All the things I'm not good at:

1.) Time Management
I am horrible at this. I try to make lists of things to do to try and accomplish them in a timely fashion. But I never end up getting to all the things. Also I don't know how to break down my day to fit things into it even when there is a normal amount of things to do.

2.) Paying Attention
I am super bad at paying attention. I get so easily distracted. Every sound will jar me and send me into a wispy fantastical day dream state. Sometimes I will call someone, we'll get disconnected, and I'll have forgotten to call them back because I got distracted by something around me.

3.) Having normal conversations
I have tons of trouble having normal everyday conversations with people. If it isn't my awkward nature it is the fact that I really don't know how to make a conversation sustain. After I've said my peace I usually default to my ADD self and get distracted by things going on around me. So while someone whom I am friends with is talking to me about their day and I have nothing relevant to add I will just retreat into my own world. Which usually consists of me looking back at my computer and refreshing tumblr, facebook, and clicking the stumble button over and over again.

4.) Writing academic papers
I can't seem to get myself to write academic papers and I don't know why this is. It isn't like I don't like the subject matter or don't find it interesting. I just can't get myself to sit down and actually write these things. I used to be able to actually, but recently I've discovered that I probably just don't care enough. See below for more information.

5.) Caring about shit
I have trouble finding it in myself to care about things. I usually end up just letting myself down when I care about doing something. I am also horrible when it comes to caring about people. Many of the people I have cared for in my life have basically used me as a doormat and it gets really tiring to have to keep putting myself in that situation.

6.) Planning
I am horrible at planning. I like plans though. I like having a concrete idea of how things are going to happen - even though I probably don't stick to this plan. I think this is because I need to have picked my inventory of scripts to pull up when I'm faced with a situation. I have trouble sometimes dealing with situations that I haven't a script for. But I can't plan things very well, and this may be because I have a fear that my execution of plans won't meet my expectations and inevitably let me down.

7.) Making Lists
I'm really bad at making lists. I have trouble thinking in a chronologically constructed manner so when I actually sit down to number out and list things that need to be done my lists fall too short or go too long. As I wrote this I had to make the list first and then I jumped around filling this out in the most random of orders. As you can see this list is evident of my poor list making abilities. The only thing helping this list are these blurbs, this is where my impeccable writing comes in but that's a list for another time.

Winter

This is a poem for my poetry class it has to be about winter (note my lazy title).

Mother is bone white and black.
Daughter born from cocaine breath
came out on the cusp of winter.
A wispy gasp and darkened heart
skin is paper stretched over bone
white sheet, dark pen, dark red.
Mother warns daughter to not love death
to not long to feel his dark eyes
fall upon her breasts.
Daughter is of winter locking,
a chest begging to be opened to light,
fill the lungs with dirt and breathe life.
Mother is bone white and black,
her burning head stares down.
Daughter turns away again – frozen.

Youngstown's Shooting Response

As you may have heard on your news channels Sunday and Monday last week there was a shooting off campus at an unsanctioned frat house in the early morning hours of 2/6/2011. Many students were wounded, one was critical, and another was killed. His name was Jamail Johnson and he was a business major here at YSU with one semester left to graduation.

For the last week I was trying to formulate my thoughts on this event to write in my blog. But all my words couldn't cover all that I was feeling. I've felt a lot of loss in m life and most of the time I just automatically turn to indifference. As I let myself drift into indifference I found that I could not.

Jamail was 25, very close to my age, probably desiring graduation as much as I do right now. Perhaps feeling similar about school. I know I've signed him into Lyden a few times before. He seemed like he was a happy guy, a nice guy, someone I'd be grateful to be friends with.

This past week, and the events inside of it, has made me become overly introspective about my own life. I keep finding myself zoning out and feeling lost in regard to my own direction.

Whenever I hear of a death of a stranger it makes me feel like I've some how missed out on that person. Especially a needless death caused by someone else. Not knowing Jamail is very sad to me. Even if I only knew him as a passerby, as someone I waved to when I saw them, at least I would know them.

Another thing that bothers me: A lot of news stories say this was a school shooting, that it happened in a class, they are wrong.

It was at a private house, with drunk students, and two people showed up with guns. There was a fight. This is what happens everywhere. Youngstown is not to blame for what happened. Youngstown has little to no crime compared to some 'good' university cities like Ohio State and Yale.

Man, this city just ain't so kind tonight...

Today Marie, Jimmy, Bryan Bojangles, and I all went to the Eastwood Mall in Niles so Marie could shop for GAish clothes and I could get my haircut.

Bojangles and I ended up going off by ourselves and I bought some chinese food at the food court. Mostly because I was starving at that point and now I've been full all day long. Then I made him go to Target with me and I kept getting distracted by ALL THE THINGS. I bought a fluffy rainbow blanket. Even though I originally went in to just get chapstick. As I'm writing this I remembered that I had to get Febreeze too. Craptasm...I forget everything.

While we were in the Target of many wonders I made my way to the makeup section where I grabbed eyeliner and purchased Marie some mascara that was on sale. Bryan made a comment saying something like, "Ugh....MAKEUP!?!"

Some 30 something cougar was bent over looking at covergirl items and she responded to Bryan with, "You can't get in the way of girls and their makeup. They need all of it."

Bryan yelled back, "ALL the makeup?"

The cougar laughed and said, "ALL the makeup!"

I laughed forever and decided the cougar was a janka.

In other news, I am depressed and can't wait to get to my apartment and curl up with my rainbow blanket and gigantic blue pillow. Everyday I spend here in this city, while fun, is making me exponentially more frustrated. It has gotten to the point that whenever I stop to think about how upset I've become I just cry. I need to stop this. It is way too early in the semester to just give up. I keep telling myself I don't have time to be sad but I make time anyway.

I just wish I didn't feel hopeless and alone all the time. I miss my boyfriend but most of all I miss feeling happy belongyness. Which I don't feel at all anymore. It makes me just want to curl up and not do anything while waiting for May.

Published in Fall 2010 Issue of Jenny

I never posted this, which was dumb, since this is my blog for such endeavors. Oh well, I was published in the Fall 2010 Issue of Jenny Mag. Submissions for Jenny Mag are open now until March 1st, I believe so you should totally submit.

Direct link to my essay: Laying on of Hands

Louis de Bernieres Quote

Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being ‘in love’ which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.
- Louis de Bernieres

Apartment of a Lily and a Rose

My pocket doors slide open,
the rose in the living room meets my gaze,
she’s stretching for the picture window.
She blossoms and opens wide
then turns back to the sun
reaching her petaled face through the dusty blinds.
I rub the death from my eyes,
we have woken up inside of spring.
Her rooted feet have dug into the floor
I water her with a coffee urn.
We do this every day,
when the sun meets us,
and every season we sprout, bloom, die.
In the showers we wash the grounds from our hair,
move around our green house growing, blooming.

University Closing Criteria:

Youngstown State University's criteria for whether or not it will open relies solely on if they can clean the walkways on the inside of campus. As the city is not their problem though.

On Tuesday it rained at 4:00 am and then the rain froze. The roads and the university were pretty bad until day break when the sun came out. But over all it was pretty nice out and pretty. They closed the University any how. Much to everyone's confusion. Many factors were given like the impending ice storm of death and destruction or the fact that the surrounding areas were a lot worse off.

Today (Wednesday) the University stayed open even though the ice storm had just hit only a few hours before the first classes were to start. I guess they could clean the walkways inside campus, huh? The ground was ice when my roommate and I went to sleep on Tuesday. I woke up I looked outside my window and someone drove sideways down my road only to straighten out when they hit Elm. When I got the guts to start my walking to school I fell about 6 times, on my ass, walking down my driveway. My little feets flailed as they tried to get traction on the pure, slightly wet, glass that seemed to cover the entirety of the landscape.

I cried a little bit after mastering my driveway. It had taken me five minutes to conquer this obstacle. And for as far as I could see (at least to the side of wick park) there was nothing but ice on every surface. On the road, on the sidewalk, on the grass.* I fell some more as I tried to make my way to the corner of Elm. By the time I had turned the corner I feared permanent damage in my tailbone. But at this point no one had seen me wipe out so I was thankful.

So as I walk I notice the sun had unfrozen most of the snow mounds and ice castles forming along Elm Street. This created gigantic pools of Youngstown mud water that soaked into my pants as I tried to tip toe out of it. But there was no other way to get around these brown hypothermic rivers than to forge them. So armed with my canvasy, rainbow DCs and my pants that just refused to not touch the ground I did this.

Walking back it was a bit warmer and mostly slushy and the ponds seemed to drain. It was exciting. I was hopeful. I left at 4:30 to go to class again though and as I went to cross at Dorian to Cafaro I did a wipe out at one of the busiest lights in my area. A truck had just stopped as my legs gave out from under me. They kicked up and I landed, unguarded, on my ass. My neck and spine hurt after that and still hasn't stopped hurting.

Here's the criteria I'm proposing if I can walk down the road to campus and fall 15+ times then you should probably close.



* - Not grass, snow mountains that had frozen all the way through.

Just fell in love with The Civil Wars

If you haven't heard them yet...you should:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooTyuRd9zSg