Must I Have a Topic?

So. (Oh dear. Regardless of the fact that I speak like this, I will not allow myself to start every post this way. Rewind.)


This blogging thing is clearly an unbreakable habit, huh? Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.
A while ago, I wanted to write a post titled Emotional comparing my extreme low levels of emotional display to other people's and wondering whether that was because I'm bad at expressing myself or because I simply don't fluctuate as much emotionally. And what that would mean for my future ability to connect properly with people, and the degree to which it is in my biology vs. alterable. So because this has been bugging me and I'm always on my computer, I, of course, didn't write it.
Then, it follows that once I actually started writing, I didn't feel like writing about that. So I decided to pick up another more recent idea that had been floating around my head. I've become slightly fascinated with my flatmates' habit of definitively professing the opposite attitude to how they actually feel, the attitude they wish they had or think would be better for them (I think my CogSci class is getting to me). But once I put them on screen, those phrases I had crafted so carefully whilst brushing my teeth in the morning just seemed fake and rather boring. I think that all I can gather from this failness is that, once I've had an idea, I must put it down within a day probably, or it just won't work.


And there we have it. I'm stuck again with no topic, at least not one that will work right now (Maybe I'll save those and see if they catch my fancy in a few months.  But probably not.  Blogging strikes me as a very in the moment thing).  I've not watched any movies, read any books, eaten any interesting well-prepared (or not) food, and I'm not planning on doing anything particularly noteworthy.  And on second thought, what's wrong with that?  I agree that reviews of books/tv shows/food are interesting to read, but this blog is not really meant to be themed in any way.  And yet I also completely agree that a list of events I've done during the day, that I do pretty much every day, is definitely boring.
So what makes a blog? Must my life be full of diverse activities for which I have not the time or the money? Maybe so. Popular blogs might be so because they detail parts of lives that we wish we could have. Although I've definitely read blogs about events, thoughts, and feelings that are not so enviable.
Then, of course, a notion I've heard before comes back to me - that your blog is what you make it. The question follows, what am I going to make of this blog? What shall I write about? I started with the opinion that I could simply take whatever was at the front of my mind, make it like a journal. The only problem with that is that most of the time, I don't 'know my own mind', I either don't have much of anything on my mind or I don't know how to say it. So I'm proposing something, to... myself; for the next while at least, I will use this blog to figure out what I feel, what I'm thinking, how I'm reacting to certain things. After all, I was going to blog about my difficulty in expressing how I feel, so this seems a very neat way to close.


And then once I finished the post to my semi-satisfaction, I realized that there actually are a few things happening in my life that I am excited for. Most immediately, Veteran's Day is Thursday - no class and postponed homework. And then I'm going to a wedding this weekend, and although I'm not too excited about that, it includes spending a night at my parents' house because the wedding is near there. Yay! And obviously I'm also going home for Thanksgiving in a few weeks, which is also yay-ful. I'm hoping to use some gift cards I have for a bookstore to get Paper Towns and The Hunger Games, two books I've been really wanting for a while now. If/when I buy/read those, I will try to remember to blog about them. More long term, I'm excited for the next series of Doctor Who in the spring, as it's recently been announced that it will be a split series more focused on a long-arc story, with a 'game-changing mid-season finale'. Which, obviously, just increases the awesome, plus, of course, my tension till then. I'm trying not to spoilerize myself too much, but sometimes its hard.

Habit Already? Really?

Classes weren't that amazing, and I was feeling rather in denial, so I wasn't going to post today.  Yet, for some reason, this page keeps calling me, and I don't feel like going to bed yet.  I am confuzzled.  Isn't it supposed to take at least three weeks or something to form a habit?  And I don't even have anything interesting to write about.


Well, I guess I have to resort to how my day went, making this a short and terribly uninteresting post.  I'd apologize, except no one is really reading this so far.


Physics and Circuits went about how I expected them to.  Every quarter so far, I've had my science classes in the same stuffy room.  My engineering class is already so small that we didn't even get a tiered room.  I don't know whether to feel disappointed or exclusive and proud of the fact that I've stuck with it.  Though, I am annoyed at trying to see through all the guys sitting in front of me and have determined to sit as far in the front as possible with only ten minutes to walk in between my classes.
My Cog Sci professor managed to make it sound pretty cool, but he is only giving like three of the lectures.  The rest of them will be from 'experts in their fields', and it is up to us to piece everything together.  This seems ok, and right now I'm just satisfied with the fact that there are no essays directly part of our grade (although I have no idea about the format of the exams).


Sorry to disappoint, but my life is pretty ordinary.  Next time I'll try to make sure I have something to write about before I start.  We had a house meeting tonight, so I'm managing to hang on to my people state in spite of long class hours.  And then there is the first split up college meeting 'tomorrow' night, so we'll see how that goes.  And the barbecue Saturday at lunch, the 'Meet the Church' meeting that evening, and then the Lord's Table, coordination, and the 'Sunday meeting'.  Hm.  Perhaps I have discovered a partial cure for my hermitness: to keep going to meetings.  I say partial because there aren't always meetings, and I have previous experience of going hermit even in the middle of a busy meeting schedule.  But, it does seem to help! :)


Part something I enjoyed from the Life-Study of Genesis today:
The lake of fire is a "thirst-creating fire" as the "consummation of the line of knowledge".  However, the New Jerusalem as the "consummation of the line of life" is a "city of the thirst-quenching water".  Everything in the world, both good and bad, just creates thirst.  God's life is the only thing that can truly satisfy our thirst within.

Multiple Personality... Laziness?

When starting this, I have just forced myself/been forced by my wonderful roommate out of one of my hermit phases.  She came home at about two in the afternoon to see me lying in my bed with my computer and several snack food items sitting around me, and promptly ordered me that she was taking me with her on some errands and then dinner at a friend's house.  I took a shower, cleaned my room up very nicely if I do say so myself, and now am taking a very undeserved break to write this while my roommate takes a very deserved nap.

Unfortunately, this is not as seldom an occurrence as I would like.  Often, without any warning, I will slip into what I have recently been calling a hermit phase, usually lasting at least twenty-four hours.  Basically, it involves not getting up out of my chair (or more often bed) except for absolute necessities such as the bathroom and snack foods, and conversing with anyone being kept to an absolute minimum.  When I was younger it used to involve books and weird daydreams; now it involves constantly staring at my laptop.

When not being a hermit, I have several other phases I go through, but they are all relatively short, reasonable, and not very different from each other.  For now, I'm just lumping them together and calling it my 'people phase'.  (Oddly enough, though the computer completely consumes me during these episodes, the only urges I have felt to blog since I 'started' this thing have been in my people phase.)  My people phase is relatively neat, outdoor-friendly, and recognizes the need to study (although writing papers isn't always included in that).

I have frequently joked with my friends about myself having multiple personality disorder, though not really referring to this situation.  However, recently, I have started becoming more and more perplexed about my extreme mood changes. There does not seem to be any factor that pushes me into my hermit phase, and only the disapproval of my peers and/or relatives, or consequences, feared or real, drags me back out of it.  I have completely different personalities and mindsets in the two phases, and each one prefers itself.  My people phase, each part of it, thoroughly disapproves of my hermit self, while the hermit knows this and is very self-satisfied.

Now, to all those nitpickers out there, I am aware, or at least vaguely certain, from my extensive education obtained from the television in all things random, that multiple personality disorder actually is when the different personalities are not aware of each other.  So I'm pretty sure I don't have that, but I am seriously considering the possibility that I have some slightly tamer version.  Of course, I would never go to some sort of psychologist, being a Christian who believes that God's life within is the only thing that can truly solve my problems. But still, something is definitely wrong with me.  And, considering the previous sentence, my hermit phase still seems to happen even when I am enjoying Him in my spirit.

Also on my mental list of possible explanations is that I am a pretty introverted person (which I learned in my note-taking class that was taught by a psychology professor).  This means that while I don't mind it, socializing can mentally tire me out, in which case I would feel like just being alone for a little while to 'recharge'.  This explanation seems to sorta fit what I'm going through, including the whole 'I don't know what pushes me into it' thing.  If this is the case, though, I have a pretty serious problem, since my flip-flopping seems to be getting worse, and it is not the Lord's way to change people overnight.

I can't really cut back on my social life to try and lessen the rebound, since the Christian life basically depends on the other members of His church.  So the only option I have is to try and set some kind of security system in place to prevent/cure my hermit phase.  The problem is, I really don't care when I am in that mood, so it has to be something that doesn't really depend on me realizing how miserable or horrible I am.  The other problem is, I'm not sure if I trust/am comfortable with anyone enough to let them know how dark I can get inside.  So I can't just say - whenever I have piles of food in my room and am staring at my computer screen that you can't see, please yank me out of bed and make me clean up and like, read the Bible out loud in the living room while playing hymns.  Or better yet, take me out somewhere public with people I know, preferably a meeting.  I suppose somewhere in the back of my mind I am hoping someone I know actually does read this and pick this practice up. Hm. I think I'm analyzing myself too much.


So, as I finish this, it's several hours since I started and I've been to a meeting and pretty much gotten rid of the mental afterimage of hermit phase. Watching/listening to the freshmen in my apartment psych themselves up for the beginning of class tomorrow makes me feel nostalgic/too old and experienced/slightly ashamed that I really don't care.  I'm just feeling slightly intimidated from 4 1/2 straight hours of science-y classes, though I am that kind of person and very happy I don't have any humanities courses.  Still, it's better that I'm feeling focused and ready (in my people phase) rather than slightly worried that I'll even feel like going out of the apartment.


Aaand, before I get too off topic, I better end this.  If I am excited about my new classes and not too tired, there is a very good chance I will do another entry tomorrow about boring stuff like how my day went.  I am also wondering if I want to purposely let my housemates read my blog. Scary stuff that, compared to random people on the internet.  Should I have a closing? Hm. Will think about that too.

Official (Title?)

Officially, this blog was started several months ago.  As in, I was supposed to be writing an essay, and therefore was finding random things to do that I could convince myself weren't completely useless.  And so I picked a title and pressed enter.
However, being the very indecisive and slightly insecure being that I am, I couldn't bring myself to actually write about anything.  (Which, in hindsight, was probably a good idea, since when trying to write a paper, I go more than somewhat crazy.)  And since then have started countless posts in my head, actually tried to write a few, and gotten nowhere I was satisfied with.
I have now convinced myself I am taking a different tact, namely, not over-analyzing each sentence after it is written. So hopefully, once I get to the bottom of this, I will click that enticing orange button and you, whoever you are, will get to read my first official blog post.

Because I chose the title when I did, it reflected my longing to slip out of myself and into cyberland, to escape my responsibilities.  Then later, I thought it was ironic, because I was bored and wanting nothing more than to fast-forward, not pause, whatever amounts to my life in the real world.  Now, I'm not really sure, because I'm not bored or stressed, just feeling too lazy to change it.

Now, I've been reading a bunch of things about how to write a good blog, just because I'm the kind of person who is not quite comfortable enough and knowledgeable enough to stick a bit of herself out on the internets without thoroughly researching it first.  However, I am determined to finish this now instead of coming back to it tomorrow (later, technically) with a different mindset and the resulting unwillingness to post something that doesn't feel like it fits me wherever I am.
So, even though I was planning on writing something thought-provoking about what goes on inside my head (if there is such a thing), it is late and I am lazy.  Welcome to my world, real or not, or most likely somewhere in between.
Good night, blogverse.