Blah

This morning I got up an hour earlier than I have been getting up and got my butt in to work so I could get the most tedious and frustrating test of my life started. It was snowy outside, had to clean off my car, doors were frozen shut, hurt my finger trying to get one open, got to work and someone tells me we had an hour delay. Not that I would have used it this morning with all the crud I need to get done, but geesh.

I'm wiped out. Went to bed about an hour earlier than usual, but all of these crazy thoughts kept running through my head and I couldn't fall asleep. So, I am pretty sure I got less sleep than usual and got up earlier. Yay for that. I'm pretty sure that after I drive to campus and go to class, I'm gonna have to come back to the base to get the ball rolling on this test. I also need to go to the grocery store tonight.

All I want is a good night of sleep each night. If I could actually get 6-7 hours, I think I'd be in great shape, but even when I try to get that much, I only end up with 4-5 hours, and that just doesn't cut it. It doesn't help that I'm doing a lot more traveling this month than usual. Three of my four weekends are going to be spent in a car. That doesn't make for the most restful of times for me.

I need to find someone to turn off my brain every night.

Late Night Thoughts

This is new...usually I post from work and I definitely don't post this late at night. But I went to a party on campus this evening, had a beer dumped on my BL hat...grrrr.

I've finally figured something out. I have not been "emotionally available" as of late. Yeah, I may say I'm looking but the fact is I'm hung up on unfinished business. I've never been the kind of person who can read more than one book at a time, and my personal life is the same.

So I'm thinking about closing this book. The plot is comparable to Sarum...if you've read that awful book you know what I mean...yeah things change but in the end you don't feel like things are any different than they were at the beginning of the book. There's a good fight or sexy love scene here and there, but the rest is just landscape. And its predictable. And in the end it would probably have been better to leave it to someone who actually might have appreciated the history behind it. And really, someone just left it sitting out on a counter-that's where you found it...but when it comes down to it the owner eventually wants the book back-the owner may have neglected it but its still her book.

I dunno...if you haven't read Sarum I don't know how much of that analogy actually makes sense.

I just hope the book doesn't want me to keep reading...because once I close that book and walk away, it would take something close to a miracle to get me to pick it back up.

Deepest Apology

I want to take this time to apologize to everyone I've ever done this to...

Last night a good friend was talking to me online. I was in one of my crappy moods where nothing seems to cheer me up. Most people just leave me alone during these times, but this good friend chose to try to cheer me up. He complimented me and told me not to be sad. Instead of being a normal human being and thanking him for what he was trying to do, I took his compliment and picked it apart.

Why can't I just let people say nice things to me, about me, without freaking out and acting like an idiot? I know at the moment I receive a compliment my feelings are some mix between modesty and insecurity. Its funny, for all that I have accomplished and that I know I can accomplish, I still seem to have some pretty shoddy self-esteem. I see myself as this normal, run-of-the-mill girl, and I have never thought I was worthy of praise for just being me. There are times when I'm kinda okay at receiving compliments-like when I'm receiving a compliment or award for some specific task I've accomplished. When you're the top student in your engineering society and you have a list that is a page long with all the things you've done to earn the award, its easy to say, "well, yeah, I do deserve that 'congratulation' or 'good job' or 'I'm proud of you'". I guess it starts to fall apart when the compliment is that I'm sweet or a good friend or something along those lines. Maybe its that I feel that those are qualities any good person should possess, so I don't deserve to be complimented for possessing them. And if the compliment has anything to do with me being attractive or sexy, that's when I really don't handle it well. I see myself as an average-looking klutz who couldn't be sexy if her life depended on it.

Maybe you're sitting there saying, "but I've complimented you in one of those ways and you seemed to handle it okay". Well, if that happened my handling it probably came in one of two ways: I choked out a thanks and smiled and then found a reason to walk away or I laughed and smiled and turned it into something sarcastic. Defense mechanisms at their best.

But anyway, I hate that I'm like this. Not because I feel that I should be prouder of myself, but because of what my reaction does to the people I care about. And as much as I don't deal with it well, eventually I really appreciate that person going out on a limb to tell me they like something about me.

So, I'm sorry.

Its just not easy to change a person overnight.

What I want from life

When I was in high school, my friends and I used to make lists of "requirements" for boyfriends-you know, if you do this, you don't qualify. Yeah, it was juvenile, but what do you want...we were in high school. And although the idea of putting the perfect man down on paper is preposterous, the concept behind it is healthy. Knowing what you can and cannot tolerate, what will make you happy and what will send you to the edge of sanity. I'm no longer of the belief that a list like this can really be compiled about a mate because if I look at the history of men to whom I've been attracted, it follows no rhyme or reason. The same thing that I find completely obnoxious done by one guy can get me completely hot and bothered by another guy. Really all I can honestly write down is that he can't be a smoker or a drug addict.

But there are some things that I've decided I should compose as "requirements" for life. Just a list of the things I don't want to live without. I would like to:

1. be married.
2. go to bed and wake up each day knowing that my husband loves me.
3. have children (number to be negotiated).
4. own a home.
5. be able to see my family (parents and bro) at least three-four times a year.
6. have enough money for the essentials.
7. send my children to college.
8. stay in shape.
9. enjoy my job.
10. make a difference through my job and my service to the community.

This is all I've got so far. Yeah, they all seem really basic, but I think that we sometimes lose sight of some of these points if they aren't staring us in the face. I don't want to say that any of those really hold more weight than the others, but sometimes you can rank importance by the order things come to mind. Maybe by having a list, the little or big decisions at the crossroads will be clearer.

Longing

Lately I've been having very strong feelings of longing. Longing to be without big decisions, longing to see people, longing to sleep, longing to be healthy, etc. I just hate feeling like everything is just slightly out of my reach. Everytime something moves close and I reach for it, it slips through my fingers. I feel like I'm going crazy.

I know there are so many people who love me and care about me, but sometimes I just want to hear someone say it, unprompted. I mean, my parents tell me that they love me everytime they see me or talk to me on the phone. But that's just what we do in my family. I also worry that I don't tell people often enough that I love them. Have people given up on me because I'm so bad at sharing how I feel?

Its weird to feel that hearts are so close emotionally when they are physically hundreds and thousands of miles apart.