Somedays I wonder how this world works, you can be in the middle of a crisis and then it's over, kinda like a hurricane, one minute life is normal (whatever that means) and then BAM (kick it up a notch) and then back to normal life, except it's not all the same as it was before, something is different. Maybe it's me, or no maybe its you. Hell maybe it is us both.

SIGH " A Mandan elder told me, when you don't know what to do pray, not so much like a WWJD, but when there is nothing left to be done, do the one thing you can control yourself and give yourself to a higher power." Before I left this wise and weather faced man I had asked him is there something you would do now with all your knowledge that you didn't when you were my age. His eyes twinkled in the evening light as the air dropped degrees cooling the earth and the meal I just served. He rocked in his chair, looked at me and motioned for a light for his pipe. He smoked it and I sat there waiting for the answer and I began to discover something, it is good to take your time with things. I began to feel just his presence, the aromatic scent from the pipe, the night descending on the prairie, I was homesick and thinking of all that the people I missed meant to me. He cleared his throat and I had forgotten that he was even there or what I had asked him. He looked at me and said "Yes?" I was slightly puzzled coming back to the moment we shared and then it struck me like lightning the question I had already asked him, the words evaporated long ago, but he looked at me and said " When I was young and foolish, I wish I would have known the power of prayer, the way I do now. SO when life pulls you this way and that, pray. PRAY!" He took a long drag on his pipe. "If you never remember me, remember my words to you, child, Pray!"

I just recently got accepted to a college I had gone to twice before, both for a Bachelor's and a Master's degree. I have decided to return to finish my requirements so that i may qualify under the regulations of NY State for Certification. It has been a technologically challenging day with some interesting results. I am officially registered and enrolled in classes which took me all day to do! Well, know i know and knowing is half the battle!

I just signed up for health insurance because the schools is more than i can afford. I get my packet this week. I have an appointment for the end of the month and get that ball rolling.

I am in the process of writing a grant proposal for finacial aid so that i can pay for this wonderful opportunity to return to school for the pursuit of continuing my higher education. But for that information has changed and I'll have to come down to the office and start all over again. There is a new application process. *sigh*

I am in the process of Filling out the FAFSA forms online! Getting a PIN. Everything is computer oriented! It is helpful when you are doing things down to the wire. It is still stressful, maybe it is because you have to be even more organized than was previously expected.

Of course you get one thing completed and two more things get added to the list from the last phone call. I have to call my banks and make sure my loans stay in deferment so that i do not default. I know there are so many Buffalonians that do this with me, but it never stops the fact that it has to be done and if you don't you screw up your credit for a long long long time!

My list just keeps getting longer and longer... does this mean I am accomplishing anything or just trying to catch my non-existant tail in time!

I recently met a very cool person that I thought I was going to enjoy getting to know when I had gone camping...

The night I had first gotten home a message blinked on my answering machine (41 messages later - yes I told everyone I was going camping and they still called - your guess is as good as mine) Message number 42 "Hey, just wanted to check and see if you made it home ok, give me a call when you get in just to keep in touch..." I was quite touched and genuinely impressed. Returned his call and we talked about coming home and getting resettled from camping.

A couple days later there was a message "Hey - it's me, call me... Talk to you later..." I got in around 11pm and called... it was a good conversation. We talked about our days, talked about how camping was for us both, shared stories and strange adventures we had had during vacation seperately. I was getting sleepy and I had to go to sleep.

Three or four days later there was another message "Hey, just checking to see how you are doin? Give me a buzz when you can..." I called him back a couple of days later because work has been getting really buzy... I, then for Pollyanic reasons, spent the next three hours of one of the shitty days of my life on the phone with someone that was rude, pushy, arguementative, crude, opinionated without cause, assuming things about me without confirmation or asking me any questions, arrogant, I know what's best for you, then out of the blue "Hey I'm going to take a risk - you wanna go out, date or something?" I was shocked and had no idea this was coming, took a deep breath and opted for the TRUTH "Here's the whole truth, I have to work on my financial stability because I am going to be ending my job in a coupl of weeks. I need to focus all my attention on the rest of my work load and finding a job. I really need to put my personal, social and romantic life on hold right now... I do not know how to answer you... My answer is I don't know." I did not really know him that well, we met three weeks ago... what the hell do i know about him. I am not attracted to him immediately. When we first met in person there was soemthing a click, an understanding, a connection, but i have no idea what it was... "He was like ok. I can deal with that you didn't shoot me down... but you didn't say yes either" By the end of the phone call he had told me that we were going to have sex, what he was going to do to me (I was like are you finished? Do I need to let you go and take care of yourself, because I am not interested in this line of conversation, nor do i want to be present.) He then switched the subject but must have gone astray with his thoughts and ended up ejaculating anyways...

I really just got to the point where I am like - DUDE! If this is some kind of test you just put me through - he's like yeah it was and you passed. Well what he did not understand is how it was making me feel and that it was killing any chances of us ever getting together... He didn't want to get off the phone and he was falling alseep so the converation was ending anyways... I was so freaked out I couldn't sleep right away... I finally convinced myself I deal with it in the morning... I had nightmares all night... Woke up with this huge gigantic headache that quickly moved into a migraine... I was so angry by the time I actually had the chance to sit down and figure out what was bugging me...

Every little while I was remembering things he said for instance "You will call me tomorrow." I replied "No, I am not." He's like "We shall see..." I replied "Don't hold your breath, i've got work to do and need to get it done not spending my only time to relax being tested." I kept thinkg about how i answered and kept coming up with wittier nasty remarks...

Then it hit me, I really don't like him. Not at a
ll
. I then wrote a journal entry of pro's and con's as to if i should even consider dating him... I came up with 2 positives and 50+ negatives.

I am truely agonized though... what is the real him? Is it worth my time to figure it out? Should I call a friend in common and ask a few non revealing questions? Should I call friend in commmon and just plain tell friend in common everything and ask for advise?

I then asked my gut. My gut yelled NO! I'm like no what? NO he is not for you. Now I know.

Then I went through the what ifs and was mad at myself for not knowing when he first asked... Well, now i have the answer to his question. He said at the end of the conversation that he still wanted to be friends, even after I told him i did not appreciate talking about subjects i told him i wanted to not talk about and wastd 3 hours having conversation about nothing that interested me...

Next conundrum: What do I do with what i know? Do I tell him and give him a chance to discuss his actions to see if there is a friendship to salvage? Run and never look back. Wait until he calls. Do a Scarlet O'Hara and worry about it another day? Or just let it go as it is?

When I was a little girl, I was told I could do anything I wanted to do; only my imagination was the only thing to keep me from making those dreams come true.
Now I am an adult, for all intents and purposes, with an education and no career. I ask myself pretty regularly what I missed in my education as to why I am not fiscally successful. Am I too honest for my own good? If I with hold information on my employment applications, I could loose my employment via not telling the whole truth. Yet if I tell the whole truth I can go to 50+ interviews and politely be smiled at and thanked for my time, but we are sorry to inform you that you are over qualified for the position available at this time. What am I doing wrong?
My family keeps telling me everything is political. It is about who you know? Not what you know? Then what is stopping my previous drug dealing ideal minded students from actually doing whatever it is they think is right? So if I believe this then right and wrong is dependant on lineage and not ethics.
My friends keep telling me that the system is skewed... I put too much of myself in my work. That my best for someone else does not serve my best interest in obtaining and maintaining gainful employment worthy of my education.
It is true I have some choices, but I keep asking why is it more difficult for some and less difficult for others. Astrologically speaking I would think I was born at the wrong time or place. Philosophically I might think that it is paying off a previous karmic debt, or maybe balancing the universal energies our society deems unimportant, natural law.

• SIGH* I am still faced with the welfare line... I do not care how optimistic one is if you have been in this line at least once you have an understanding of human depravity and hopelessness! Then on the other hand I could go back to school, something I know and do well at. Which could feed the possibility of a new career with just a few missing pieces of my education and be in line for a teaching career...

I do love the subject I'd want to share with future students. Some evil bastard once told me those that can't make it in their chosen field teaches. So somewhere in my mind I feel I am selling out. Being a starving artist is a place I have been before, as noble as it is, it too is an urban myth-nomer. If the IRS can tax the chosen profession I want to have then, it is a full time career. Unfortunately I am missing many things in my education because I do not know how to be what I want to be when I grow up!?
I suppose it does not really matter what I choose because life will continue on, the sun will rise and shine (or hide behind rain clouds), but it will be there nonetheless... And this too shall pass. I guess it is the journey that matters the most, but would a little financial success hurt the Grande schema?

I am so tired of working for people who use me and my work ethic to the betterment of themselves. I obviously have missed out on how to be greedy or something that I seem to not know what it is. One of my bosses very confidently told me that I know everything I need to be successful. Except when I asked my boss, then how come I am not? It isn't for a lack of trying. My boss said do not worry I know what it is you know and you will be successful. OK. Besides that this boss used me mercilessly for their own needs at cheap labor almost free labor, I still think this WILL BE is not helping me in the PRESENT, where I currently live.
Success is a state of mind. I am successful and talented in many ways. I just seem to have some difficulty with employment. Is it a fear? What is the fear? What social conditioning did I buy into that keeps holding me back? Do I sabotage myself? What is so daunting about getting a new job? What is so frightening about a new career?

Maybe it is just CHANGE. Spare change. Hmmm.changes. Why do we call extra coinage, spare change? Why are most human beings af
ra
id of change? The unknown. Wouldn't that be preferable to what we do know?

Pretty girls (socially acceptable pretty girls) are very insecure people. Plain girls (The rest of the known population which comes to about 90%) are not, because we do not rely on our looks to attract other human beings to us in our lives. This was an unusual discovery for me, because when you have all the pretty girls coming to you asking you for advise and suggestions, because of your personality and tendency not to judge them on their looks. You have to say to yourself - self, what does this mean?
Being the kind of person I am, I begin by asking myself if I was insecure and about what? After getting the answers, I started thinking about BEAUTY... what a concept. If it is truly in the eye of the beholder (which it really is) then why is there only one standard of beauty for all women. Some of us through genetics are automatically shoved out of the running on logistics: Height, weight, size, hair color, eye color, breast size, shoe size, bone structure... (I just had a very sick thought: if women were socially conditioned like men to think there genital size mattered - we'd be screwed there too! Because like men we come in all different shapes and sizes) Just like our genitals our bodies are all different. We all bleed red. We all feel the hurt of not fitting in, or being accepted by our peers, or do not like being judged by the body covering the spirit that dwells inside.
The socially acceptable beautiful women are not always very happy. Generalization though it maybe I had many come up to me to talk to me about their problems... when we got right down to it, they did not love themselves. This is an awfully high price to be socially acceptably beautiful. I rather like being plain, gives me more time to focus on being real... instead of creating an illusion to live up to which you know will fade with time and age!

• Sigh* I have become addicted to this television show called MONK the neurotic, defective detective... anywho, I have been trying to tape the damn thing and usually it is on twice in a row an hour apart from the Premiere episode and thanks to the Olympics it is not on this friday night... I then get stuck on this crazy schedule for tomorrow because I am going out of town and have a shit load of things to get done... I just love my family.

• SIGH* Now that I am done ranting and raving... I couple of friends have introduced me to this absolutely fabulous website! I have enjoyed reading many of the entries and have had a good many laughs and it seemed an evil secret not to join in on the fun.

What is on my mind? Way to much to type, being that I speak faster, way faster than I type! So I will take it from the top and see when my fingers are tired or the stress of my trip sets in... VACATION....hmmmm, an oasis, a dreamy state of mind, begging me to come... this little voice has been whispering deep inside my mind that I must consider going camping. For a city girl I have learned to enjoy getting away from the concrete jungle and appreciating nature at it's finest without phones, computers, cells, doorbells (actually I don't have a doorbell, more later on that subject) - Just getting away from the stress of my daily life, family, work, projects, people, friends... all the things I will enjoy and love returning to after I have reacquainted myself with myself.

Hello, I am a workaholic! Is there a support group for people like me? My mind never shuts off, it is amazing that I ever sleep (well, that is up for grabs, for those that do know me... know that I am a Night Owl and an Early Morning person, you know that silence before the deafening din of all the work-a-day world wakes and after the party people have settled in for a nice piece of something on the side.

Thank you for just being there, shit, I feel like Dougie Houser checking in with my sanity! Maybe this will get me back in the journaling groove! Thanks guys! Keep it Simple! One thing at a time!

Oh and my all time favorite: "The definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over again, expecting different results!"