jakebe | I AM

I am in love again with that song by the Goo Goo Dolls, "Big Machine."

I am at work and exhausted again, after staying up too late (again). I'd like to think that this is a subconscious impulse to commiserate with

toob, so that I can share in his suffering even though we're a thousand miles apart.

I am reading "The Year of Magical Thinking," by Joan Didion. This is an account of the loss of her husband and daughter in 2003-4, about a month removed from each other. It's very fascinating so far; it takes me places I've been only once before, when my sister ran away for a few months. I didn't realize that the word for that sensation of emptiness and disorientation was 'grief,' but now I do. The experience doesn't compare to what she must have gone through, but it's the one conduit I have to empathize with her. It makes me think of what will happen when I'm confronted with the death of people I love (a morbid thought, but it's bound to happen sometime) and how I'll handle it. How she handles it is at once strange and familiar, puzzling but understandable in some illogical way.

I am having one of those days where I feel uninteresting and unimportant. I call it a "Chaplin Day," where you're the lone Tramp looking in on a roomful of people you admire, who are smarter and quicker and happier and more well-adjusted, where you know you'll never fit no matter how hard you try. It's a romantic sort of melancholy, and, I know, it's completely untrue. Still, it's good to indulge in these little fantasies now and again, if only for the fact that it encourages me to observant and invested in the world around me.

I am still trying to come up with six odd habits, because

shaterri tagged me for the meme a while back. I was pretty impressed that he divulged one habit, which is kinda gross...but the honesty was really neat. In that spirit, I have three, but...coming up with more is hard for some reason. I guess I'll have to call in outside help on this one.

I am debating whether or not to sign away my healthy eating habits and fragile tooth state for a ginormous box of Tastykake chocolate cupcakes. I know I'll *say* I'll be good and only have one or two a day, but that'll last the weekend. Then I'll tear through half the box in an orgy of guilt-ridden comfort-food snarfing. :9

I am possessed by the need to write, which is why I'm here when I should be working, which is why I wish I could take off half the day and go somewhere with no internet and dump the contents of my brain onto a screen, or lined paper, or little notes I keep writing to myself. It's very hard to be in a bookshop on a day like today.

I am probably going to bite the bullet, and work anyway.