One could do worse than be a swinger of birches...

So, I'm going to bed now, but feel the need to announce that I successfully wrote 4 pages of my essay today and still found time to clean my apartment.

Yes, that's right, I've broken the mold.

That is all.

So today I got to thinking about time: time to spare, time to change, time to stand up, time to fight, time to shut up, time to kill. No matter how you slice it, there simply never seems to be enough. Lately I've spent more time on academia than I have on close personal relationships; more time on filling my mind than on nourishing my soul; more time complaining than expressing gratitude; more time immersed in doubt than drenched in belief; more time thinking than doing. And I ask myself, "how can this be?" Is this what it all comes down to? Has the fleeting replaced the deep and permanent? Has the drive for success replaced the drive for the self?

Students of life, you are not your degree. Turn back the hands of time, minute by minute. Resist the ideological current of progress and belief. Dare to spend more than a moment of your pathetic little life in total nothingness. Bang on the door of social order--tell them you want your life back.

Okay, so it appears I have some work to do...

It's nearly midnight and I've managed to spit out a somewhat coherent and insightful introduction to my Arthur Hugh Clough essay. I'm not sure that I've made much progress...I can remember a time when writing was effortless and thoughts just seemed to converge on the blank page before my eyes. Oh well--let's see how I fare tomorrow. For now, I'm going to relax, listen to my nightly meditation and slowly stumble back into clarity.

Thus concludes day one of live journal. Sleep tight my friends.

Peace

...Hello?

So I guess this means I'm no longer a recluse--here goes, I'm coming out of the Platonic cave. Tadah!

So I always said that I'd never be one of those twenty-somethings broadcasting their life over the info highway. And yet here I am. I've been thirsty for some kind of meaningful existence beyond the text book, and my creative outlets have been drying up faster than I could ever have imagined. My latest attempts at poetry and verse have been nothing short of laughable, and it seems that lately I've been so plagued with writer's block that I'm academically "backed up." I'm hoping that spilling my guts every night will breach the dam and let the feelings flow, however freely. So, of course I'm going to modestly preface all of this by telling you that I'm not very good at this--by this I mean simply confining random thoughts and sensations to the shapely and coherent structure that is 'the sentence'. Lately the sentence and I haven't been getting along so well. Truth be told, I've been scheduling emergency visits with my thesaurus more often than I'd like to admit. It sees the sentence and I have had a fall out, for reasons I really can't imagine. The sentence has been frigid, demanding, and uncompromising, while I remain open-minded and obliging. No good can come of this--no, it's time to "attempt the pen" and be done with this nonsense.

Time for an experiment! I'm going to settle down with my Victorian poetry essay for the next little while. Let's see if this little preamble will help loosen the lid on my mind. Results to follow.

Peace!