The devil and god are raging inside me.

Oh. My. God.

I love Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, and Adobe Photoshop. They are, by far, my top three computer programs of all time. Yes, it is 6:30 in the morning. No, I haven't been to sleep yet. Yes, I've been here at the library since I got off work at 1 am. No, I cannot feel my arms anymore (or my butt). Yes, I have been working on one project this whole time.

And I'm okay with that.

I freaking love my major.

Romance fail

If you're looking for a good laugh (at my expense), read my latest post on my food blog. If I can laugh at it, you'll be a rotflcopter for sure.

More shameless self-promotion

My first, class-oriented foodie blog is up and running! Check it out; we're going to be learning some really cool stuff this quarter and we have to post it all. Interviews, interactive maps, slideshows, video...it should be interesting.

My official foodie blog (for Backdrop magazine's new website) is still in the works. If you have suggestions as to what I should make, feel free to comment!

I'm making an effort to post more

And not just my personal life. I want to blog like a professional; I want to be a social commentator.

Additionally, I'm going to take this opportunity to shamelessly self-promote. In the next week, I'll be starting a prototype blog as a class project; it will be all about cooking on a tight budget. Next month, Backdrop (the magazine I work for) will be launching it's official website. I'll be an official blogger for this site, on the same topic. The first blog will only be active until March. The second will (hopefully) be active for the next year or two. Links TBA.

Now. I was using StumbleUpon today and found this page on gay marriage. Now, I don't think that the government has any right to allow or disallow gay marriage; that decision should be left up to individual religious leaders. But this article cracked me up; bureaucracy at its absolute finest. What is wrong with this country when two loving men are not allowed to remain married (through the state's own mistake, no less), but a man and woman who hate each other have every right to remain together for as long as they wish?

Silly, silly technicalities.

Why literary nerds have more fun

I feel like tonight will be a pivotal night for me, the type of night I'll hold in memory for quite some time. It's Thursday night, which might as well be a Saturday in Athens. I'm sitting in my tiny attic apartment with my boyfriend, cigarette smoke filtering through the skylight as ashes fall into a coffee cup. We're discussing our writing styles and Ginsberg and philosophy and creativity in general under the influence of beer and tequila. And I think I've reached another epiphany about soulmates.

I had just finished reading the first part of Ginsberg's Howl and discussing the finer points of the poem ("boxcar boxcar boxcar" and powerful speed-induced rhythms), when he interrupted me to say, "I love you." And that is what it's all about. Spending two solid hours just talking, bouncing ideas off of each other in a relaxed frenzy and realizing what it means to finally have someone understand you.

Everything is gonna be alright, be strong, believe.

Last night, I committed academic suicide. I signed up for my third journalism class of the quarter.

It should be noted that I am also taking an English class and a film criticism class. All five classes require an insane amount of writing. All five classes are work-intensive. I have a project, if not two or three, due every week but one.

And I did this willingly. Cheerfully, even. Why? I'm not really sure.

I enjoy challenging myself. And although these classes will require a lot of work, most of it won't feel like work. Because these are the classes that will teach me how to do what I want to do for a living. I might even go so far as to call them "fun."

So here I am. It's 8:30 in the morning. I've been up this early all week. I haven't gone to bed before 1 am at all either. And I love it.

It'll be okay.

Rambling

I used to keep a paper journal. Sometimes I still write in it, but rarely. More often, when I have a thought that I want to record, I post it on this blog. It always turns out more generic, but I'm really okay with that. My fingers flying across the keyboard are more accurate than a pen on paper. It's really skipping a step for me; the words appear on the screen as I'm thinking them, whereas when I'm writing there's a mental gap, a bridge that I have to cross to make the words appear. There's more of a stream-of-consciousness effect with a keyboard. Plus there's the added bonus of being able to backspace, to erase mistakes, to word my thoughts with precision.

I've kept a paper journal since I was in kindergarten. That's over fifteen years of my life, recorded on paper. I'm currently in the process of archiving the past six years of my life, transferring the blog posts from the internet to a word processing document, so I can print them and have a copy on paper that somewhat matches the medium of tradition for me. I don't even know why I'm writing this now, except for the fact that it seems important and posting it to my blog is easier, more convenient than pulling out my notebook, finding a pen, turning on a light, and taking the time to write it all down. It's kind of sad that this is how it's turned out; from real writing to just typing my thoughts onto a screen, no medium, no thought process behind it. Just moving my fingers as my mind sees fit. There isn't even a connection between the two. My mind has a thought and my fingers express it. It's weird, you know?

I think it's representative of where society is going. We've become a people that facilitates the notion of "think before you speak;" actions come before thoughts, and the consequences are ignored almost entirely.

Tonight I was at a bar in my hometown and it was so surreal; I saw the most random collection of people from my past. And as I was leaving, I saw this guy I knew and this girl I didn't (though I think she was a friend of a friend) all over each other in a semi-private corner outside. And it just exemplifies what we've become; think first, act next, deal with it later. Will either of them remember what happened at 1:15 am? Will either of them care?

I don't really know where I'm going with this post. I'm a bit drunk and I'm just letting my fingers do the talking. How uncommon is that?