I hesitated twice to open my school email. I still haven't. There's so much to do. So many little and big things to do and decide, and I'm already struggling today because it's Friday and although I don't have any classes or work today I feel guilty for not waking up until noon and not actually showering and looking presentable until around 2pm. I left my room and came down to the community computer in the lounge area of the dorm because I love my netbook, which is my primary computer until I buy a 15" screen something or other, but if I have to look at that tiny little screen one more time today I'll scream. I'm finally attempting to sort through my list of things to do , a list that doesn't necessarily get shorter. I complete one thing and add another. Such is life. But this list, today, is killing me slowly. I'm beginning to feel like I'm at a crossroads place. In a way every day is cross roads place because technically today could be the day I decided to quit school once and for all and leave all my belongings here and move to Trinidad. That's definitely a cross roads. But. I'm feeling extra angsty about decisions lately because I have SO MANY OF THEM TO MAKE. I have been blessed with the opportunity to do a number of things with my life within the next few months, things which will lead to other things, as things often do. But which thing to chose? Ok, that's not really the root of it all. At the root is that they're all so different and picking one sort of means making a very specific decision about what I'll be doing next. I could either choose to live rent free as a graduate supervisor during my last year as a PhD student and spend an inordinate amount of time with RAs and undergraduates but not have any bills to speak of, or I could choose to continue working as an indexer of Folklore books for my department, but I'd have to move off campus and find a place to live, and probably tutor on the side just to have extra cash. I could be a graduate supervisor and forgo teaching experience in my department (by not applying for an Associate Instructorship in my department) and run the risk of raised eyebrows in my department (Residential Housing over Folklore? Fie!). I could be a graduate supervisor and become an instructor (as opposed to an AI, whose job is really to be a Teaching Assistant to a professor of Folklore) responsible for a class of my own in Folklore in the city, a 45 minute drive from my campus, but that would allow me my teaching experience AND free housing. There are some combinations that aren't allowed (politics of financial aid) so I couldn't be an AI and a Graduate Supervisor.

Just in a place where I'm realizing life rarely goes as planned. In some other world I'm living a different life. Well, at least other dimension mes are living some version of a life I could have lead. Not a bad life existence at all.

I bought myself a necklace the other day. It's not especially flashy, but just my style. A marginally longish sterling silver "box" necklace with an interesting pendant. The pendant is a never ending circular shape that sort of twists in on itself. I think maybe they're called infinity circles. I could certainly be making that up, but I'm going to assert that that's what they should be called.

I bought myself a necklace for various reasons:

1. I love necklaces. My neck feels naked without something awkwardly dangling inside my sweater or tangling with the folds of a shirt. There's always something near my heart that way too.

2. Practically every necklace I have owned since 2006 was one given to me by a man with which I've had "relations." I say this in a non-skeezy way to imply that while many of them were from boyfriends, I received one, a pretty thing with a pendant depicting an open tulip (my favorite flower) from a guy who, in his own words, was my Mr. Right Now. He was, at the time.

3. I have since stopped wearing the necklaces given to me by these men, even the expensive one with the tiny diamonds in the shape of a horseshoe (from my recent ex).

As cheesy as it is, it was time to buy my own necklace. How fitting, then, that I found one with the same message as the one on a ring I had bought myself two and a half years ago when my first ex and I broke up (I swear I may have a mental breakdown if at some point I can start counting exes). Life moves on. Mourning ends. Messages apply to new and different situations. Just like infinite circles are supposed to be.