Hey, everyone.
I'm still alive... I imagine that's good to know.  School has been more or less eating my life -- I have so much to do, yet what feels like no time at all to get it done.  Which is odd, because I know for a fact that I waste far too much time online playing flash games (Evony and Cafe World, the latter on Facebook, are the latest addictions)... but on the other hand, that's pretty much the only thing I do to decompress, since whenever I watch movies or TV, I'm usually doing schoolwork on the side.

Today I sorted through all 20+ interlibrary loan books that are currently on my bed for my senior thesis -- some sort of collective biography surrounding gay men in Nazi Germany, and managed to get notes done on the relevant sections of four of them.  There's so much to do.  I'm just grateful that the professors aren't making me translate anything German that I use.  Reading German academic work is hard enough, and my translation skills are mediocre at best.  I'm also really grateful that this isn't going to involve any writing in German -- my German academic writing is even worse than my English academic writing, and with German I have the added issue of not always knowing what gender a word is or which case I should be using at any given point.  I feel like my whole academic career currently has just spiraled completely out of control and I'm floundering to keep up with anything.  I take the GRE on Saturday and I've hardly studied.  I know that I'll have enough time to retake it if I do horribly, but that's another $150 that I'd really rather not spend.  (Can I just say that I'm a little annoyed that my parents didn't even offer to help me pay for the GRE?  I understand that graduate school is going to be my expense a lot more than my undergrad has been, but still.) 

Speaking of grad school, I'm not going straight out of my undergrad.  I'm planning on spending a year or two volunteering, ideally in Berlin doing administrative work, organizing, and oral history with Aktion Suehnezeichen Friedensdienste, an organization founded after WWII in order to do reconciliation and preservation of the historical memory.  But we'll see how that turns out.  I really just want to get out of the ruts I've fallen into and do something somewhere new.  That said, whenver I go anywhere to "do something somewhere new," I always end up feeling like Ani DiFranco did when she wrote North Main Street: it seems to me I'm not doing anything new; I'm just not doing what I used to.  It's like I have this constant feeling of being stagnant and in a rut; I'm eternally restless.  I feel like I should probably be blaming that on our society which has pelted me with overactive media my whole life, conditioning me to need huge amounts of stimuli at all time, but I don't really feel like that's the case.

I figured out how to crochet tonight, when my brain couldn't handle any more genocide.  I'm currently slowly but surely working on a granny square, and I'm very proud of myself.  We'll see if I become capable of doing any more, or if I ever actually get to the point where my crocheting is efficient.  I'd eventually like to be able to make amigurumi, since a lot of the crochet patterns are way cuter than the knit ones.

I had what I think was a panic attack tonight, which has given me cause to call the therapist one of the professors here recommended to me when I asked her whether she knew someone... I'm going to call her tomorrow, and once I've worked out whether seeing her is even feasible, I'll start worrying about things like how to tell my mom that I'm in therapy again.  (For those of you who haven't been around for years, i.e., almost all of you, I spent around a year in therapy when I was in the 8th grade; school was miserable, I hated life, and was cutting... it was definitely a lot more than your standard teenage angst.)  I'm hoping that this therapy will be more effective than what I had back then -- really, I just want to get a formal Asperger's diagnosis and have someone to talk to about my issues with anxiety and depression.  And someone who can help me figure out some ways to cope that work for me, because thus far, I don't have anything.

I'm still with Screech.  That makes me happy.

Anyways, I should probably try to get to bed now.  You should look at my photography, which are posted on my Flickr.

I just un-came out to my professors, i.e., I emailed them asking to go back to being called Ellen. In some ways, this "uncoming out" is a lot more liberating than any other coming out.

The text of my email is below the cut.

( Read more... )

Also, check out my Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/naturalog) to see pretty pictures.  Mostly of yarn, though, but there are some of other things.  Like flowers.  And buildings.

The semester is done... I got my grades -- decent, but far from what I would have liked.  I've moved into my room for the summer and have (finally!) gotten around to fixing my bike, so I can bike places to get things and go out for rides.  My CD burner is broken, which means I can't make any mix CDs right now.  Fortunately,  I have a functioning CD drive in my old computer, so I can switch them out whenever I'm home -- I'll be home in a few weeks, since my GA flights are out of Indy.

I cast on for a cardigan yesterday, and am about 1/3 of the way through the body ribbing right now.  It's going to be a simple striped raglan v-neck cardigan in a pretty heathery brown and a deep sage green.  I'm really hoping that it'll look as good knit up as the skeins do near each other.

I'm in the process of finalizing my plans for my trip to Minnesota this summer -- right now, I'm just waiting on an old friend of mine (a teacher from my junior high school who is one of the two people at that school who made it somewhere vaguely close to bearable.  I can legitimately say that she saved my life) to get back to me about when would be a good time for me to stay with her.  We've started talking again in the past year or so, and it's really surprising how easy it was for us to switch from teacher-student to friends. 

Screech and I are still doing well.  We've almost been together for a year, which kind of blows my mind.  Maggie and I were together for almost six months, and that seemed like ages at the time.

Also, I have discovered something curious -- if I don't drink milk with every meal, I feel sick afterwards.  Also, when I was young, I had an allergy test and didn't respond to the histamine. 

That is all.

Current Mood: hungry

well, exams are over... now i'm sitting here in my messy room thinking about starting to pack up and move.  today, though, i just kind of want to chill out and play harvest moon, except screech is playing that right now.  (silly screech)

my life is relatively unexciting.  i got a book with a bunch of patterns for cute little knit animals, so i'm excited about that.  and

after saturday, i will no longer be in choir here (yay!) and i already am no longer involved in united sexualities, which is also a blessing.  there seems to be a tendency here for people to just give up on the rest of their communities -- there's a history of that happening within us, and some people of color friends of mine have basically given up on the black/hispanic/asian organizations here.

i want to send mail to people.  if you want mail (no guarantees about when), you should give me your address.

hey everyone.

i haven't updated with much information about my life, and since i'm procrastinating a lot right now... er... i mean, taking a break from working on my take-home exam for class, status, and power, i thought i'd post an update.

lately, i've been... surviving.  i've been really dysphoric lately, and it's not fun.  i'd really appreciate it if i could just, you know, be trans and stick with that.  or be cis.  whatever.  i don't really care at this point.  my body image is also practically non-existant -- i just know that regardless of my gender identity, this is not what i want to look like.

i'm frustrated with a lot of people in united sexualities; i somehow ended up doing almost all of the planning for our drag show, since nobody else was stepping up for things.  people also just weren't showing up for mandatory rehearsals... we didn't actually have a runthrough of the show until the show itself, which made certain technical aspects of the show challenging.  like, you know, knowing what was going to happen.  it also kept people from being able to have lighting more exciting than a white wash.  (well, amber, technically.  i gelled.)

i'm also trying to figure out what the fuck i want to do after i graduate -- i was thinking definitely grad school, but then i realized that i'm really burnt out on school, so maybe not.  i've come to the conclusion that i'm going to apply to my top graduate programs (i'm thinking indiana, iowa, and maybe minnesota for history and boston and chicago for sociology.  seminary is going on the back burner for now -- i've felt the call, but this isn't the right time to pick up the phone) and look around for some other volunteer-type opportunities.  on the list right now are a few placements in (northern) ireland and germany through brethren volunteer service, and possibly a fulbright application to go and teach english in some random country.  i'm also considering something like teach for america, but i'm unsure about how the teacher certification process would work with that.  i wouldn't mind finding some serious way to do tech theatre, but with my limited experience (even when i graduate), i wouldn't really be able to get a job in the field.  lots of places have civic theatres and other volunteer opportunities, though, and i'd be fine with that.

i've made the decision to quit choir next year.  there's too much favoritism -- and not like there was in icc, where it was clear that patrick and i were leck's favorites (but it was also known that we had been around longer than anyone else and had earned it), but in the sense that it's having really negative effects on the way the director interacts with the choir... this huge divide has emerged between people who like this person and people who don't, with most of us on the latter side.  besides, we aren't that good and i don't like most of the rep we're doing.

my relationship is going well.  at least that much is the case.  and i've been knitting a lot.  i like knitting.