What if I'm beautiful and I'm intelligent, but I'm neurotic as hell and no one will ever be able to truly accept my crazy? What if people can project whatever they want to on me, and they see the awesome girl that they want when in fact I'm just as ugly and frustrating as any other girl on the inside? What if I find myself in my underwear obsessively cleaning my house and trying not to look in the mirrors because I'm suddenly unhappy with my body? What if I lose the best thing in my life because every now and then, inexplicably, I have to really work not to randomly cry? There's a distinct terror in not knowing whether you're normal or not.

Heidi gave me the most brilliant, perfect way to make my senior thesis interesting again. I can't even tell you how much of a weight that is off my mind. It also gives me an opportunity to do something that is somewhat unheard of in arts programs - debut a failed project. Basically what she wants me to do is to use the video I shot in New York in conjunction with the blogs that I wrote on the same days, and if possible, the texts from those days as well. I show essentially how the video failed me, and that for my purposes in my particular time, text was the better medium. While it is in fact undoing a lot of the things that Brian's working to do in his PhD program, it really makes my project not only more interesting to me, but more original in general. It's such the better plan - I'm quite excited now.

Chainsaw noises behind my house again. There are nights when I'm none too comfortable coming home to my little ghetto apartment in crackhead-land.

I think sometimes it's incredibly obvious when I've been splitting up my blogs - when one part was begun one night and the next part was written the next day. Some of this is intensely personal, and sometimes I think I shouldn't post it.

Musings Over a Few Days

Check out this quote by Michel Foucault (my new forced philosopher of choice):

"My problem is essentially the definition of the implicit systems in which we find ourselves prisoners; what I would like to grasp is the system of limits and exclusion which we practice without knowing it; I would like to make the cultural unconscious apparent. Therefore, the more I travel, the more I remove myself from my natural and habitual centers of gravity, the greater the chance of my grasping the foundations I am obliviously standing on. To that extent any trip - not of course in the sense of a sightseeing trip nor even a survey - any movement away from my original frame of reference, is fruitful."

This is an incredible, succinct explanation to why the distance, the chaos of New York was so inspiring for writing. I was everyday forced to examine those ideologies and assumptions that I stand on - that we all stand on, differently - because it was so far removed from my normal, even from the circumstances and situations that *built* my ideologies and assumptions. It's really an incredible quote, and the more I look at it, the more I realize why the inspiration, the wonder that was New York completely faded when I came back here. Honestly, it's bizarre how quickly I fell back into South Carolina. Rapidly, mercilessly, like I hadn't missed a beat. Maybe for a split second my ideologies were challenged by familiar sights after an unfamiliar period of time, but it was incredibly brief. I was already back in my South Carolina mindset by the time I'd spent my first night back.

There's nothing quite as wonderful as having someone to believe in you more than you believe in yourself.

So it's pet peeve time. If this blog were called "Rachel's Pet Peeve of the Day," it would much more easily be a daily post. I know a lot of you love me maybe not for my snark, but at least along with my snark, so here goes: entitled people. Entitled people irritate me to no end. I hope to God that when it's all said and done, people can say that I was at least thankful for all the things I was given. I don't deny that I've been given many things in my life, but I dearly hope that I've expressed my gratefulness for them in most of those cases. Here's the thing, though - don't walk into my coffee shop thinking that my only purpose in this world is to serve you. Don't come in with daddy's credit card, run up a twenty dollar bill, and the conveniently forget to tip. Or even just look up from your cell phone for a second, make eye contact with me, and thank me for the time I've taken to make you that fancy coffee drink that you think you need. Courtesy, people. It's not that difficult. Throw me a bone.

School . . . Future . . . Eww

I find that professors are often the only people smart enough to know when I really think they're stupid. Thus I've never been popular with the professors that I was not impressed with intellectually - Elizabeth Hoffman is a good example (yep, we're naming names). Oddly enough, my fellow students can rarely tell when I think they're absolutely idiotic, but the professors always seem to have a fairly good sense of when I can't stand them. I think many things about me can be falsified, but my eyes don't lie. When I hate you, you know. That's part of the reason why I didn't break the A in my last history class - my TA was, legitimately, an idiot, and she could tell that I knew it. The first day of class she asks, "what can maps tell us?" And I wanted to break out my Benedict Anderson film theory and show her the what-for. She then proceeded to grade all my papers harshly because she didn't like me. Swear to God.

There are days when I feel - intensely - like I'm riding on the coattails of much greater and more talented people. Brian's the obvious example. The next three or four years for me will be both an opportunity to distinguish myself from the excellent company I keep, but also to deserve that company. At the moment, I'm fairly certain I've just stumbled into it. I'd like to earn it. What happens come April will fairly well decide the course of the next few years, and while I'm a little depressed that those glad tidings won't be coming for me, I'm still happy that I have some semblance of a plan. Although that plan reads "follow Brian to _____" at the moment.

I had a short discussion with him about it about a week ago - I told him that it's comforting for me to be able to rest on what he's going to do, in some odd way. If he goes to India, I'm given a circumstance like New York, but more intense and hopefully more inspiring. I don't know if I'll flourish or languish there, but either way I'll have done something intensely new. That's so much pressure to put on him, though. I'm asking him to support me (emotionally, less so monetarily), and be comfortable with the idea of me following him wherever the next few years take him. I hope against all odds that I'll find some way to create my own good luck, but for me, having any semblance of a plan helps.

Senioritis has certainly struck. I'm making it - for the most part - and in fact got my first A on a film paper since taking exclusively Susan Courtney film classes. I was ecstatic, for the record. I'm making better grades this semester than last - at least so far - but I just find myself having to force myself to try a little more than last time. Last semester was my shining beacon, but I guess I've said that more than once.

So that was my school/future bitching session. Expect one on work in the near future. Maybe tomorrow night.