After 5 months, "I'm" Baaack

It's really weird to say "I'm back" because I'm not really back, I didn't die, I didn't go into an insane asylum or re-hab for 5 months-- what I think really happened was that I lost myself to... My Self? Nope, strike that. I became so focused on the DOING and ACHIEVING that I think I forgot the reflecting. So painfully Buddhist of me! Now, chained to my computer in an obligatory race to finish my last 12page paper of my college career, the mad thoughts start running again. Maybe I need to throw myself in ridiculous situations to get some good musings.

I guess a good place to start is the beginning of Nelly Furtado's "Do it." What an obnoxious and whiny start to a song: "Someone needs to, like, RAP off the top." I'm ashamed for having it on my ipod, if only for its mediocre workout beats.

I'm currently reading the second half of my Rhetoric of the Myth class from March 30th-present day in, literally, 2 days before writing my paper. My reflections on the transition from agrarian to industrial society in the Gilded Age are intermittently interrupted by the footsteps of roommates making food, cars driving in the rain, and distant airplanes. I hate the libraries and refuse to re-visit the caves of the Main Stacks, I place I thought I had to live freshman year.

I try extremely hard to curb my anger, along with my enthusiasm (though that's easy) at the tiny distractions inherent within any impending deadline. All noises seem magnified, and again I'm left to wonder: Is it really just me???

I found a 2 page musing in one of my class notebooks today and it never ceases to amaze me how sad I sound in my first-person ramblings about the stresses of being a twenty-something. This is the stuff of memories, am I right?

I'm noticing that each paragraph is tending to begin with "I"-- what a selfish move!

I wouldn't have it any other way though. At least not now.

I also think most of my writing comes tinged with bitter sarcasm, and I'm wondering if that's a symptom of my psyche, or a response to an absurd world? (See: some article in the New Yorker about definition of anxiety & depression). I suppose if I took Freud's advice, or called up a certified therapist covered by my blue cross plan, I could pay to hear some grounded scientific responses that would at least temporarily curb my worrying.

When you're tired, everyone annoys you-- but what if you're chronically tired, tired of this game and the ones who think they've "won"-- tired of the virtual social arena in which we're entrenched-- tired of the tired rhetoric of immanent "Real Life." Part of me wants to flee-- to rely on that ever-itching disease of movement, to mirror my thoughts-- but because of my plaguing sense of over-awareness, I KNOW painfully that fleeing is just an attempt to reach a new physical location where my mind may hopefully follow suit. The weight and heaviness of it "all" sometimes fades behind wafts of Star Jasmine, conversations with seemingly confident people, or warm twilight runs on my own.

I often wonder if my "I" is really a "me"--If my writing is worthy of incandescence, or merely symptomatic of my culture, my time, my psyche?

Do I write to protect myself from this feeling of needing to "go back," to return to a state more simple? Do the people in my classes take comfort in hearing themselves talk about anything that seeeeeeems relevant to the reading? With their flittering hands and detailed notes-- that used to be me. I become dizzy sometimes, dizzy from all the swirling emotions around me, and then the bell rings.

We sit at cafes, contemplating the rapid passage of time as if to somehow stop its continual spinning-- but the most we can do is talk of it slowly, sitting on stoops and walking the young Berkeley air-- fated attempts to place All of This in a time capsule.

"Just do your finals so you can advance in the social order." That's one social-darwinian approach.

"I have three finals, but whatever, on Thursday I'm getting blacked out." That's another escapist view from someone who seems to resist the System, but still succumbs to its ultimate shittiness by self-medicating.

I see albums on facebook of people beginning their careers-- very respectable careers as nurses or EMTs or even the beginning of law school and I think how miserable I would be in such positions. But for them it is a happy, happy time-- the dawn of a new era of adulthood for which they are excited and immensely prepared.

I, on the other hand, am 22 years old and still feel like I'm 19. Though my brain has millions more thoughts and patterns and information, my body still longs to play lacrosse all weekend for fun, to go to the beach and to write without obligation. Such is the dilemma of being pulled in two directions. Such is graduation.

Somehow this post turned from bitter to nostalgic real quickly, but I'll just go with it.

"To think in our culture is to have answers-- It's the American way. To see polarizations is to see divisions [...] but what exists under it all is a dynamic and creative tension..." -some quote overheard in some class, they all blend together.

To end this thing finally I must ask: Who am I writing for, if not myself? I don't have an audience to entertain.... I have a brain to iron out. But still, I will link this baby to the ultimate network of facebook in the hopes that some/many procrastinators will read such neurotic thoughts and perhaps think a little bit about why they're working and studying so hard--

What's it all worth?
Do well now so you can get a good job?
Or maybe it's become so ingrained that we don't even question the process of cramming anymore-- get hyped up on ritalin, learn a bunch of knowledge, and then forget it two weeks from now?
For me at least, I'll think these things for a little and return to the work I've chosen not to do for the latter half of the semester because I've actually started to realize what does make me happy: writing, creating, and producing comedic shorts-- a weird choice for such a seemingly "heavy" thinker. But notice I still return to the work. I will get it done-- we all do. Why?

The narrative equips us for modern life.