Peacegrrl's World: April 2006

Friday, April 21, 2006

The Zen of Stupidity

I wrote this in a journal sometime in August and unearthed it last night. I think I may have been onto something. My question is, who was that person? Where has all of that optimism and insight gone in the last eight months?

8/11/05
How many things in this life do we leave undone for fear that we'll look stupid? And in spite of all our grown up, mature inhibitions, how often do we end up feeling stupid anyway?

Coming off of the heels of a harrowing attempt at love, I'm feeling a little stupid these days. I certainly look stupid! I looked stupid in love, with my silly smile and failure to process any thoughts not related to The One. And now, out of love, I look even stupider, with my deflated hopes and puffy eyes.

But that, I realize, is the juice of life. It's the good stuff. The taking risks, taking plunges, believing in the unknowns. This is what life is about. It's running out and banking on the highly unlikely, fully aware that we're going to look and feel stupid when it's all said and done. If I go through each day deciding what NOT to do for fear that people will laugh or I'll feel silly or embarassment will stain my cheeks, then why get out of bed? What have I gained if I haven't risked a thing?

Wisdom is finding a place in life where you don't care how stupid you look. This is maturity. This is happiness. We should all strive for the zen of stupidity.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Spring Fever

I can't concentrate on anything today. The window is wide open and this amazing early-spring breeze is circulating through my office, making it seem obscene to pour my energy into things like end-of-year reports and budget balancing. Scantily clad students are lying in the sun all over campus today, and I can't say I blame them. Spring in Ohio is a WAY bigger deal than it is down south. We bundle up in October and stay that way for the duration, spending as little time as possible outside, because we'll be plagued with slush and salt and dirty snow (and besides, the sun's only putting in a rare appearance). Those first few days of spring, when everything is melted and the trees are starting to flower and you can smell the green in the air, feel like manna from heaven.

Naturally I'm feeling pretty good these days--large doses of sunlight will do that to you. And I'm feeling restless. I blame spring for that, too--nature's on a crazy frenzy to bloom and reproduce, so doesn't it make sense that people start to feel the same way? It doesn't help that people are pairing off left and right, and my sister is seriously pregnant, and my ambiguous relationship continues to get more and more confusing as I refuse to confront it. I hate it when I get like this, focusing too much on my state of singleness and ignoring everything else that's great about my life.

OK, so I haven't written about my Philip Seymour Hoffman obsession lately. This month in O magazine, they asked him what his favorite books were...and of course he and I have a shared favorite (A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley, in case anybody's wondering). Peacegrrl Seymour Hoffman...I like the sound of that. I can't wait to see him play a mean bastard in the new Mission Impossible movie, even if it means enduring a few hours of that crazy fucker Tom Cruise. And I'm extraordinarily pleased to see that PSH finally has a fan site , even if it's a little lame. It's a start.

Well, I've managed to successfuly kill about an hour and a half on this post, so I guess I'll get back to today's version of "work," which basically entails listening to Interpol and pushing paperwork around my desk. Happy springtime!
-pg

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

The moodiest person I know

That would be me. I'm honestly starting to think I'm some kind of freak. Last week and the week before, I was a bundle of nerves, stress, and depression. This week, I'm a bundle of nerves, stress, and strange euphoria. I look back at journal entries from January, when I was on an optimism kick, and I wonder, who the hell was that? Then I look at stuff from last week, when I was doom-and-gloom and thoroughly obnoxious to all of my wonderful friends who are good enough to put up with me, and I think, well, who the hell was that?

Grr. My life is filled with uncertainties, and I deal with uncertainty as unproductively as possible. I worry about it, talk about it, write about it, obsess over it, and don't do much about it. Cases in point: I need to finalize my degree plan so I can graduate in August...but instead of going through the somewhat tedious process, I simply COMPLAIN about it. I don't sleep well, so I take sleeping medicine, but then I proceed to worry about the implications of taking it--will I get addicted? Do I really need it? Am I going to start sleeping too much? I need to confront a relationship that has gotten complicated and started to spill over the borders of a platonic friendship, but instead of having the talk, I worry about having the talk: have I been misinterpreting everything? Will I get rejected? Will I get depressed if I get rejected? How depressed? BLAH.

I am in a funk today. I slept without a sleeping pill last night, which means I had an actual dream (instead of the normal Ambien blackness). It was one that goes on forever, continues after you wake up, hit snooze, and doze back off; one that sticks with you all day. Super wierd, all about Casey (formerly The Guy, remember?), who I haven't spoken to in forever, so I have absolutely no idea where the hell it came from. Don't you hate it when you have a dream like that, that clings and leaves you with an anxious, confused feeling? At least I'm in a good mood. The semester is very quickly coming to a close, summer stretches out with at least the strong possibility that I will graduate, and the sun is out. Life could most certainly be worse.