although of course, I had not been sleeping well and was not at my most stable. I began to leak a few tears, silently. One of my roommates did see, and was alarmed and apologetic, said she was only trying to have a normal conversation about it. I said that I cry easily, and not to worry about it, that it was important to talk about it if there were problems with anything I were doing, too, and I thanked her for doing so.
I have not had the will to write my follow-up emails to the representatives from Ireland today, though. I have not been willing to do homework or work out, or even really to go back out into the cold (it is quite cold and windy today) to buy bread. I am feeling weak, and sad, and small. I have returned several times to crying.
I miss Eoin. I feel conflicted. I feel guilty and self-conscious and yet still slightly, in some ways, indignant. I think some part of things is that I had been so focused on the meeting with the reps, and I suspect some stresses I had been putting off processing are out now that it's done. I decompress. I feel sadness. I remember all the things recently associated with sadness, and I feel a little helpless, listening again to voices talking in a language I do not understand, through the very slight muffling of the wall, and I miss Eoin.
I will pick it all back up again later. For now, I remain small and curled inside myself, hiding from the conflict I do not know how to deal with gracefully, hiding a little from the responsibilities I must return to in time. There is time, there is time.
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