Monday, May 31, 2010

Black rose to my socks

I started a pair of socks.  The pattern is called Blackrose socks.  Then I made a few mistakes (ladders, wrong cast-on, random and inexplicable decreases, skipped a lace row) and scrapped them.

So now I have to start over.

Lovely time in NJ is coming to a close tomorrow.  Then I just have finals and nationals, and then I'm done!  I shall be working on my blackrose socks whenever I can.

In other news, the yarn I'm using, Nashua's Best Foot Forward in Autumn, is variegated and I absolutely love it. This is staggering, because I hate variegated yarns but this one looks lovely.  It also obscures the lace pattern.  Who knew.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Well, here I am

... in Jersey.

I'm actually having a really lovely time.  Despite this past week being a week in which I thought I was going to relax but found out otherwise, I have blessedly not been as tired.  During this whole week (excluding last night), I haven't gone to bed before 1 AM.  Although, last night should count, considering I had to wake up at 3:30 AM to catch my flight.

I nearly died of a heart attack today several times.  First of all, the bus to take me to O'Hare was fifteen minutes late.  For someone like me who likes to be at the airport in plenty of time, even if the airport bus was spot-on time, it would've been an abnormally tight squeeze.  Naturally it wasn't.  I got to the airport with forty-five minutes to go before my flight and due to my genius of printing out my boarding pass ahead of time managed to make it to (what I thought was) my gate in fifteen minutes.  But wait!  There's more!  My boarding pass and the boards at the airport told me to go to the wrong gate.  F8, they said.  If not for the intervention of an extremely helpful gentleman, I would've missed my flight.  We were chatting and he was telling me about how you could get text alerts about your flight, and since my phone was already off he decided to do it for me.  This was the point where I discovered my gate was actually E7, not F8.  I had to book it to the other side of the terminal and managed to make it 15 minutes before my plane left.  Phew.  (For reference, I usually like to arrive at the airport about two hours before my flight.  The earliest airport bus, however, would only take me to the airport one hour before my flight.)

But, here I am, safe and sound.  Ryan's family is pretty charming (a lot better than mine, but what's new?) and their house is a genuine menagerie.  It's amazing.  They have like, eight rabbits, two tortoises, two guniea pigs, three hamsters, a snake, a leopard gecko, and two frogs in the bathroom.  Rabbits are really soft and cuddly... just in case anyone wanted to know.

Tomorrow I'm going yarn shopping at some local yarn stores, because if I don't start a new project for me as soon as possible, I'm going to explode.  I still haven't ever knit anything for myself.  Not to mention, knitting provides daily stress relief in a way nothing else does.  Although being in Jersey, not having anything to do, and hanging out with Ryan all day is the best stress relief cocktail I could ask for, I still want to knit.

Time to do some Ravelry cruising.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Four different topics

I need to start a new knitting project or I'm going to go insane.  Technically, I should finish the EPS raglan and begin on Hope's scarf.  Sigh.  In truth, Hope's scarf seems daunting to me right now when all I really want to do is knit a nice cardigan or shawl or mittens or something.  (Sorry Bree, it'll get done  D: )

On a complete tangent, I had a very nice weekend with Ryan and saw him off to the airport yesterday.  Bree went with us, and when we were on our way back, we missed our train.  We ended up skipping around Millennium Park and hanging around a Dunkin' Donuts... and who should sit at the table next to us but real, genuine hookers?  They were really terribly dressed and were talking about "the business."  Yeah.  We also saw a crazy hobo on Michigan Ave.  He was speaking in tongues.

On another complete tangent, I've also been playing on Skritter for awhile.  It's a website designed for kanji practice for Japanese... seriously, the most amazing kanji practice site ever designed.  It makes learning kanji fun (for me, at least).  So fun, I use the verb "play" when I talk about Skritter.  I play on Skritter.

Headway on life problems has been made, I think.  Waiting for the start of summer for things to really kick off (about a week and a half).  Feelings towards AAP are slowly dying down to embers.  The release from the emotions he stirred up in me makes me want to cry, it's so good.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Amazing

Ryan's coming to see me tonight.  Expect me to disappear off the face of the earth now that he's here.

Oh, and I finished all of my IB exams!  I'M FREE!  Now I can start getting off of my ass and maybe doing some things?

Thursday, May 20, 2010

The Trifecta of Depression

WARNING: extremely long blog post about life problems

Sometimes the ginger life ain't so easy.  I'm having some problems and I think I can't go to bed with any semblance of peace of mind until I get these thoughts out of my head somehow.  I don't like talking to people about it because there's nothing, really, that other people can do to help.  In order to overcome these problems, changes are going to have to occur inside of myself.  (Of course, others can give moral support and encouragement, which is greatly appreciated.)  Not to mention, it's difficult for most of the people I know to relate to my problems.  And, I haven't told many people about it yet, so in order for people to get the entire story, they'd be sitting there until next July.

But I'm going to tell you, O Blog Readers of Mine.  Not just to tell someone, but so I can get these thoughts organized and presented in a fashion that will help me understand them as well.

The problems in my life either fall under the heading of Arrogance or Sloth or Hate.  The arrogance of other people is getting me down; I always feel compared and judged by these people.  And sloth because there are changes I want to make in my life, and I know how to do them... it's just that I haven't.  There's no reason why I couldn't have done anything.  I just haven't.  And hate because I can't deal with hating humanity very well.

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Arrogance... It's really the arrogance of other people, and maybe some traces of arrogance in myself.  I hate arrogance.  In my humble opinion, nobody is better than anybody else and everyone is entitled to their lifestyle as long as it doesn't harm anybody (philosophical questions aside).  I must admit that sometimes in my thoughts I fall victim to arrogance; many a time there has been when I have imagined myself better than some crude people I know.  But I know that on the inside, we're all the same.

What really gets me, though, is the presupposed self-importance that many people carry around with them.  I don't like it.  It makes me feel a little bit sick to think that they think they're better than me.  One person in particular haunts my life with his arrogance and immaturity even though I haven't spoken a word to him since December (who hereby will be referred to as Aforementioned Arrogant Person [AAP]).  Every time I'm in his presence, I feel like every action I make should somehow be geared to telling him that I am not the lowlife he thinks I am.

But more than this person, I feel like the things I do in life should be done to tell everybody that I am worthy of high thoughts.  Right now in high school, I'm dealing with everybody in my class who has a higher rank than me, higher GPAs than me, better scholarships than mine, more awards, etc., etc.  In reality, I don't care that I don't have these things.  I don't need them to be happy.  All I wanted was to go to IU to study languages and become a translator, and I'm getting that!  IU gave me enough financial aid so that I can realize my life goal.  I have everything I want set before me, and I'm still suffering from bouts of depression because I feel like I have to prove myself to people.  How messed up is that?

I had a realization one day that I live in an extremely competitive society where high achievement -- not happiness -- is considered success.  I honestly do not give a flying fuck about achieving as much as possible.  I care about achieving what makes me happy.  But what makes me happy is not what everyone else thinks goes into the formula for A Good Person.  Thus, my happiness goals conflict with the societal image of a person worth thinking highly of.  Societal schemas still rubs off on me, though, and I can't help looking at all of the achievements everybody else has made and becoming depressed.

I'm all for achieving a lot in something you're passionate about.  I haven't really been achieving much lately, though (see Sloth), and so that might have quite a bit to do with my depression.  I want to be involved in humanitarian causes, languages, and religious activities -- all things I'm not doing right now.  You should achieve great things in areas you have a passion in, by all means.  But I'm not doing that either.

Social networking sites do nothing to help my obsessive comparisons.  I look up a lot of people on facebook to see what they're up to way too much.  If I weren't so obsessed on what everyone else is doing, then maybe I could get up off of my ass and go do something of my own.  I'm making this out to seem like I'm a closet case, which isn't really true at all, but my words do have something to them.  I spend way too much time in front of the computer, torturing myself by looking up AAP's profile and becoming so angry with the fact that he is so arrogant... I'm only emotionally beating myself up.


So when I compare myself all the time to everybody else, I can't help but feel lackluster.


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Moving on to Sloth.  Admittedly, I am a lazy person and enjoy inactivity.  This is destroying me, though, because as mentioned beforehand, I don't get up off of my ass to do anything.  There are so many things I want to do, and I'm not doing them.  Why?  There is no reason why.  A mental block, perhaps, but if there is one it is so subtle, I don't even know it's there.

I want to learn six languages, start some knowledge on my midwifery training, knit, lose weight, start on the path to religious realization, start my yoga training, and read.  I also have a job and am going to be a college student.  All of this is really hard to fit into one life, I know, but it is so doable.  I know I can do it.  And I don't.  I'm not going to lie when I say that I have some problems with my weight.  I'm not fat, but I am by no means fit, either.  And this bothers me.  I want to be fit.  I have all the tools before me to become what I want to become, and I'm not doing it.  Not doing anything to further my dreams drags down my self-esteem even more.  And it makes me even more depressed when I look around at my life and realize that I am not a step further towards my goals today than I was a month ago.

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And finally, Hate.  I hate humanity, I hate how people mindlessly go about their lives, I hate how I can predict where half of my graduated class will be twenty years from now.  I hate ignorance and arrogance and apathy about important things.  I hate lies and untruth.  I hate war, fighting, and pointless conflicts.  I hate atheism, intolerance, propaganda, irresponsibility, being woken up, boredom, and petty-ness.  The list goes on and on, but most importantly, I hate AAP.

AAP and I used to be friends.  We used to be very good friends, as a matter of fact -- he was one of my best friends.  And then he started to change... and become more arrogant.  He began to believe that his opinions on everything were better than everyone else's.  He laughed at others' stupidity.  Sometimes he would sit on the internet, find pictures of people, and laugh at them because they weren't like him.  He thought his opinion was the only right opinion to have on naturally subjective matters, like politics and music.  Then he found someone who was just like him and had the same arrogance level, and everything magnified tenfold.  Now he likes to make fun of people who aren't like him.  Eventually, I bitched him out and told him to stop talking to me.

I just can't get over losing him to something I dislike so much.  I can't deal with the fact that I hate him.  And I don't hate him, per se... but the thought of him makes me sick.  I can't wait to get away from him when I go to college, yet I occasionally peek through his tumblr and facebook profile to see what he's up to, and everything I see intensifies my anger and dislike.  I find myself thinking about him at least once a day, and I can relate so many things about him that I don't like to almost anything anyone says.  It's sad.  It's terrible.  Because all of his activities or anything he does is just a representation of his arrogance and the pleasure I know he gets from being "different" and "hip" and (shudder) "avant-garde."

I hate all of this, and I can't let it go.  His presence is a shadow over my life and there's no reason why it should be, but it is.  My prolonged hatred of him is eating away at my spirit, slowly but surely, and I need to find a way out of not only hating him, but hating everything else as well.  I need to find a way to deal with everything so that I can find inner peace and not be bothered so much by annoyance from AAP and the world.

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I compare myself to everyone and feel lackluster.  I don't take the steps necessary to fulfill my aspirations.  I am mired in the hatred of humanity and AAP.  In short, I've got some problems and need to do something about it.

Arrogance will be solved when I manage to adhere to my own principles of happiness and achieve them.  Sloth will be taken care of when I start working towards my goals.  And Hate will be tossed away when I can manage to start the path towards self-realization and finally not be troubled so much by everything.  Someone I know always laughs and is happy she's not like everything she hates; I can't do that.  But maybe someday I can work towards it.  I don't have to be angry at everything.  I just need to learn to let things go.

Easier said than done, but at least I've identified the problem.

Monday, May 17, 2010

I survived today

Bio exam was moderately well-taken (except for the material our teacher never taught us -- but that's a rant for a day with more free time and energy), debate work was slogged through, and work went all right.  I am home and not even dead tired.  I have enough energy to write my grade justification essay for my history teacher (i.e., I've known you for four years and I've worked very hard this quarter, so in lieu of having no grades for me, give me an A).  It's good.

I survived today!

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Side note

I've just read the last few posts I've made recently, and I have to make a side note to apologize for the absolute monotony of everything.  I promise I'm not this boring.  IB exams and work are just eating my life.  This vortex of fatigue should end this Sunday, though, so that's when normalcy shall resume.

Whatever normal is.

Of Mitsuwa and Overwork

I have just a week before things slow down and I can relax.  Really, I should have taken this day as a personal day but I chose instead to accompany a few friends up to Chicago to Mitsuwa Marketplace.  Mitsuwa is a Japanese department store in Arlington Heights and it sells almost everything; they also have a food court that offers the best udon I've ever eaten (but I haven't eaten much udon).  I kind of need a day where I can regather my resources and get everything organized... that was supposed to be yesterday during the morning, but that never happened either.  The Great Purge?  It's still waiting.  It kind of has to happen tonight.

Whenever I get really run down, I always have these urges to just lay around and do nothing so I can recuperate from the world.  Trouble is, there's usually all sorts of things I still need to do... so this often resorts in a lot of stuff going undone.  My two most challenging IB exams are coming up this week, bio and Japanese, and I really should be studying a lot for them; instead I nap a lot.  And eat ramen.  And take trips to Mitsuwa.

Tomorrow I have three and a half hours of bio exams to sit through before heading off to a two-hour debate meeting and then going straight to work.  With the rate tonight's going at, it'll probably be on six hours of sleep, too.  Kill me.

Friday, May 14, 2010

The Great Purge

I feel a little guilty for not writing in this regularly, even though almost nobody reads this.  I guess it's the integrity of the matter.

Well, anyway.  I really wanted to talk about "Nicole wants to be a conscious consumer."  For two reasons, really.  One, it's alarming how much stuff that I have that I never use.  And two, it is also alarming on how once I spent almost all of my weekend earnings ($75) on food alone.  Food.  Consumable stuff that I didn't even need to buy and could easily have obtained at home.  $75 that might have been able to be put towards a new laptop for college.  So, I am feeling like a very mindless American right now and this weekend, the Great Purge shall take place.

I feel that all of the possessions that I have cluttered into my room have also cluttered my lifestyle.  It's kind of a bummer to come into my room at the end of a very busy day and just look at all of the stuff, and then also realize that because I have so much stuff, it's really hard to keep my room clean.  My laundry gets out of hand because I have so many clothes, my desk gets cluttered because there are so many useless papers, etc.  I feel that if I can narrow down my possessions to things I really need, and keep it that way, that ultimately it will make me happier.  This also carries some deeper religious undertones... everything in this world has energy, and that energy becomes stagnant when the thing isn't used for its purpose and just sits there.  There is a ton of stagnant energy in my room, not only from unused objects lurking in drawers, but from the unbelievable amount of crap blocking energy from moving around my room.

Enter the Great Purge.  Anything I don't need will be donated to Goodwill.

Things also need to be organized, so that I can easily determine what will take the trip with me down to Bloomington and what won't.  I need a basket for my yarn.  Go figure.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Things that aren't about knitting

Knitting?  What's that?  Yeah, I haven't been knitting at all.  I worked on the EPS raglan for... about twenty minutes today after I finished my third history exam.  Three essays in 2 hours and 10 minutes.  Can you say essay fatigue?  The AP English kids also had their exam today, so in Japanese absolutely nobody wanted to do anything (but that's not different from any other day, anyway).

I'm kind of glad because today I had a re-surge in my desire to actually learn Japanese.  It made me happy and made my college major seem worthwhile.  Hooray!

Aaaand, today I went clothes shopping.  Again.  This is actually more relevant than it seems, because it has ties to "Nicole wants to be a conscious consumer."  More on this later though, considering this blog post has been festering in my browser for two hours while I've shopped for laptops, researched processors, and switched from Microsoft Office to Google Docs.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

It's been awhile

I've been working lots of hours, and my IB exams started this week.  Needless to say, I'm pretty swamped.  And when I'm not swamped, I either sit and stare into space with a zombie expression on my face or sleep.

I've been knitting on the EPS raglan.  Mindless stuff.