new year's eve.

i have been cleaning out my life, trying to get everything back in order before classes start again. i'm really close to finishing--my room is clean, my sheets and pillowcases are fresh out of the dryer, and the papers that have been littering my desk and floor are (almost) all filed away.
i don't think i'll go out tonight, even though there are currently three parties in progress to which i've been invited--but for some reason, i can't convince myself that it will be much fun to start the year drunk and then spend the rest of the day sleeping, or worse--hungover and awake. last year i spent the last half hour of 2009 and the first half hour of 2010 doing yoga and listening to jazz, and it was splendid, in a very nerdy-socially-awkward julie way. this year i think i'll get out my paints and work on the canvas that has been sitting behind my mirror for months (although, don't stress about my newly acquired antisocial tendencies--i'll be sure to join in with my roommates when they start making a commotion around midnight).
before i go, my new year's resolutions:
1) train for and run the 2011 portland marathon
2) kick my nail-biting habit
3) make a confident college/university transfer decision for fall 2011

i love you, anna and sue and vika, and tomi--if you're out there and reading. be safe tonight.
happy new year--xoxo, j.

on becoming a writer

since fall term ended about a week ago, i've been waking up, working, falling asleep thinking about writing. i've been sorting through ideas for essays and poetry and research, and i feel an energy that has eluded me for years. it simmers beneath the mundane, allowing me to dream and to feel alive even though the sun sets before five, and the majority of my day is spent in bed or at work.

i've always wanted to be a writer, and i've always wanted to be an artist, occupations that thrive in uncertainty and financial deprivation. to justify the expense of college, especially to parents who could care less about my education, i've felt pressured to choose something more useful, something more socially acceptable for a career, and to do the things that really move me--drawing, photographing, writing--on the side. but that whole "on the side" thing doesn't really work for me, because i want to be immersed in those passions, i want to breathe my art and the art of others. damming my passions, as i've been doing since leaving home, serves only to cut off my enthusiasm for life, leaving me apathetic and dull.

how could i have missed this? i've been staggering through depression for years, and if the most significant reason why is because i've missed my purpose, then this is it. this is the solution, or at least a valid way back to solid ground.

and, if money and material possessions really mean as little to me as i say they do, then the risk of dying as poor as i was born should not threaten me.

church

i went to the evening service because i worked all morning, and i slipped into the back pew fifteen minutes after it started. the whole time, i kept going back and forth between feeling like an outsider posed as an insider and feeling like an insider posed like an outsider. it was really unsettling.
i think i'll still try again next sunday.

winter weight.

i wish i could just be okay with what my body looks like, but--especially now, with the pre-finals weight gain starting to show--i can't help but loathe what i see. sigh.
the worst part is, i know that my thinking is just a product of a fucked-up society--i'm fine, i'm normal (whatever that means)--and somehow that doesn't help at all. when i weigh less than what it says on my driver's license, i should feel happy or something, right? but of course i don't, because then i only think about what it would be like to be, i don't know--five? ten? pounds lighter. but when i weigh at least five pounds more than that stupid laminated number (like now), then i covet the julie of two months ago that now appears so lithe, so beautifully thin in my memory.
come mid-january, when i start to look the same as i did mid-october, i'll forget the thoughts i'm having now, the ones that wish i would have been more happy and showed more skin with that sub-123lb body. instead, i'll keep scheming about how to make it even skinnier, more toned, and closer to the photoshopped dimensions of the girls in magazines. wtf?
i'm intelligent, and i fall for this shit like a dumbass. i don't get it.

i hurt, therefore i am.

someone get me to a low-cost clinic, please. i feel like i'm going to die. my entire right shoulder--from the bottom of my neck, especially through the shoulder blade, and into my bicep is shooting pain messages to my brain with ungodly speed and endurance. it hurrrrrrts.
also, the craziest thing happened to me today at work and i'm afraid to post it online, and i kind of want to say it in person, so maybe anna&sue should do a joint skype-session with me? it's a good story, i think. it'll be worth the trouble.

in other news, today i took the last of my exams and it feels good. i can't believe i made it :)))!
xoxo, goodnight (if i can get myself to sleep through the screaming shoulder..)
j

so close...

my last two finals are tomorrow!! and, after a career counseling appt on wednesday, my winter break will officially begin. i'm so excited to read and to clean and to cook and to work and to hang out with friends. aiiee. so excited.
my reading list:
--finish "anna karenina"
--"slouching towards bethlehem" by joan didion
--"one man's meat" by eb white
--"the unbearable lightness of being" by milan kundera (and, probably rewatch the movie because it's so fucking incredible)
and, (besides whatever else catches my eye)--

"the sexual politics of meat" by carol j. adams, my vegan neighbor's book that i promised to return two months ago. oops :)