Just in case you were wondering January 30, 2008
I finally fell asleep last night, though not until 11:45, my usual time. But I’m feeling much better this morning, less worried. It was just a weird night.
I worry too much January 29, 2008
I was going to go to bed early tonight. I’ve been exhausted all day for some reason. I had planned on doing some job stuff, sending off resumes or something this evening, because Kyle has plans so I won’t be talking to him. But then I just didn’t feel like it. I’ve been feeling sort of weird all day, which is contributing to me writing this entry, which will probably be weird and possibly depressing. So if you don’t want to continue reading about my worries, you should probably stop here. Today I’ve felt weak with a slight headache, and I’ve been really homesick and nervous. So I thought I’d just get a lot of sleep and that would take care of it. But then I got in bed at 8:30, and I haven’t been able to fall asleep.
I started wondering why I’ve been feeling weird. I wonder if something is wrong with me or if something bad has happened at home and that’s why I feel nervous. It’s not like I would be able to subconsciously know that, but I still worry about it. In my head, I reason out that there’s no reason to worry, and even if there was, there would be nothing I could do about it so I might as well not think about it. But I can’t stop it. So then my mind won’t shut off, and I can’t fall asleep.
I was talking to my mom over the break about my irrational worrying (whenever I come back to England, I’m always afraid that something will happen to my mom or Kyle while I’m gone), and she said she didn’t used to worry. It wasn’t until my dad got sick, and something really bad happened in her life that she realized bad things could happen to her. And I guess I’ve grown up knowing that bad things can happen, so I’ve always had a tendency to worry more than the average person because in some ways I’ve had my worst fears realized when I was quite young, although my worrying has gotten worse or maybe just been renewed since Joe died. I’ve survived it, and because of it, I know I can survive pretty much anything emotionally. I’m stronger because of it, but sometimes I just wish I could go back to being naive and thinking that bad things only happen to other people. But I can’t. Every time I get on a plane, rather than think it’s fun and exciting I pray until we get into the air and start praying again as soon as we start our descent. When I tried to fall asleep tonight, I thought about Joe and wondered if there are people out there who have sleep apnea and don’t know it. I always keep myself signed onto skype and gmail in case anybody needs to get a hold of me, and I get really mad when our internet quits working because then I’m unavailable.
I don’t know why I’m writing all this here. I guess I thought maybe if I wrote it down, I could stop thinking about it and finally fall asleep. But I probably won’t. I’ll keep worrying until I stop feeling nervous or until I’ve gotten through the night and know that nothing bad has happened. I know I’m blessed in many ways, and a lot of people are a lot worse off than me. I know I should be grateful for what I have, and not get upset over things that haven’t happened. But sometimes my irrational thoughts win out over my rational ones. I don’t know how to control it. And when that happens, it totally sucks.
Reward January 28, 2008
I just sent an e-mail to my thesis supervisor with a draft of my entire thesis as well as a new chapter, which consists mostly of charts and graphs with a bunch of data. I’m not really sure what to do with the data, other than put it into scatter plots, but hopefully he’ll be able to give me some insight with that. I kept pushing back my deadline of when I was going to get this e-mail to him because everything always takes longer than I anticipate when it comes to this thesis. First it was Friday, then it was Sunday, then it was this morning, and it finally got to him this afternoon. I’ve worked six hours today on that thing. I haven’t left the flat once. I was in my pajamas until noon, at which time I changed into sweats because I had to go out to the kitchen to make lunch. I took a short break for lunch, and then worked until I got it done. And now I’m rewarding myself with writing in my blog.
I haven’t written in a while, and some pretty crazy things have happened. Last week, after the first couple days, I had a complete lack of motivation to do anything. Tuesday I was in a foul mood because I had a tutorial with guys who don’t talk to me. And then a JCR meeting, during which I worked on my thesis the entire time. Thursday, Jeanne (Georgetown girl) and I went to get tickets to Beauty and the Beast on Ice, not Disney on ice, more of a ballet with music by an Italian composer and done by the Russian Ice Stars. Although afterward, I did really want to watch the Disney movie. We went to that on Sunday. It was really good, except for the fact that they didn’t turn out all the lights in the theater, and one of the lights that stayed on was right above us. We asked about it, but they just said we could move, and all the other seats weren’t in the center, so we stayed. It was almost an acrobatic show as well as skating. They grabbed onto ropes and swung around above the ice, had fire, did flips, all kinds of stuff. I can’t really describe it, but I did take some illegal pictures, so I’ll have to put those up on flickr at some point.
But before that, on Friday night, formal hall was Burns Night, which is a Scottish celebration of a poet, Burns. They had haggis, which is a bunch of gross meat (intestines and stuff) all wrapped up in cow stomach, I think. I tried it (didn’t taste as terrible as it sounds), but mostly stuck to the vegetarian option (which was more nutty), and mainly ate the mashed potatoes. There were bagpipes and speeches and reading of poems. It was a lot of fun. Then afterward, we had a Ceilidh, which is basically Scottish square dancing. There’s a caller, and you try to do what he tells you, if you can understand his accent. I danced from like 9:30 until 11. My first partner was an old man named Peter. Then I danced with Jeanne for quite a while. And last, I danced with Allison (another Georgetown girl). And on like the last move, I twisted my ankle, which I had planned on that being my last dance anyway, so it worked out well. I also apparently pulled a muscle in the back of my leg, maybe at the same time, and kicked the back of my foot, making it bleed, which I didn’t notice until I got back up to my room.
But it was a lot of fun. I acted crazy like I haven’t done in a while, and the Georgetown guy who is here (who was trying to get me to drink all night) thought I was drunk. When I told him I hadn’t had anything to drink, he said that’s even worse since I was acting like that. But I just said, hey at least I’ll remember the fun I’m having. I didn’t say it in a mean way, though. We were joking around, but I don’t think he understood that I just don’t like to drink much. And apparently I don’t need alcohol in my system to make me make a fool of myself and have fun doing it.
So anyway, those were my two big events of the week. Now I have to decide if I’m going to do more work or take the rest of the evening off. Or maybe even send my resume out to some people. Oh the wonderful options I have.
I have a desk now. January 21, 2008
On Sunday, Celia came over after church for lunch, and we managed to move this table/desk from my flat’s common room to my bedroom. And it fits. It makes things a little more crowded in here. But now I have somewhere to write more easily. And I can feel more productive. And I can move it behind my bed, so I still have enough room to do yoga, or the same amount of room I had before.
I’ve been doing pretty well at sticking to my schedule, although today, I had a brief detour in trying to get my plane tickets shipped to the right address. My mom actually did most of the calling, but I kept having to call her back and give her more information. First, who only issues paper tickets anymore? Second, the person who left a message on my cell phone to tell me that I needed a new address to ship to gave me the wrong number to call back. Third, even though the ticket is issued to my name and paid with my credit card, because it was bought while signed into Kyle’s Orbitz account, they wouldn’t let my mom change the shipping address the first time. But it finally worked.
Then I was reading through international economics. I feel like I really need to study this stuff because I didn’t do very well on the collection, but as I read the textbook chapters, I really feel like I’ve learned these models a million times. So there’s just something I’m not getting. So I e-mailed Dr. Cooper, my econ prof from G-town (a lot of abbreviations there), and asked him for help. We’ll see if he has time. I also got a package from Kyle today of some notes that I left in his car. I thought they were these really important notes for my thesis, so I told him I needed them as quickly as possible, after scanning them didn’t work because of the pencil they were written in. So he spent a bunch to get them to me over the weekend. So I get them, and the notes I’m looking for aren’t there. I went into panic mode for a bit, until I looked through my other notes and found that I had had the really important ones with me all along. I needed the other ones, just not as rushed as I thought. So this evening I worked on my thesis. I had forgotten how long it takes to just revise things on it. I’m so ready to be done with this thing. Sometimes I think it wasn’t worth it, but at the end, I’ll have a good piece of work, and be really happy that I only have 7 exams instead of 8. At the end of my day, Kyle and I were talking on the phone trying to make my graphs look pretty, and I got an e-mail about revision classes for my economics of industry course. But that’s the one I did really well on in the collection, so I really don’t feel like doing it. But I guess I will. You can never have too much preparation, right?
I did a headstand! January 20, 2008
So I was doing this yoga routine last night. It’s from this podcast I get, and it was yoga for hangovers, which I doubt I’ll ever need that. But the girl says it’s good for just plain old headaches too, which I do get those a lot. And I had a bit of one last night. So I took an advil, took a bath, and still sort of had it, so I decided to try this routine. I don’t remember if it made it go away, but I guess it made me stop thinking about it. At one point, the girl says, I know this sounds crazy but doing a headstand can actually help. So I’ve tried sort of to do headstands before, but I’ve always gotten too scared that I would come crashing down, and just given up. But last night, I was against a wall, and I actually got to the point where my back was touching the wall. So then I just had to lift my legs up, which you can’t just kick because you’ll hit the wall and probably bounce off. So I did it slowly and got up. I was so excited that I was actually able to do it. So I held it for a little while, and I was leaning against the wall quite a bit, but I came back down without crashing. So now I have more confidence that if I get my abs strong enough, I’ll eventually do it without the wall. And maybe even start handstands at some point. I used to do headstands and handstands with no problem when I was in gymnastics, but that was like 15 years ago, when I was a whole lot shorter with a whole lot less body to hold up. So I just thought I would get excited about it on my blog. I also did almost 6 hours of studying on a Saturday. I was impressed with myself to resist the temptation to say, it’s Saturday, I can take a break, which I didn’t do my full day of work, but I did quite a bit. So yesterday was a good day.
