I can't come up with a clever title for all this...

Today was one of the longest days I have had in awhile. I cannot complain because I love what I do these long dreadful and at the same time very rewarding days.

Here in the writing department we meet every couple weeks to see what our goals are for the year. Today was a very interesting day. We had another of our meetings... not to mention we got delivery from noodles and company so that was pretty much a guarantee that Julia, head of the writing department, had something in mind for all us. Although, as usual the meeting took a different turn and we talked about being able to bring passion to the classroom while incorporating the personal and technical ideas or something like that.... well we didn't really come to a way to do that so the conversation just kind of went all over the place. But the whole discussion of passion made me think of if I would consider myself a romantic or if I would be be able to recognize romanticism.

Unfortunately.... I don't even know how to recognize passion when I see it. I love doing lots of things and I have interest in many different topics but can I really say that I am passionate about _____? I do not think I am at that point in my life... I remember saying couple years ago that I was passionate about art. Am I really? When was the last time I painted or produced a piece of art? I cannot recall. I also remember saying that I was passionate about music. I only played the viola for 3 years. I go in and out of phases where I "have" a passion for about a year and then I am done with it. Nothing in my life provokes that much emotion in my life for me to call it my passion. For those few of us who are lucky have chosen their passions lead a live where many of the things they do is focused and I feel like I am all over the place. I think that is a good way to describe where I am at this point in my life. All over the place! Well now come to think of it. Do I wanna be that person who has a fixed passion and is so focused on this path of life? How is one supposed to learn and establish and experience and..... I don't get it. Once again I have managed to confuse myself.

This makes me think of an assignment that I have for my psychology class that is due on Friday. I am very excited to write about it. I guess I can say that the current topic of discussion is kinda my passion:) Heh, the usage of the word kind of makes me laugh. We are talking about gender, class, and race. I am going to analyze the gender, class, race issues portrayed in movies that are out this week and I have to write a psychology paper on it. I am quiet excited to do that:)I believe I can really work with that.

Anyways, this was a long and dreadful post. By the way, I am very proud of myself with all this shit I am doing for work and school, I am currently on the path to finishing the novel I am reading. How exciting, I might just finish in the next couple of weeks and start a new one:) Who knows:)

Take this...

Last night, I accidentally left my music on. I believe sometime in the middle of the night I experienced what people call, "half awake, half asleep" sensation. Have you ever listened to a piece of music and felt your body pulsate as if you felt every beat in your veins and the blood flow through them as if your heart is in perfect tempo with every sound that comes out of your computer's speakers???? Yeah, what I felt last night was pretty much what I described times eh let's say ten. We are constantly so aware of our surroundings that we cannot stop for one second and focus on one minuscule, meaningless, satisfying, waste of time of something.

I have also developed an interest in the concept of sleep. I don't understand how people talk in their sleep either I should do some research on that. I wonder if sleep talking occurs during REM sleep cycle. Somehow I highly would disagree with that because it would make more sense to sleep talk when one is in the beginning stages. Anyways.... back to music.

I do not understand how every artist does not strive to do that to their listeners. Music has become such an institutionalized commodity. Most artists care about making money and selling albums. They produce music where they know is in high demand and will sell. What happened to being daring and doing what you love?

In the writing class, we organized a workshop that was focused around how to integrate quotes into your essat correctly and effectively. In order to make it fun we related it to music. We came up with three terms; the biters, commercial rappers, and the innovators. The idea was to show kids the correct way to introduce a quote, stating the quote and explaining what it was about and how it related to their paper. So, the example we had for commercial rapper was P.Diddy and the song that he took from the Police. He is the commercial rapper because he takes a song which is already popular and spits it back out in the same form with little or no personality added. He knows that when people listen to that song, they will think to themselves, "I know this song, it's from that band Police". Diddy is doing what is popular not something that is his own material. He does this so often that I do not even know what is his own material. Did I mention that he is a terrible dancer? He has no coordination. Enough about him. I should bash Avril Lavinge or someone. There is so many of them I do not know where to start.

But now imagine a song like All That Could Have Been by nine inch nails... There is so much emotion, personality, originality, passion, love, hate, despair, regret.... You feel all those and then some when he is playing the piano and every time he opens his mouth. You feel the rhythm of it all over your body... What else can I say. He says it all. That is how music should be...

Promise.

Eh

I have decided that our personalities are so malleable. Maturing doesn't justify how we are so impressionable. Everyday we drop values that we held onto so strong before (however you would like to define before) and yet those values are so easy to be forgotten. Anyways, I had a good thought going with this...
I have been thinking that I have no intellect. I have been reading the same novel for the past three months and I am not even half way done. I am incapable of making time for something so essential in a person's life, reading. I've forgotten how to form grammatically, structurally, correct sentences. I am ashamed. I feel like a hypocrite when I read my students' essay. In the writing department, thats what we are striving to do yet, I haven't written anything nor have I read a page of my novel. I made a book list over time summer but unfortunately I was only able to cross off a minuscule amount:

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell
The Best Way To Play by Bill Cosby
Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
Cane River by Lalita Tademy
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard
Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou
Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
Jewel by Bret Lott
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Light in August by William Faulkner
A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton
The Meanest Thing To Say by Bill Cosby
The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier
Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes
Night by Elie Wiesel
Open House by Elizabeth Berg
Paradise by Toni Morrison
The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
River, Cross My Heart by Breena Clarke
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Songs In Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir
Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay
A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons
What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage
Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts

Of course, I stole some of these from Oprah. I say, don't hate because of my Oprah love. I love Oprah. Not to mention that she has a good book list.
I also have collected about 3 or 4 months of National Geographic that I have not even opened. I know there is so much I am interested in that is written in those glossy pages but I have not had the time. Although, I know saying that is a big cop out. The other day, I was so stressed out about how I had no time and the hypocrite I am, I sat down and calculated how much time I work and how much time I waste going to school. Here's what my calculations look like:)
There are 168 hours in one week and I spend about 7 hours a night sleeping which makes 49 hours of sleeping a week.
So 168-49= 119 hours I spend out and about.
I work about 25 hours a week and lets say I spend about 2 hours a week for driving and getting to work that makes 27-28 hours just for work.
so 119-28=91 hours for school, homework and fun.
Unfortunately, I am a full time student, I have school five days a week from 8 AM to 5 PM so that makes that makes 40 hours so 91-40=41 hours for fun.
Everyday i probably spend 2 hours eating/making food so that another 14 hours
41-14=26 hours of fun. Well, somewhere in there I make time to shower about 5 times a week so that is another 2.5 hours. Still, I have so much time for fun, yet it feels like life is filled with everything but fun.

So, why does it still feel like I have no fun:)
Sorry, I am being obnoxious.

I cant wait to graduate:)