So I got that study abroad scholarship! I don't win things often enough; it's a nice feeling. Of course, now I'm the study abroad office's ass-slave and will have to do all kinds of bullshit for their $500, but. Still. Money. Good.

So maybe this England thing is really going to work out. I hope it does, for lots of reasons besides the obvious getting to travel and visit a foreign country ones. I'm nervous but excited about the fact that I'll be doing this all by myself. I know I'll be freaking the fuck out for the first few days, but I also look at it as a way of showing myself what I'm made of. I daydream occasionally about difficult things I want to do, to prove to myself and everyone else that I do, indeed, every now and then, kick a little ass. You know, skydive, go on a trek through a rainforest, battle a wizard on a mountaintop, travel alone.

On an unrelated (or is it?) note, I saw this little "disclaimer" at the bottom of an Amsterdam Coffeeshop Directory website, and it made me giggle:

"The word 'coffee' in the title of the Amsterdam Coffeeshop Directory should not be taken as condoning the use of addictive drugs. Drinks containing caffeine should be used with care and moderation. Alternatively, stay on the grass!"

I'm never going to get these stupid papers done.

Two weeks ago I swore to be working on the Egypt paper by that week's end, and the fact that this sentence started with "two weeks ago" should tell you how that plan worked out. Still trying, still failing. I got a half-ass paragraph out today. Such progress! It makes one shiver.

Let's not even talk about the other two papers. Let's just not do that.

Please die, semester. Just roll over and do every college kid a favor and fucking die. Would you do that for me? For us?

Four-ish weeks, counting finals. Maybe I can do this.

But, goddamn, I don't want to.

Edit: I miss having a room that says something about me. The last time I did was in high school, and as juvenile as I now see that it was (how many pictures can one person have of Gerard Way?), it was still undeniably mine.

Since then my rooms have been dominated by function rather than form. Bare walls, unpacked boxes--a room where a person lives, nothing more.

Of course, when I graduated high school, I'd been living in that room for, what? At least five or six years. Plenty of time to plan and decorate and revise. Nowadays I can't even be sure where I'll be living a year from any given moment.

I can't wait for this semester to be over.

I'm so tired. I wake up, and it's so hard. Hard to get out of bed, to get dressed, to sigh and think, "another day." I want these essays to be finished, these finals to be over, to turn my brain off for a few weeks and not feel angry or sad or afraid. Just for a little while.

I hate this city, and I hate this school. I just want that house in the middle of nowhere that I've been dreaming about. No traffic, no people, no noise. Just quiet. So quiet and so still.*

They're wrong, you know--everyone who says these are the best years of my life. They have to be wrong. If they aren't...

God help me.

* I've been trying to remember where that's from for days, and it finally hit me--The Green Mile. The movie, anyway; been a long time since I read the book.

I have No Idea how I'm going to graduate in just three more semesters.

I mean, what am I supposed to do? Take three 400-level lit classes simultaneously? Can I just hang myself instead? That would be the least (less?) painful option.

I really don't want to be in school anymore. I'm only continuing to force myself to do this because it's free for me and, I mean, what the fuck else am I going to do? I'm the worst possible employee ever. Friendly customer service? What the good goddamn is that?

I should study now.

Kill me.

I'll be so glad when today is over. I've been moving nonstop for two days now--no time for breaks, just study study study.

Not that today being over means I get to stop studying/working. Oh, no. The worst (by far) is yet to come. But at least after today I won't have any immediately upcoming tests to cram for.

Nothing worse than being so overwhelmed that you have to cry while studying, because there's just no time to cry without being productive simultaneously.

Oh, and my passport came in the mail yesterday.

Now to see whether or not I actually get to use it.

I just remembered that NaNoWriMo is coming up--and soon.

I didn't participate last year, and it's doubtful that I will this year, either (three ten page essays with rapidly approaching due dates, among other things), though I do miss it.

I don't even know what I would write--it has to be something you've never written before.

Ah, well. Someday.

I'm getting very excited about the Johnny Wolfgang story. I'm nowhere near ready to start working on it (there is no plot--yet), but I came up with a new character for it not too long ago, and AH! I love this! I know I don't actually write nearly as much as I should, but trust me, I think about my stories all the time. There is never a given moment where they don't cross my mind in some way. Whether I'm in class or driving or watching TV or a movie or reading a book--all those characters I've created are in the back of my brain, talking to me and to each other. They never go away, and I never want them to. They are some of my bestest friends.

Johnny is... fuck, I just love him. Johnny loves drugs, and I love Johnny. Or Jonny. Ugh, no, I don't like the way that looks. But his actual name is Jonathan. Or Johnathan. For some reason, I just really prefer for nicknames to resemble the spelling of the name from which they derive as closely as possible. I may make an exception to this, though, because I really prefer Johnny to Jonny and Jonathan to Johnathan. Eh... not that Johnathan would kill me. I'll give it time; maybe it'll grow on me. But he's only ever called that on occasion, anyway, and then only when Grayson is exasperated.

Grayson (first name? last name? just the one, like Cher?--haven't decided) needs more fleshing out, but I love him too. He's easily the oldest main character I've ever created, which pleases me, for whatever reason. (Not that late thirties to mid-forties is old--and not counting vampires, as I tend to think of them as being the ages at which they were vampirized rather than their true ages [though that vampire that Ambrose sleeps/slept with is in his thirties, or was].)

And Malachi is the newbie. He's a vampire. He likes the way Johnny tastes. But Johnny is straight, I swear.

Probably. Mostly.

Vicky needs a lot of work, too. All I know so far is that she's a witch who is also Grayson's fresh-out-of-college accountant. A witch accountant amuses me greatly. Just not the sort of thing witches generally seem to go into.

By the way, Johnny and Grayson are werewolves. Pretty sure I've mentioned that before, but just a reminder.

Ah, rambling.

I should probably work on Heaven on Earth soon. Micah wants to get laid already.

And OH MY FUCKING GOD. I am about three milliseconds away from officially deleting my MySpace and Facebook accounts forever. I hate social fucking goddamn networking.

Edit: Bye bye, MySpace. Watch it, Facebook--you're hanging on by a thread.

I'm pretty sure at this point that I will not be finishing The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

The "fragile and weak" woman's nature in me just can't bear to be called a "blue-eyed white devil" even one more time.

I've been re-watching the first season of Lost. I never intended to start over, but I got an urge to watch the pilot a few days ago, and ever since, I've been watching an episode or two late at night before I go to bed.

I miss Lost.

Lots of things going on--scholarship application's due a week from today, and this Saturday I plan on doing some community service cleaning I don't know exactly what but it doesn't matter because I'm just doing it to pad my resume thing. Doing something you never do just to make people think you're the kind of person who always does that sort of thing--there has to be some sort of neurosis hidden somewhere in there. Not that community service isn't great and wonderful and full of sparkly unicorn candy rainbows.

...It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't always want you to serve the community at ungodly hours on the weekend. But they do. Who says you have to save the world in the morning? On a Saturday?

I know I said "lots of things" and then went on to specify only two things, but there are lots of other things going on, too. Book reading, paper writing--boring crap that needs no expounding upon.

So that's all for today.

So I got possibly the weirdest email ever today. Labeled simply "hi again," it seems to be some sort of mass email, but mine is the only college email address on the list--so I don't know where this person might have gotten it from.

Some part of me that's been warped by all my literature classes to believe that if it makes no sense it must be good can't help but think this is some weird avant garde work by an eccentric individual. Or maybe s/he's just crazy.

( Copied and pasted. )

I haven't decided whether or not to reply. Probably I won't, but I can't help but be intrigued.

School. Scholarship applications. Doctors.

If I could just be rid of these three things, maybe I could stop being so goddamn emo.

I'm pretty sure I lost my ability for critical thought over the summer.

If anybody knows where I can find it, please let me know.

I'm beginning to wonder if all the effort I'm going through to try and get these study abroad scholarship(s) is even worth the meager amount of money I'll get if I win.

FUCKING FUCK, I'm so frustrated I could shake a baby!

WHEN were the requirements for my scholarship changed? WHY was I not informed? WHO can I punch in the face for making all of this as difficult as they possibly can?

It's been a while, but I just don't have much of anything interesting to write about. Still behind on everything, still stressed, still trying to go to England. (There has been a bit of progress there--I've been accepted into the program, anyway. Now to find the money.)

And, well... that's really it. Really.

Forgot to mention:

New chapter of Heaven on Earth.

"I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread."

Oh, Bilbo, how I sympathize.

Between Catch-22 with its sexual objectification of 99.99% of the women that flit in and out of the storyline (apparently ladies are either sluts or nurses, and IF you can call it a "storyline") and The Name of the Rose whining about how women are of the Devil every other fucking page (those monks are just bitter about swearing off the snatch for Jesus), I sure could use something angry and feminist right about now.

I wish I could open up my skull and shove all these books inside and just be done with it.

So today will be my first skipped class of the semester.

Just one, mind you, because the other one was canceled, and I did some miscalculations regarding budgeting time for showering, doing the online assignment for the canceled class, and getting out the door forty minutes early because even though it only takes twenty to drive there, it takes another twenty to find a goddamn parking spot and still get to class on time.

And, by not losing all that time driving, I can spend more time studying to make up for it!

...No, seriously, that was my first thought when I realized I was going to miss class. That's okay, now I can spend all day studying! Yay!

I've become a monster.

I just need a minute to freak the fuck out.

I can't do this anymore. I just can't. Want to, but can't. It hasn't even been a full week since the semester started, and I'm already going crazy. It's all I can do to keep up with the reading for my English classes, but what about my other three classes? I need to do some reading, studying, whatevering for them too, but how am I supposed to find the time when I'm always reading fifty pages of this book or a hundred pages of that book?

And it doesn't help that every five minutes I think about all the work I need to be doing and how I'll never be able to do it all, and I just freeze up and cry and fall apart.

Much less getting anything done regarding England.

What the hell am I doing?

Saturday was glorious.

I got new shoes, Thai food (& sushi! ♥), and the weather was gorgeous. On the drive home, the afternoon light made everything all golden, and when the sun set it was pink and purple and orange. And I was happy.

Today is not so glorious.

Today is just another day of read, read, read, doubt, doubt, doubt.