Friday, November 19, 2004
Snow day!
It's snowing! It's snowing! Not so much now, but it was really coming down last night, and when I woke up this morning, and even more on the trek to uni. After that it stopped snowing. BUT THEN IT STARTED AGAIN! Could anything else have cheered me up while staying in all day yesterday writing an essay for my Celtic Civilizations class on a topic that causes most people fall asleep before I'm finished reading out the title? I don't think so!
Yesterday was absolutely no fun aside from weather-related excitement. Jo and I both had essays to write, so we decided to keep each other company all day. Unfortunately, for much of the day, this only served to make it easier for us to sit around screwing off instead of getting down to work. The thing is, I can't inspire more than a passing interest in any of the subjects I'm studying this term. I'm trying to read academic texts exploring Celtic connections past and present, and I feel like I'm looking at pictures of myself spending the rest of my life in a cubicle until I die, stupid and poor, and nobody comes to my funeral but Nun-Clown. And she doesn't even care, she just feels guilty because she probably had something to do with it.
I mean, I'm not stupid, but most of the time I feel like the stupidest person in the room because I would rather rip out my own fingernails with pliers than read an academic text entitled "Celtiberian Studies and Spanish Celtic Historiography in the Nineteenth Century." I am up to my ears in these kinds of texts this semester, and I would love to blame it on the fact that I'm taking courses outside my own department, but then I remember feeling the exact same way about film studies earlier this year. When I really think about it, I can't remember ever taking a film studies class that I actually wanted to put a reasonable amount of time and effort into. I did it anyway, but how come I didn't feel anything for it? How come I still don't?
My parents will love reading all this now that I'm in my 4th year at university. Don't worry, mom and dad, I'll work my ass off to finish this degree and I'll make sure it gets me somewhere. Wherever that is, I just hope it's a place where I write things and other people give me money for it so I can continue to write instead of getting a real job. When it comes down to it, the only things I have that are the product of true passion are my websites, my screenplay, and my short film. I have to cling to the hope that one of these things, or similar endeavors, will help me get where I want to go in life.
Anyway.
So it's not snowing anymore, but I'm sure it will again before the day is through. The weather is incredibly schizophrenic around here. I stayed up late writing my essay ("The history of the concept 'Celt' from classical antiquity to the present"), but it hadn't started properly snowing until after I went to sleep, because I woke up at 7 AM and the flakes coming down from the sky were practically the size of cottonballs. I don't know if I'll be able to get used to the idea of all this snow, because we never get it (or much of it) in Seattle and I've always wanted to be snowed in to the point where you couldn't leave the house, even if there was a killer in your home and the telephone wasn't working so you couldn't even call the police. A real White Christmas, you know? I don't know if I've ever had one of those. Everyone here told me it wouldn't snow in Aberdeen until January, but they were so very wrong. Hooray!
I don't know why water falling out of the sky should make me feel so different just because it's in the form of flakes instead of drops, but I really feel there's something magical about it. The whole world looks different after it's been snowed on. I told you it was snowing like crazy when I woke up this morning, and I still walked to uni instead of taking the bus for two reasons: (1) magic doesn't change the fact that I'm broke and can't afford the bus fare, and (2) as it is, I don't trust those double decker buses not to fall right the fuck over under ordinary conditions, let alone when there's snow and ice all over the place.
Walking down Union Street, the wind was causing the little flakes to dart around in every direction, looking like strange white insects. It was all very winter-wonderlandy, listening to Bjork's Vespertine as I crunched along. However, after I turned onto Broad Street, the wind and snow shifted violently into high gear and I had to lower my head and kind of swim through the horizontal onslaught. It stuck to me right away, so that my entire front was stark white just a few minutes later. I basically crawled the remaining mile to university, and the snow even managed to get underneath my clothes somehow. So maybe a small part of the fun died at that point. But it's still magical, dammit!
Yesterday was absolutely no fun aside from weather-related excitement. Jo and I both had essays to write, so we decided to keep each other company all day. Unfortunately, for much of the day, this only served to make it easier for us to sit around screwing off instead of getting down to work. The thing is, I can't inspire more than a passing interest in any of the subjects I'm studying this term. I'm trying to read academic texts exploring Celtic connections past and present, and I feel like I'm looking at pictures of myself spending the rest of my life in a cubicle until I die, stupid and poor, and nobody comes to my funeral but Nun-Clown. And she doesn't even care, she just feels guilty because she probably had something to do with it.
I mean, I'm not stupid, but most of the time I feel like the stupidest person in the room because I would rather rip out my own fingernails with pliers than read an academic text entitled "Celtiberian Studies and Spanish Celtic Historiography in the Nineteenth Century." I am up to my ears in these kinds of texts this semester, and I would love to blame it on the fact that I'm taking courses outside my own department, but then I remember feeling the exact same way about film studies earlier this year. When I really think about it, I can't remember ever taking a film studies class that I actually wanted to put a reasonable amount of time and effort into. I did it anyway, but how come I didn't feel anything for it? How come I still don't?
My parents will love reading all this now that I'm in my 4th year at university. Don't worry, mom and dad, I'll work my ass off to finish this degree and I'll make sure it gets me somewhere. Wherever that is, I just hope it's a place where I write things and other people give me money for it so I can continue to write instead of getting a real job. When it comes down to it, the only things I have that are the product of true passion are my websites, my screenplay, and my short film. I have to cling to the hope that one of these things, or similar endeavors, will help me get where I want to go in life.
Anyway.
So it's not snowing anymore, but I'm sure it will again before the day is through. The weather is incredibly schizophrenic around here. I stayed up late writing my essay ("The history of the concept 'Celt' from classical antiquity to the present"), but it hadn't started properly snowing until after I went to sleep, because I woke up at 7 AM and the flakes coming down from the sky were practically the size of cottonballs. I don't know if I'll be able to get used to the idea of all this snow, because we never get it (or much of it) in Seattle and I've always wanted to be snowed in to the point where you couldn't leave the house, even if there was a killer in your home and the telephone wasn't working so you couldn't even call the police. A real White Christmas, you know? I don't know if I've ever had one of those. Everyone here told me it wouldn't snow in Aberdeen until January, but they were so very wrong. Hooray!
I don't know why water falling out of the sky should make me feel so different just because it's in the form of flakes instead of drops, but I really feel there's something magical about it. The whole world looks different after it's been snowed on. I told you it was snowing like crazy when I woke up this morning, and I still walked to uni instead of taking the bus for two reasons: (1) magic doesn't change the fact that I'm broke and can't afford the bus fare, and (2) as it is, I don't trust those double decker buses not to fall right the fuck over under ordinary conditions, let alone when there's snow and ice all over the place.
Walking down Union Street, the wind was causing the little flakes to dart around in every direction, looking like strange white insects. It was all very winter-wonderlandy, listening to Bjork's Vespertine as I crunched along. However, after I turned onto Broad Street, the wind and snow shifted violently into high gear and I had to lower my head and kind of swim through the horizontal onslaught. It stuck to me right away, so that my entire front was stark white just a few minutes later. I basically crawled the remaining mile to university, and the snow even managed to get underneath my clothes somehow. So maybe a small part of the fun died at that point. But it's still magical, dammit!
