The Coming Winter
I bet it's not hard to figure out what I meant when I previously talked about thinking too much... Normally my attitude is "play it off, everything will be fine," and I think I've been doing a great job around other people.. but on my own I'm still..
It's.. really quite a jarring change to have not talked to Jacki for almost two weeks now. I realize she's going to be busy with school and the campaign.. and that I may not be high on her list of people to talk to.. but.. I miss her, and..
Imagine one night you're on Facebook and you start talking with an old friend. You guys talk for a few hours, catching up.. And then you talk the next night. And the next night. Catching up has now turned into learning more about each other, sometimes more than you thought you wanted to know, but you're still eager to talk and listen. Now imagine that you're talking with this person every night, for hours upon hours (sometimes upwards of six or seven) until it's almost daybreak; every night (save for, like, maybe a total of five nights) for two and a half months.
That's precisely what happened with Jacki and me. It was something nice and familiar to expect after a long day at work and the general boringness of the summer. I looked forward to talking to her every night. It was worth getting two or three hours of sleep each morning and falling asleep at work. ..I got used to it. It was during this time in the summer while we talked that I honestly believe I fell in love with her. It just took me forever to admit it to myself (I was afraid).. let alone to her.
And, well, then we got together, then she left me, that's all commonly known.
Don't you think that she'd be on my mind less because we don't talk? Normally, maybe, sure.. but.. I lost something consistent in my life. Yeah, I realize that one should never rely on things because change is inevitable.. but.. still.
There's this TV in the main lobby of MSV that usually displays things like upcoming events or news or whatever. It's really too high to be convenient to read (or maybe I'm just too short), but it has displayed a single quote from George Santayana on its screen since mere days before Jacki broke up with me:
To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
But spring was so fucking nice.
From Blah to Awesome
Yesterday turned out very well in the end given our immense boredom initially. On Friday, a whole lot of nothing happened, particularly with me becuase I had been awake for a year and desperately needed to get some sleep. Woke up around 3PM Saturday, did nothing on my computer, showered, went to dinner at six. The only people at dinner were Corey, Jeremy, and Penny (whose real name is Christine, but Jeremy and the guys insist on calling her Penny). Hung out for a bit, she left to do some lame sorority thing, and we were left to our own devices. Basically from seven or so until about midnight, Jeremy and I were bored as fuck. At one point the three of us toured Crown Hall because we had never really been in there before. Then Corey went to go play Rockband with fourth grad and Jeremy and I sat in my room just hanging out. Nathan stopped by after his date with Amber and it wasn't until midnight that we finally got the idea to go to Clark's for some delicious food. Pat and Corey accompanied us. Good food, good times, good friends. Got me out of my blah mood and definitely made the whole weekend so much better.
This probably reads really poorly, I could barely choose the words I wanted... Might have something to do with having just got up.
I just lost my note of who I owe money.. great.
Wow
So these Atlantis episodes are getting really good. I can't believe they're ending it after this season. Then again, I guess that's part of the whole reimaging of the Sci-Fi channel. Ugh. At least Wright and Glassner intend on doing movies with Atlantis like they did / are doing with SG-1, and with the experience they've already gained there they're sure to make some damned fine movies about the Pegasus galaxy. I just wish it didn't have to end so soon. Daniel Jackson was on Friday's episode! He appears again this Friday too, in the second part. It's pretty fun to see him and McKay go back and forth.
Oh. My. God. I just realized that I am similar to Amber when it comes to Stargate... Well, I don't so much know (or care) about the writers or what the directors are doing, but I have become very involved in the Stargate universe (not to be confused with the third show, Stargate: Universe) just as she is with.. well, every show she watches. Mostly Doctor Who. That's all she really talks about, she relates far too many topics to Doctor Who.. but when someone starts talking Stargate, whether it be Richard or Stephanie or Joy sometimes, I am so there. I think it's something about the universe and its lore that draws me into the show. Same for Amber with her shows. There's just something that pulls you in, makes you want to know more. I think Stargate has been the root cause of most theoretical scientific discussions in my house. Which is not a bad thing at all. It gets your mind working, your imagination flowing.
I don't really have anything else. Today is my poopy class day. Started eating the candies that Galina, Linda, and Pat dropped off. God I love Air Heads. I need a can opener so I can drink this Jarritos :( No offense or anything, I guess.. but it really surprised me that Linda remembered how much I love Jarritos. Then again, she met Yee and Nate (and Tim?) and they made us go to Meijer for some Jarritos... I'm sure that moment stood out for her, meeting my weird friends and goofing off in a gigantic south-eastern Michigan grocery store :razz:
I can never find good bass/treble levels for my sound card... It's annoying. And then the bass knob on my speaker controls only helps to frustrate me.
I finally found a program that will let me use the extra buttons on the wireless Logitech mouse that Casey gave me for my laptop (the mousewheel is wonky and he has like a million other mice, so he let me take this one for the laptop). Now I just need to figure out what I want those buttons to do...
I've been talking with Mary, Brian's ex, a lot lately, since like mid to early August at least. Her boyfriend broke up with her about.. a week before Jacki broke up with me. Is.. is it bad that I have some sort of satisfaction that she feels she can come to me in this time? I mean, that is a good thing, and I am sympathetic to her and am trying to help her.. but I just think I want for people to come to me with their problems far more than I should.
I wish I had two line-in's on Andraia's sound card. Sometimes I just wanna run my DS or Zune through my main speakers at the same time I have the laptop as well as the desktop going. Usually the desktop is for music or whatever show I'm watching or game I'm playing at the moment. The laptop is for AIM, most youtube videos, and sometimes a movie or show depending on what I'm doing on the desktop and is therefore always hooked up through Andy's line in. It would be nice to run the DS through the speakers so I get some decent sound quality, and sometimes I wanna listen to the radio, so the Zune is great for that. Too bad the laptop doesn't have a line-in.. Wait.. my sound control thingy has a slider for "Line 2." This may be perfect!
Ugh.. time to shower.. then class, class, lunch, homework, dinner, class, lab, homework.
I need to start working out. I'd say on a regular basis, but all I ever do is just a lame amount of push-ups. I'd like to get a fair amount of push-ups down before I actually start going to Keating though, for some reason. I don't know, it makes sense to me. Push-ups are easy, something I can settle myself into everyday, ideally.
Changes
I've got it in my head these past few days that I should get a haircut, but I have no idea what I would do. I liked it when it was short like it was almost precisely a year ago. I also love having the long bangs that come down the side of my face. I miss how my hair would look after I waited for the El on the platform and after I walked to work during the summer. The wind shaped my hair very nicely and I just don't have that anymore. I could emulate the look with hair stuff and a hairdryer, I'm sure, but that a) requires money and b) requires time that would make me feel like a girl. Neither of which is all that desirable. We'll see what happens, if anything I need at least a trim and to bring the back up a little bit more than the rest. Though that might end up looking gay or extra-feminine. I don't know. And it's pretty much decided that I have to keep some sort of goatee going, because otherwise I look far too feminine in the face. I just have to figure out how long I want to keep the thing and then how to keep it that long. All I've always done is let it get stupid long and then shave it all off.
I constantly have dreams about my bottom front tooth being loose and falling out. Last night I had one about all of my bottom front teeth being loose. And to quite a degree, too. It was very unnerving. I finally had that wake-from-a-dream-into-another-dream situation too. I was running around some warehouse and felt my teeth loose. I woke up and was laying in bed, and tried playing with my teeth, they were still loose. I woke up again and all was fine. I don't recall if this was the final time I woke up.
I talked with Jacki a few hours ago. I think my attitude change helped a lot. She said some things that hurt me, but only because she felt/is that way now because of the things I said a week ago that hurt her. I would rather her tell me the truth though. Neither of us knows what's going to happen from here, but I feel a lot better right now. In the end I have learned a lot that is bound to serve me well and that's what life is about.. growing.
Now to eat some food and play some Kirby.
Paradigm Shift
Like whoa.
After some thought collection:
I took a walk this morning around 5:30 because I was just completely unable to focus on my lab. I use to sneak out of dad's house at night and go to Browning to sit on the play structure and think. I am so glad we have a small playground here near the apartments on campus. While I was sitting there something Jacki said to me in the first two weeks of our relationship hit me. It was the first time I had thought about it since she said it (I don't remember her exact words):
This may sound weird, but I look forward to our first problem so that we could work through it and become stronger together.
This may be that problem, this may not be. If it's not, well.. I guess we never got to that first problem Jacki, and that makes me sad. But that's not the point of this. The point is that.. for some reason, I had an epiphany. Not unlike that epiphany-toilet episode of Scrubs I watched with Corey and Phil last Sunday.
When Linda broke up with me, what did I do? I whined and cried, but worst of all I felt sorry for myself. That's all I did. I moved on, but I didn't.. take the chance to learn. ..Thinking about it, I don't think the chance was necessarilly there. I also don't think it was there when I got frustrated that Stephanie starting liking Phil after our date. Nor when Nicole left me. I just felt sad for myself because nothing seemed to work out. Then the past week or so after Jacki broke up with me has been no different. First I jumped to conclusions, then I felt like even more shit for having done so. Then.. I got some fresh air. I really don't know what it is about that quote, but.. I stopped feeling sad for myself. I stopped beating myself up. That is not to say I don't care anymore. It still kills me to have lost her, you have no idea. But.. like.. I feel confident now. I got back from my walk and sat down to finish my lab.. but I still couldn't focus. Instead of moping, though, I was.. smiling. I felt so much better. My mind was forming coherent thoughts. It was working out how things could work, working out how I could do things better, not how I could have done things better.
That's what my problem was, I completely had the wrong attitude about everything. I realize that now. This may be the first step to getting over Jacki. I may have to use it as such. But really, I would rather it be the first step in getting her back. I still love her. I still honestly think things could work with her. I just need to talk to her again and lay it all out there, properly.
Her original want was just to take a break for a bit, be on her own. I don't quite understand that fully, but I do respect it. I fucked things up pretty badly (in my defense, I misunderstood her, big time), but I would love to get things back to that point, back to what she originally wanted, a break. I would count that as a colossal win.
..She'll probably read this before we get a chance to talk again. I dunno. I would like to talk to her soon, but I realize she's busy. I just want to lay it all out there, make my case. You know.
Anyway, yeah, the whole point of this was that I feel amazing right now. I dunno, though, I hesitate to use the world "enlightened" :razz: It's an odd but rejuvenating feeling when you have a realization and complete attitude change for the better like this, especially when it's because of the person you love. Sadness and self-pity have been replaced with confidence and determination. I don't know if it's enough to work, but I will try my damndest.
In other news:
My laptop smells like a hairdryer that's been on for far too long (maybe I should turn it off).
This episode of Atlantis is.. pretty creepy! I like it, I don't recall if the Stargate crew has ever done a creepy episode of either show before. Episode seven of season five, if you haven't seen it, check it out.