When I interrupted my reading of Hegemony, Intellectuals and the State by Gramsci for the millionth time to wonder out loud who reads about hegemony on a Saturday night I decided that I needed to blog. This is my life. Sitting, toes freshly painted pink (interruption #25) on my well-worn couch, the brown one I used to sleep on when I just moved to this town to start my PhD in Folklore after I had decided that I didn't want to date and was rather content with sleeping on my couch with my laptop near me, which is, somewhat lamentably, almost the same state I'm in currently, give or take a now ex-boyfriend and a much more comfortable bed. There's a half empty Styrofoam cup of week old white on my floor, one that won't be half empty in a minute because I intend on finishing this bottle this evening. I'm trying to (and failing at) reading for my Cultural Studies class, my minor, because I'm fielding texts from a man I met in an airport who is equally cute and slightly chivalrous but also creepy and a bit forward. I don't know if I should be flattered or call the police. I've opted for trying, politely, to tell him to back off a little. But not too far. He does, after all, write things like "May I call you tomorrow?" Who does that? Who courts people any more? Mind you he thinks "the world of me", and although that's sweet...we've only met once...in a crowded airport in December while I was fleeing sleet and snow by heading to Trinidad for two weeks. I was delirious with joy, and confused because the trip was initially planned for two but I was decidedly alone.

My life is ridiculous.

Not in a bad way mind you, but ridiculous nonetheless. I'm warding off potential stalkers on one hand, and possibly maybe striking up an international romance with an old classmate from Tobago who had a crush on me when I was 12. What? And the crux of it all? I can't finish reading this fricking six paged essay on hegemony to save my life.

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.

Part of the reason, I've come to realize, that it's become progressively harder for me to write anything anywhere is the increasing self-consciousness I've developed over the years. I've been a xanga member for a lot of years. Some of my first entries weren't about anything really profound or amazing. Many of them were actually cryptic messages about the confused state of my romantic life. But I wrote. Often and occasionally in depth. I was myself, unapologetically.As I got older not only did it get harder to chronicle my increasingly complicated and tortured thought process, but I began to feel a little like there was something wrong with me. Why did I think the way I did? Why can't I think in some other way? Why don't I do things differently? The increased self-consciousness didn't bode well for writing anything. I felt like everything I wrote was a complaint of some sort, a whiny diabtribe. And some of them were.

It's interesting to realize that you're still trying to get to know yourself. I thought I knew, but a little something changes every day, as is to be expected. I'd like to be less self conscious and just more self-aware. Once you know and accept who you are, and I mean flaws and ugly glaring mistakes and all, it's a little easier to remind yourself who you are on the days when you forget and lose sight of it. You're the best you there is. Period.

Holding on to that can save so much grief, even on those days you're cursing yourself for not heeding your own advice, on the days you wonder whether you're actually learning anything at all, or if you just prefer to make the same mistakes. When you understand who you are you listen to your own voice more than the voice of anyone else, and you feel comfortable that the decisions you made were ones you wanted to, and no matter the outcome the choice was yours. There's a freedom in that I can't wait to taste.

I keep looking for music.

I want music that touches me in some seriously deep way. And I'm not discriminating. Lately it's been a mix of songs from Disney soundtracks and bits by European DJs or a random song by Fela Kuti. I need sound, a piece of life, of someone else's emotion to distract me from mine. I don't quite have the patience yet to abide this healing process in peace. I feel anything but at peace.

And it's distracting, and that distraction is immediately annoying because, despite appearances to the contrary I'm actually pretty busy. I have papers to write and emails to respond to and meetings to attend and programs to plan. I'm annoyed because some people would be able to do all these things without distraction. There'd be a neat little box in a corner of their mind titled "Shit to think about later" and in it would be exes and pain and loneliness etc. I don't have neat little boxes. I have an unnamed basket with no cover with things spilling out of it inadvertently, things on the carpet and hanging over the sides. It's in a corner, so to speak, but I can still see it, and occasionally trip over the stuff on the floor near it. I'm tired of my basket.

But I'm not some people. I'm me. I think that's the crux of it all. If I could get that through my head I'd be ok with my Disney music and my European DJ music and my basket.

And then there'd be peace.

It's December 1st, and right on cue the first snow of the year happened here today.

That would all be well and good normally, but I honestly feel like I've missed something. I feel like I sleep walked through the month of November. I kept saying this to myself over and over this week, after realizing that November would soon be gone and I felt like I had nothing to show for it. I really don't remember much of the month, and it's because I've been re-learning how to be a newly single, responsible human being. I know I'm being a little dramatic. Breaking up with someone is nothing like losing a loved one to death, or divorce. I should be (and I am, relatively) fine. But it's the repetition of events in my life that are occasionally upsetting. And the realization that I am (still!) entirely too dependent on everyone but myself. Let me clarify. I am self sufficient. I fix my own things, buy my own things, and have lived alone for quite some time. I can drive long distances alone, travel alone (though the way I appoach all this and the way I feel about it is changing, but more on that later). I'm not necessarily a princess in distress. But oh, the tears I cried last month during my newly single hours. Emotionally, I'm, in fact, a little tiny princess in a pink fluffy dress hoping for someone to carry her, or at least hold her hand because she just broke a heel and there's mud and it's cold and she doesn't want to do it alone.

It doesn't seem right that December is here all bright and shiny with snow and Christmas-y bells and lights yet. It doesn't. The little princess in me is stamping her well heeled foot in petulance.

I occasionally write like a wandering person (mendicant?), carrying muddled signs with short sentences and enigmatic, paradoxical or philosophical themes. Or crazy themes. People tell me they like my writing, my 'voice' as one friend put it. There's a bit of me in my writing that, ironically, isn't actually the me people hear when I speak. Or, maybe it is and I don't know it. I mostly ramble, which I also do in person, but when I ramble as I write sometimes, most times, things come full circle. Or they at least say something interesting enough, or in such a manner that prompt people like my sister to tell me "I love your writing. At first when you start reading you're like ughhh, but then you ease into it and it's lovely." Ease into it, she says. My brain eases into coherence. My writing does much the same.

It's a full moon and I've had a weird day. I don't know if they're related. Chances are my day would have been what it was regardless of the moon. That's a pretty big chance. Officially nothing out of the ordinary really happened today. Woke up sort of later than I hope for every Saturday, but not any later than usual. Stripped my bed and planned on cleaning my room before I realized that it was already clean. Caught a few minutes of the movie Across the Universe, and realized that I really enjoy covers of songs. Got dressed and went out to get wine and some dessert for a girly get together later on in the evening and I intended on going to the library to read a book of short stories about folk tales in the Caribbean (perk of studying Folklore) but, as has been my habit lately, I decided against it and decided to return home to my quiet, immaculate room to read. Alone. I got into bed again at around 6pm, dragged the book with me and ended up napping. I woke up and dressed again for my girly evening of food and wine, and spent some time talking alternately about hair, nails, vampires in leather pants, interracial couples, back to hair, yoga and cell phone apps.

Here's the weird part. I enjoyed my day. Some of it was typical, some of it wasn't (all night I kept thinking this was the longest period of time I'd spent with girls I wasn't related to in a long time, and I don't really ever talk about nails or hair quite this much.Ever.). But I didn't have a bad day. Yes, here and there I was reminded of the occasional hurt I think I'll feel for a little while yet, for various reasons. But life moves on (even that thought hurts, but that's as it should be I think). Tonight is a full moon, and as I settle in I think about the phone call I got from someone who never calls me (there's this awkwardness between us that I swear I'm not making up. I know awkward when I see it, and I know it's not just me this time. I don't know if he senses my slight crush on him, but if that's the case it's not just me) and now have two amazing movies I could watch before going to bed because I am not sleepy at all. But I think I'll call it a night, or at least read myself to sleep. I might as well. No one else is here to do it.

I like that I'm sitting on my couch watching the last minutes of Conan, pleasantly buzzed on three day old wine. It's been a long week. I may or may not have bombed a french test today and I'm not certain if I sounded quite as together as I would have liked during a classroom presentation today (on X-Files no less). But there it is. It's all over for now. The back to back work-meeting-school-meeting-RAing-class cycle I'm in Monday through Thursday. Tonight I'm sitting. And stewing.

I've been making a concerted effort to attend social functions hosted by fellow classmates. Hoping to avoid the sad awkwardness that is sitting alone at home on a Friday or Saturday night. So far so good.

The George Lopez show just came on. I think this is my cue to turn the TV off and read something.

I keep alternating between indignant coldness towards him and embarassingly girly questions that I need not ask. I don't actually say anything to him at all. Most of the time. Except for when he randomly calls in his attempt at us remaining 'tight'. It's always slightly awkward when he calls. Mostly because I'm still trying to figure out if I should hate him or just ignore him altogether. Whatever my options, this halfway hope thing I have going on is slightly pathetic. Just slightly. I think ignoring him altogether could be useful, at least in these first few painful weeks. But that's almost more awkward than talking to him. You see, I'm fairly conscious I'm ignoring him, and it plagues me. It really does. I just want to be at a place where it doesn't still sting. Yes, time and all that.

In the mean time, anyone have a cure for the sting?