To forget the rest of the world...

Is probably a sin. After all, there's more to this world than just me. Alas, I am at the age where I think I rule the world and...actually, that's not quite right. I'm at the age where I've realized that the world is not me, nor am I the world, and I should remember that at all times.

Regardless of what I should or should not do, however, I still act like I'm king (or queen) of the world, and I'm sure this has a great deal to do with where I'm at: college.

College is a funny place, you know? You learn, experience things, make connections, and do things you'll probably remember the rest of your life. You also screw up, make enemies, and do things you'll wish you could forget for the rest of your life. I suppose it's all a matter of balance, but a gymnast I am not, and I'm scare of heights, too, so I'm pretty sure the balance beam is off-limits.

The following is a list of things that tend to keep me off balance, and make me forget that great big wonder that is the rest of the world...

[Warning -- most of these sound like complaints. And maybe they sort of are. But I'm just trying to tell you what's up. If you can't handle the pessimism, then, frankly, you shouldn't be reading my stuff. I'm not the cheerleader everyone thinks I am, and I'm damn tired of acting like one]

* I'm taking nineteen credits this semester. You may or may not know that this is the maximum amount of credits one can take without having to pay beyond the full-time tuition fees that already tax a person. Ideally, nineteen credits means nineteen hours of studying outside of class. Let's round this up and say that I have a 'job' that takes up forty hours a week. For most of the fifty states, that equals a full-time job. Only I don't get health benefits or insurance, and I don't get a discount at the bookstore, nor do I get a Christmas bonus or paid vacations.
Of course I said 'ideally.'
Four of the nineteen credits I'm taking are private lessons. Voice is mostly just to keep my voice strong, and help me to expand my range, and not go into a coughing fit like I used to if I sang for more than ten minutes at a time, and so I'll probably only practice fifteen minutes a day on that one. Though that still adds up to almost two hours for one credit per week. Composition is something I'm seriously considering doing a double major for (the first being piano performance). It's complicated, involves more research than practice --at least at this level-- and so I spend an hour a day on this. Seven hours sound much for one class? Maybe, maybe not. Then we have piano. Piano is my life. It's my everything. Though I rarely admit to it, my dream is to be a concert pianist. I want to play with symphonies and ensembles, and of course play solo as well. This after I get over my stage-fright, of course. According to my 'credits' for piano, I should only practice two hours a week. I practice more than that per day.
And yes, I'm still getting everything else done, though it's only week two so perhaps I'll slip up, but so far so good. So far so 'I'm going to kill myself if I don't find a time for a break' more like it. So the ideal is twenty hours outside class. The reality is closer to thirty, maybe even thirty-five. I don't have the time, or I'd calculate the exact amount for you.

* I offered to give my very good friend Kat piano lessons.
How many of you are teachers, or have taught in the past? Do you remember the terror of planning your first class? Did you have a syllabus or other schedule to keep you on track? Did you keep on track at all? Did your teaching help your students or screw them up?
One lesson down, and Kat doesn't mind I have to treat her like a first-grader, and I have some ideas of where to go. But I'm seriously glad that I never once considered teaching for my career.

* I made a horrible mistake: I tried out for the school play. And I was cast, and given four parts, two of which are pretty major (this out of eighty or so total, and none of them in the same scene).
You might think congratulations are in order, but I think a slap upside the head is more appropriate. Though the practices may go long or short, or may be cancelled due to my scenes not being rehearsed, in theory, I'm supposed to be at practice every night from seven to about nine, maybe nine-thirty. As if I had the time for this, right?
And what's the play, you ask? Something exciting, right? And dramatic, and wonderful, and elegant, and...? Well, it's something, all right. You may or may not have heard of 'The Laramie Project.' You may or may not want to. To know what it's about, just Google 'Matthew Shepherd, Laramie, Wyoming,' and you'll find out. It's based on a real-life incident over ten years ago, and it's not pretty, let me tell you. It's also controversial and weird, and you know, I'm seriously compromising my morals by appearing in this play.
Yeah, congratulations on your role...
Of course, I'll be excellent, and if you're in the area, I'll tell you to get front-row tickets, because this play really is amazing, even without me in it.
But be warned, this is just one more step toward turning me into a bleeding-heart liberal...gah...

* On the subject of compromising my morals, I drove one of my girlfriends to the airport so she could go home and get an abortion.
Do you know how much that haunts me? I've been told that I can't force anyone to think or believe like me, and that all I can do is love her and pray for her, but you know, it's not easy.
For awhile, I prayed for a miracle.
Not that she would change her mind and keep it, though I've done that.
No, I prayed for God to give the baby to me instead.
Hell, I've wanted a kid since I screwed up and said "It's okay, Mommy's here" when Hildi was a baby.
And I believe in miracles.
But the longer I'm on this earth, I don't believe any miracles God has in store are for me.
Sometimes it's scary being me.
Sometimes I wonder just how corrupt this world will make me before I leave it.

* When I recently visited my family in Minnesota, I loaded up my car with a little less than what I already have here at school and brought it back here with me. Needless to say, there was no breathing space in my room for the first week of school, because I simply didn't have time to sort through things, toss some, keep others, organize, organize, organize...
I got to that this last weekend, and not there is room to breathe.
If only a little. I have way too much stuff, and it's occurred to me that if I died tonight, you'd all have way too much to deal with.
So I'm slowly going to go through things and get rid of even more. Get rid of books I won't read (either again, or for the first time). Stop collecting toys and shotglasses and posters. Forget learning how to cook or draw. Have only enough clothes to last a week before I must wash again. And stop buying so many damn pillows.
Half my problems stem from the clutter. Whether I'm in the room or not, it preys on me, and I absolutely cannot handle it.
I'm starting to break.

* I cannot sleep.
When I discovered how little sleep I was able to get, how little rest, a part of me thought, hey, I'll just become like the vampires in Twilight and never sleep again...
Except of course that's not realistic at all, is it?
So I thought, well, okay, maybe I can learn to adapt to the three or four hours of sleep I do get, and I'll be fine. I mean, I can't do a thing about the nightmares, but a little rest should count, right? And I felt a spark of hope when my voice teacher told me that staying tired doesn't last forever --she has two children, twins, four years old now-- and I jumped right on that, asking, how...?
Only the answer is not that you get used to it, but that the kids start sleeping more, and so you can sleep when they do.
That doesn't quite work for me.
And if you didn't know, lack of sleep can literally make you sick. The past two days, I've been telling my stomach that it is not going to upchuck the food I just gave it. So far it's listened, but it clearly resents my authority over it, and I'm only eating half portions because I know if I eat any more, then I really will get sick.
All that bullshit about college and gaining weight is so not happening for me. I lost weight my first year, now in the latter half of my second, I'll do it again...
But I'm not sure if this is a silver lining or not.

* There is a boy.
There's always a boy.
This one smiles at me, and talks to me, and sings with me in the chamber ensemble, and I've been told he might like me as much as I like him.
I've also been told I scare him.
I scare myself, but do you know how much it hurts to be told that? Because I'm not a 'normal' child, because I'm sporadic and spontaneous and I do things like get a dragon tattooed on my inner thigh, and I alternate between dressing like a nun and a hooker depending on my mood and the weather...
Well, damn, of course I scare him.
Knowing the why doesn't make it any better.

* There is another boy, a friend, who only talks to me when his other friends are not around. I used to be friends with those others, and then one day they simply ignored me, and I was unfriended on Facebook (horrors, haha), they stopped calling and inviting me to hang out, we stopped eating lunch together, and no one told me a damn thing.
For the longest time, I worried that I'd said something wrong, but I'd forget when he talked to me as if nothing was wrong, and I never got around to asking. When I realized that the only time he talked to me was without the others, I stopped giving him a hug when I saw him. It made me see red when he stopped me to chat and then waited a few extra moments for that hug, clearly expecting it, and just as clearly not understanding that he'd hurt me.
Serves you right, jackass.
I don't know that I can call him a friend anymore, but it still makes me smile when he seeks me out to talk, so I guess I'll just let myself be a sucker for his attention, and call it a day.

* Did I mention I have a work study? It's in the music department, of course, and though it's minimum wage, a job is a job, and I'll take what I can get, be it five or fifteen hours a week. My official title is 'Documents assistant,' but what I do is help sort the choral library, set up online calendars, type up behavior contracts, take roll in choir, put professors' libraries in Library of Congress order, request theses from the interlibrary loan system, clean and dust offices and choir rooms, play a little accompaniment when the regular accompanist isn't in, and other random things the faculty can find for me to do.
In the case of one professor, I get Oreos for extra payment, in the case of another, the occasional candy bar.
And I suppose I should clarify, some of the above is not paid work, just volunteer.
But I like it.
Even if it cuts into the time for everything else.

Nine is a strange number to end on, but I like odd numbers, so...
This and more, is why I forget the rest of the world.
Though I think I might have taken an hour or so to catch up on that anyway, haha...
Be grateful for what you have; I'll try to do the same.