Road to Nowhere

Tuesday 14 April

Happy last day until the end of the world!

Let's see. Last Tuesday Middle East Politics was cancelled, so I got to sleep in until 9:30, which made me dangerously awake for the rest of the day. My philosophy when classes get cancelled is that I'm not going to get any work done during that time period allotted to class anyway, so why the hell would I be productive when I don't have to be? So sleep it was, and then I did some reading about insider trading and also Marco Rubio (who also announced his candidacy and I just don't know how to feel about it—tbh I think it might be Romney 2.0 when the GOP takes a good candidate and drives them far too right to be a feasible option).

Anyway.

Took a leisurely stroll over to campus, bought a Rockstar and hid in the basement of the library reading "Reversal of Fortune," which it turns out wasn't actually due but fuck it YOLO. It stressed me out a lot, and so Norlin class was a lot worrisome, tbh.

We ended up talking about insider trading and how perceptions are most definitely distorted by wealth and status and how maybe it didn't even occur to Martha Stewart that what she was doing was a bad thing. Which is scary, and honestly with the way the case was presented I was pretty horrified that she was targeted in the way she was. I know for a fact that I have a bias against the wealthy—you don't work at a country club where they treat you like dirt for five years and escape without one. It's hard to see through that to see that they're still people like you with hopes and fears and dreams and are fallible. But you have to in order to build a more just world, which is problematic for me.

Anyway. Went home, watched some 30 Rock and ordered a pizza with my last $10, because it fed me for three days. Then Paige came home and we talked about our boyfriends and our classes and how done we are with school, and then I put pants back on and went to the library. I made a bomb study sheet for Quantum Mechanics, and then halfheartedly studied my Water Chem notes before I did my bibliography for my paper. Finished work at the library's closing time, and wandered home wondering how on earth people could actually party on a fucking Tuesday night.

So for my Norlin final project this year, I have to tell a digital story about my career trajectory and my hollow values that I may or may not compromise on depending on the situation, and I literally don't know where to start. I wrote a professional autobiography about how I almost got to play the Swan Queen but then I blew my knee out so that didn't get to happen, and I guess the lessons of duality you learn from the Swan Queen carry over into my dual roles as a politician and a scientist. It was a lot of rubbish, honestly.

I don't know. For the first time in my life, I have no idea where I'm headed. At all. I don't have a plan for the summer, I don't have a plan for graduate school, I don't have a plan for my career. And that's scary for someone like me, who's had her life planned out almost from the get-go. My only purpose throughout my childhood was to get into college, and now that I've done that, I don't know what to do. I'm sick of giving that answer, but it's the truth. I don't know what to do.

The dancer metaphor honestly seems very inauthentic, too, because that's not who I am anymore—I'm not the perfectionist, I don't jump when someone tells me to, I don't live my life for a single role. Granted, it's still a part of me—I look for rhythms and for patterns and for symmetry and aesthetics, but that isn't who I am. Which is also hard, because it was me for a long time. I guess I don't really know who I am, either. And it's ridiculous—I don't have to fit a single archetype, but now that I don't it's infinitely messier, and that's also frightening.

And somehow, it's okay. I'm learning how to live within this chaos of my life and my choices or lack thereof, and even though I may be on a road to nowhere, I'm having a damn good time with it. Despite everything, I'm okay. And that's something they'll never teach you in school, honestly.

On a roll, I'll be done soon.

Thanks for reading :)