Procrastination Blog -- Becoming Obama

About this very long article, or rather excerpt from a soon-to-be-published biography.

Regardless of politics -- incidentally, isn't it funny how people always seem to preface any non-political comment about the President with "regardless of your politics?" I've read/heard two different people's accounts of traveling among people who speak a different language, who mentioned that the only word they could both understand was "George Bush" or "Obama." And these writers always prefaced the anecdote with "regardless of your politics." Are they just being overcautious, or are people really so touchy that even the name of the President is inherently "political"?

Anyway, regardless of politics, this account of Obama's youth reminds me forcibly of a Fitzgerald novel (esp. The Beautiful and the Damned). Look at his diary entries, his letters, his girlfriend's diary entries and letters! Just thirty years ago, did people (or at least, these two people) think so much and observe so much and write it all down and have the right word at their fingertips all the time without having to Google "thesaurus" every few minutes to find exactly the right connotation? After reading some of this I feel sort of misled by his public demeanor, which seems too friendly and almost slightly bumbling compared to this...this mind. (Though on second thoughts, perhaps acquiring this unimposing personability was what "growing up" meant to Barack Obama.)

But but but how can someone think so much?

And now, how can we think so little? Do we think and write less, or is it (as always) just me? Considering the effects of the Internet, it seems almost inevitable that we write less, if only because the public screams of the few are spread so well that they threaten to eclipse our individual whisperings, or at least make them pointless to record. Maybe this is a good thing: maybe nobody actually wants their diaries to be found thirty years later, no matter how well thought out, and maybe the individual whisperings are all drivel anyway. (I'm almost positive that mine are, but I will publish them anyway in complete confidence that at most two people will read them.)

But do we think less than the average Obama contemporary? Was Obama an anomaly, a real-life Fitzgeraldian hero who happened to choose statecraft instead of an inevitable spiral into madness and/or debauchery? Or am I the anomaly, living a semi-examined life? I would guess that it is probably easier (but also less fulfilling) to avoid introspection today than it was ten years ago. (Hint: www.tumblr.com, or failing that, Netflix.) I would also suggest that introspection may be more discouraged today than it was years ago. At college (or at least at my university), there's a culture of efficiency: of speed-reading, of not asking questions, of cramming courses into schedules, of fulfilling requirements, of why do you care so much, of pretending that you don't. That list is actually quite close to my list of "keys for success for the incoming university student."

But maybe the lack of introspection comes back to the "why do you care so much" point. We had to keep journals for the class associated with my scholarship, and my first entry turned into a very long rant (somewhat akin to this one) that jumped off from something that was said in one of my classes or lab or something and went off on a philosophical tangent (as I am wont to do when I write.) I was of course terribly embarrassed almost immediately upon finishing and ripped out the pages and started a fresh entry wherein I quite literally listed the events of my day. A bulleted list. And wrote a to-do list. A bulleted to-do list.

Keys to success!

I wish I had time, I wish I could think, I wish I could read, I wish I didn't have Calculus homework due at midnight.

Procrastination accomplished. My deepest apologies.

Why so silent, good m'sieur?

I am tired and bored and a little anxious so I thought now was a good moment to blog and spew some stress out into the internet. You know, as one does.

Also, my titles are random, as you should know by now.

I miss my piano a lot right now. (Even though it's one in the morning and I couldn't play piano even if I were at home.) On Friday I took the Patterson piano for a spin (not a spin, a...tickle? what is the appropriate idiom for this?) and it was awful; the whole feeling was wrong. At first I was playing Cristofori's Dream and one of the RAs sort of rushed up to me and said, "I love that song!" And I said, in my awkward/overenthusiastic way, "Oh, do you play David Lanz?" And he had no idea what I was talking about and rushed away again...

After that I was terrible, terrified that I was either awful or bothering everyone around me, and there are people EVERYWHERE in this hall and oh god it's so claustrophobic sometimes. I love being truly alone, but I hate being alone and surrounded by people. That's the worst part of college, in my opinion. Particularly sitting in a classroom or lab or lecture hall full of strangers...it's a huge contrast from knowing and trusting and liking everyone in my high school classes.

Also, I can't freaking sing! I never knew until now how often I have the urge to burst into song...an urge I have to repress unless I want to alienate everyone on my floor. (Once I decided to sing in the shower, thinking there was nobody there...I was wrong. Also, apparently you could hear me four doors down. Whoops.)

Ahaha I just realized how whiny I sound. I'm really quite content with my college experience thus far...it's better than I feared, worse than I'd hoped, which I suppose is true of most things. The above is pretty much an exhaustive description of the things I hate about college. The things I love...

~ Coke Zero! I have recently discovered it; it's so lovely! I drink it like water.

~ A few lovely people I've met

~ My sister! Never again shall I be separated from her and her cool hair.

~ My research mentor...perhaps in a few weeks I could just shorten this to "my research," but right now I am still too stupid and can't figure out anything on my own. So it's not really "my" research. Also, I'm doing online safety and ethics training right now...it's torture.

~ My BIcycle, BIcycle BIcycle. I love to ride my bicycle.

~ Autonomy (need I even explain this?)

~ My room. It's pretty decked out. To the extent that we're going to have to take off the posters to pass fire safety inspection.

~ My two goldfish, Mad Eye and Nymphadora, and their bling. (They have bling instead of gravel right now...but I took pity on them and ordered them some black gravel to mix among the bling.)

There, that was a fulfilling and positive blogging experience! Now, back to the sodding safety training.

xxx

Love the art in yourself, not yourself in art.

Hooray for no posts in June!

So, I wrote that speech, about a month-and-a-half ago, and cruised and cooked-out and graduated (graduating is a week-long process at my school.) Call me an emotionless robot, but I really enjoyed that week. We got to go on a boat, and lie out in the sun, and write ridiculously long yearbook signatures. Maybe it didn't register for me as a leave-taking, and I just thought of it as a week of enforced fun in the sun with my friends. I didn't cry at all...except when I was riding home from graduation with one of my best friends, blasting "Get Back to Hogwarts" from A Very Potter Musical for not-the-last-time-but-it-felt-like-it.


I'm unemployed for the summer, so I've turned into a total housewife. I garden and clean and play piano and cook and take  care of my dogs and volunteer and read and indulge in disgustingly long Scrubs marathons and have genteel meet-ups with friends. Unfortunately, I'm hilariously unskilled at all of these activities (except the Scrubs marathons). All my plants are being eaten by the baby groundhog that lives under our porch. He's adorable.


Housewifely industry notwithstanding, it's a lot easier to get depressed when you don't get to see hundreds of cheery people with whom you have everything in common each day. And when the official end of the Harry Potter franchise is only fourteen days away...


(Side note: I'm actually having bad dreams about my parents having to drive us to the Harry Potter midnight premiere, deciding to stop at Walgreens, and causing us to be half an hour late for the movie. It's so frightening. I'm way too obsessed.)


(Another side note: I'm so disappointed by Pottermore. Yes, it might be cool, but why, WHY have an actual COUNTDOWN to an announcement about a website that won't even be launched for four more months?)


(Final side note: I now have the Months-of-the-Year song I was taught in kindergarten stuck in my head. Why, why, why, Delilah?)


Anyway, I'm off to bake bananana bread! Hopefully I'll start blogging more regularly now that I have nothing to do!


x

Song Challenge Day 10

a song that makes me fall asleep...Heartbeats ~ Jose Gonzalez

I first heard this song last year on Bones and instantly loved it. I still sometimes listen to it before bed.

Also, there should be accents in "Jose" and "Gonzalez" but I'm too lazy to teach myself how to do them in Blogger. Also, apparently Spanish people are not as crazy about accents as the French. Can anyone confirm or deny?

In other news, I am trying to write a speech. So far I have written "Spich. By me." This is not going very well.

*Update* I've now written three lines. Just re-reading them makes me bored to tears. How does one write a thrilling commencement address?

Songz Day 9...and the return of the Blog Challenge!

a song to dance to:  Monster ~ Lady Gaga


And because I can't think of anything else to say, I'll do another Blog Challenge day...remember that thing I started way back in Januray? Yeah, me neither.


a habit I wish I didn't have...

I would put procrastination, but everybody puts procrastination. Everybody procrastinates; that's not nearly bad enough of a habit. So here goes!
One habit that I wish I didn't have is complaining about people behind their backs. I guess I don't "talk behind people's backs" in the normal sense, because for some reason I'm not usually annoyed by people I don't know very well -- or at least not annoyed enough to talk about it. What I do is worse: when one of my friends or family members has done or said something to hurt me, I don't confront him/her; instead, I whinge about it to another friend. To the person's face, I act totally friendly and unbothered even though I may be seething on the inside. I can't decide which is the better alternative, though: To tell people off for all their petty slights, introducing discord into an otherwise perfectly good relationship? Or to just remain silent and deny myself the satisfaction of complaining? For little things, I'm leaning towards the latter, trying to be less obsessive about snarky throwaway comments, trying to care less about what people think of me...basically, trying to be less of a loser :)


Sorry, this post was meant to be slightly more amusing than it turned out to be, but I ended up picking a rather dismal topic...have a picture... 

I would never dissect a ewe.

 
...and a ninja-hyperlink, if you found it! Yeah, I spend too much time on YouTube...maybe I should've written about procrastination instead!

Song Challenge Day 8-ish

a song to which I know all the words: Going Back to Hogwarts ~ AVPM

Yup. I'm just that hardcore.

That live video is pretty much the most amazing thing ever, but here's the nice clean studio-ish version if you want it.

You don't understand this love.