Land of Lakes and Volcanoes

Acceptance is not my strong suit. It doesn't fit in with my worldview very well. To me, accepting something means acknowledging that you can't change it. I'm not usually sorry about this as a character trait. I think it's what's enabled me to change my life so much, to be the person I am today. I honestly wasn't very happy growing up, and if I had just accepted that that was what life was like, I wouldn't have worked so hard to have something different. However, sometimes things just happen that you can't do anything about. I'm facing one of those situations right now. I have a hard time accepting that there's nothing I can do to improve things, no action I can take that might make things better. Everything I've tried to do, no matter how well-intentioned or innocent, has only made things worse. It's hard to realize that sometimes accepting a situation and doing nothing is the best "something" you can do. I hate it, but ...

This is my favorite movie ever. I´m not sure what that says about me, except that I have a deep abiding faith that love is both wonderful and possible. Some people might interpret this movie as Lee becoming a woman only through her relationship with Edward, which happens to be sexual and romantic in nature. The fact that she's the submissive in their sado-masochistic pairing might raise additional eyebrows. At first glance, this is not a very female friendly movie and it paints Lee in a rather bad light of needing a man in order to be happy. I happen to believe that there's something deeper going on. Lee (Maggie Gyllenhaal) isn´t perfect. She is profoundly and deeply scarred, both emotionally and physically. She is contained, as Edward says, ¨closed." She is still a child in many ways as demonstrated by her purple bedroom and canopy bed. Even her cutting kit is beribboned and the first implement we see her use against herself is the sharpened foot of a ballerina. ...

Either that or USC needs to up the admissions ante. The undergrads seem to be everywhere, in every nook and cranny, even where they clearly SHOULD NOT be and when they SHOULD NOT be there. This annoyance is exacerbated by motor vehicles. In the past week and a half, I have had the following experiences: I got hit by a car. In a vehicle: Just them. # of incidents: 2 Technically, one of these happened last semester, but then I considered it just a fluke. Last year it was a girl on her phone in an SUV so I was able to slap her back glass before she completely flattened me. My presence behind her vehicle merely elicited an impatient shrug. Today it was a girl backing out of a parking space in some kind of early 90s sedan. She did not appear to be on her phone, but she also wasn't watching what the hell she was doing. Because it was a sedan, there was no back glass. As a result, her bumper actually collided with my thigh. A couple of furious poundings on her trunk lifted her...

I had a great weekend to kick off the semester. Friday night was the acoustic Magnetic Flowers show at the White Mule , located in what was Jammin' Java in my pre-Nica life. Recently opened, the White Mule is helping to revitalize (I hate that word) Main Street Columbia. What that really seems to mean is "get white people to go there at night." Regardless, it's a nice little subterranean bar, complete with back patio and food until 10. I ordered a sandwich at 10 'til 10 and it was out to me in minutes, absolutely delicious, and accompanied by a peppery pasta salad. MF, photo courtesy of Mallane's FB page. So the music... I will admit that I wasn't really a Magnetic Flowers follower until this summer, but they have quickly become one of my favorite Columbia bands. Their music is varied, energetic, catchy and emotional. They take risks and while I'm not always thrilled with the results, the excitement they feel about their music comes across in ...

As someone whose life still revolves around academia at the age of 28, I find that Fall, rather than Spring, is my season of renewal. The inauguration of new exploits, the introduction of new people, and the opportunity to begin again all come with the arrival of a new school year. This year is no exception, as I am embracing a new avenue of part-time employment and with it a new and different academic setting. I have taught labs and co-taught courses before at USC, but this fall I will be an adjunct at Midlands Tech, teaching a lab and a lecture, although not for the same course. I am ridiculously excited about this, as I do truly love to teach, and that wasn't an option at USC this semester. It's also another semester that I hold on to my love of biology and share it with students. A new year also means a whole new crop of students in the courses that I study at USC as part of my research job. Last year we had a number of unexpected challenges and difficulties, but I...

I've been pretty personal on here lately, but I figure, you know, why not? So I've got problems - who doesn't? Tonight's topic is obsession. Really, it's "obsessing", but obsession sounds so much creepier. I obsess about things, particularly about relationships. I do this about work, about my family, about money, about everything. However, relationships are the most likely to send my mental anxiety processes ramping into overdrive. This is not my favorite thing about myself, and at times I have found it practically debilitating. An example would be when my mom died. I would start to think about her and it would feel like every sad feeling I had about her loss was crashing in on me, along with an acute awareness of every moment I would want her with me when she wouldn't be (marriage, kids, etc.). It wasn't there and then all of a sudden it was, all of it, so quickly that I couldn't seem to do anything about it until it was so overwhelmin...

Today a colleague and I went to Conway and recruited a rather large number of participants for one of our studies, and that was productive. I am, however, exhausted. We spent 6 hours in the car for 3 hours there. Now I'm watching a silly comedy in the hopes that it will cheer me up because I'm still moping and I'm getting a little sick of myself by now.

Well, I've been spouting self-pitying nonsense on Facebook for weeks now and it's 1:45 AM and I'm supposed to "get up" to go to Conway tomorrow at 7:30. So essentially, I'm at the point where I just need to get some stuff out. I'm not feeling good about my life right now. I'm trying to learn from my mistakes and move on, but self-pity has been creeping in a lot too. So, to let it out: I feel like a failure lately. I know there are so many things in my life that people would look at and see as success, but the things that really matter to me aren't going so well. I'm not sure why I seem capable of managing the little stuff while completely screwing up the stuff that's actually important. To list: 1) family and relationships, 2) education, 3) financial security and independence. I want a family. I always have, and while many of my friends who don't actually care about this have been in relationships for going on 10 years now, I am...

The new semester has come, and with it the students. It's like an annual invasion of insects with drivers' licenses. People are double-parked everywhere, sweating parents are trying to conceal their glee and/or sadness, and a new crop of freshman are positively vibrating with excitement at being let loose upon the world. This is truly an event that fills me with ambivalence. I work at a university. I wouldn't have a job without the students because I study them. I even really enjoy teaching them. However, there's that moment when I'm desperately looking for a parking spot and some kid who has no idea how to parallel park is blocking traffic and if I could wiggle my nose and make them all disappear, I would. This also happens when it takes twice as long to get coffee at Cool Beans, when they use the elevators to go to the second floor, and when they appear to not understand that walking in front of my car is a bad idea. Really, it is. The end result is that t...

I've been having anger management issues lately. I can tell they are getting to be issues because I'm starting to take things personally that maybe I shouldn't. People and situations have been disappointing me lately in bizarre and unexpected ways, and while 95% of what is going on actually has very little to do with me, after a while it becomes difficult to fathom that it could all be coincidence. I find myself wondering what sort of bad-planning mistakes I've made that have resulted in my current situation. I won't go into what's been happening here b/c a lot of what's going on just shouldn't be public, but I find myself looking critically at my situation and wondering how I can improve it, and I'm kind of at my wit's end about a lot of things. I don't feel despair or anything, just a resignation to sit back until the tide changes direction. I feel like I'm doing everything I can to paddle against the current just now, but it's...