28 January 2003

So I finished Atlas Shrugged. Whew.

It's...a strange feeling after you finish a really good book. Part of you wants it to continue--you've built up a relationship with the characters and the story--but the other part of you wants to sit still and just enjoy everything that the book was and is.

I wish I had someone to discuss it with. I wish I had been taking a class and I had someone to lead discussion, to tell me about all the meanings that perhaps I missed. I wish....sometimes after I read something or learn something deeply insightful...it is so hard to keep that feeling with you.

When I read the Conversation with God series by Neale Walsch it changed my life. And it gave me a sense of inner peace--and that has not been forgotten, but so much of it has. If only I could attend a church--or some kind of group that would discuss living your life like that! It's the fellowship that I desire, and it's the same feeling I have now.

So many important things were said in Atlas Shrugged and feel as if I'm losing them already. It's too hard to work with a world that is unwilling to see it a different way.

Have you ever been asked the question, "If you could hold a dinner party and invite any five people--alive or dead--who would you invite?" I think I would invite Ayn Rand. I wonder who I knocked out, because I used to think about that question a lot. To imagine what it would be like to sit down and speak with all these great people. I wonder if it would even be possible to have a conversation. Would any of them be able to talk to me?

I would invite Jesus, Malcolm X (if you haven't read his autobiography, you must!), Woody Allen, Ayn Rand and Jeff (hey, I have to bring someone I know along so I can share the experience!). Haha, who would you invite? Tell me here.

I feel really uninterested in my classes this quarter. Not that I've been especially taken in with my classes before now, but I don't know, they all seem especially....not worth my time. Which is a poor attitude to take, because I am sure there is a lot to gain from my classes, but it has the same feeling I have from being in a...math class or something.

That tired "I don't care" feel to it. I don't care to learn it. I don't care about the "crack epidemic" and it's relation to women. I don't care about the economic problems of solving poverty in third world countries. I don't care to argue with women who are at women studies "101" level, when my education has pushed me far beyond.

I know that's bad. I know for a lot of people in my "communications & gender" class have never taken a women's studies course, so they're at the basics. And it *is* hard to wrap your mind around some of the ideas a class as such presents, because it goes against all the socialization you've had up to that point.

To realize, "Hey I'm white! That means that I recieve unearned advantages probably on a daily basis, which also means that a whole lot of other people receive unearned DISadvantages on a daily basis--now what am I going to do about it?"

It makes you uncomfortable. Why should I have to do anything about it?

I am not going to sit there and hold useless arguments with people who just aren't "there" yet. I had the same discussions in my basic level classes, and I want my brain to be CHALLENGED!

Ohh, to have a teacher that really strikes a chord in me! I mean, I know I'm lazy, and I don't want to work, but at the same time, to have a teacher that does make you work, that does make you think, that does challenge how you've always seen things. It's almost...fun.

It's coming to life! It feels so amazingly refreshing, to have your mind buzzing with all these ideas. It's like you don't realize you've been bored for so long until someone wakes you up and you see this whole new thing.

It's so easy to fall in a rut. To just follow the others, to simply be set into a patter of motions, of hours and days and years. It's probably what I fear most. That feeling of "going" but going no where. Does everyone feel that?

I want...so badly to know what I can do. To know what my ability is. To know how I can be useful. I feel...so disappointed in a way. I'll be graduating in June from college, with a double major. I think i'll leave college a lot smarter (and street wiser!) than when I entered, but I feel just as lost as when I entered. I picked my first major because I ran out of general courses; I picked my second one because I had the time and means to do it. Doesn't sound so impressive anymore.

I'm going to graduate feeling helplessly lost, and sick to my stomach. I've felt sick to my stomach all throughout college. Knowing at some point I would have to actually do something with my life, and I'm still clueless as to what to do.

And Jeff! The love of my life, sometimes I feel as if he's all I have. And I know that's not true, but he seems to be the only thing that really makes me happy, and then I fall down that spiral again, because I hate knowing I'm dependent on a person for my own happiness.

If I wasn't dating Jeff I would take an internship out of the country. I want to leave really badly.

I want to....go. Although, I think I know deep inside, I'd still just be "going." I am getting excited to graduate, but not because I'll be done with school, but because I think that means I'll be moving. I feel like...I've given this state, this city 21 years of my life, and it hasn't given me any answers.

I don't know if I'll find out...who I am in another place, but i'm hoping that something out there will trigger something, or give me a clue or an inspiration to be.

God, I have no idea. I don't want to be anything. Ahhhhh! I don't want to be anything.

It's so depressing.