Jane Eyre

I've just watched the movie... and it's made me cry just as the book did, when I read it a few years ago. It's so romantic, and heartbreaking. Her patient and diligent love, her humble and quiet demeanor.

I feel like I'm constantly searching out this love to have, to put my heart into. Sometimes I think my cigarette addiction is nagging at my heart, and so I would smoke, and it doesn't fix it- I become restless and tearful and wonder why- and it's the same as it's always been: Heartache. Heartache not for the love lost, but for the love never had. So badly do I want to have it, only to be ever denied. Once and a while I think I've found it, so I chase and I chase after it, only to have the person of my affections turn from me, and maybe that's my great dilemma, falling in love with those who will not have me. A fear one way or another to demolish any hope of happiness- fear of losing that person, fear of not being good enough, smart enough, pretty enough. Fear of letting them down, so why not destroy it before it gets there, anyway. Maybe one day I'll find someone who will make me calm, someone who will stand through the firestorm that is my defense- it's not fair, it's not something anyone should put up with or endure. Perhaps, even, I will find this calm in myself, God, wouldn't that be nice... Why must I have it in my head to find someone to complete me? Where have I gotten that silly idea stuck in my head. Just as some would like to tame me, there is a part of me that wishes to be tamed but none who I see fit to do so. Lately I think it comes down to me taming myself, and which I've started to do. I can't decide whether it is sad or relieving. A part of me thinks I am giving up on this love, another thinks I am preserving some semblance of that innocent girl who believes so much in that romance. I don't wish to be jaded and broken, but no matter how hard I've tried, I think it's happened...

Small Town Reflections

So I've been in Gouverneur for five days now, and until today I haven't exactly left the house, except to the gas station across the streets for snacks. Not for any other reason except for the fact that I've been totally and completely engrossed in scanning and editing pictures. I have a lot more to go, but I'm getting antsy, so today I went for a run, down to my old Elementary school (I was only there one year, but it was still nostalgic.. and small) and through the path in the woods they have there. It was great, I really enjoyed myself, and I've enjoyed being alone and quiet. Of course, I've been keeping my brain distracted with Buffy while scanning, but I'm in the last season, so by sometime tomorrow I'll have no more Buffy, which is good. Then it's on to exploring more of the town. It'd be nice if I could maybe put some of my work up in the cafe here, find a way to make some money to get business cards and my website up and running. Etc. It's all a bit rough but between selling most of my clothes and some of my other things, it should be a good start. I have a lot of prints, and I hope that I find people who want to buy a few of them, unfortunately there's a lot of portraits, and too personal.

I do wonder, what will happen when I try to tap into this little town. There's gotta be families wanting family portraits, highschool girls with dreams of modeling, and couples wanting romantic or saucy pictures... But it's interesting, because it wont take very long for me to infiltrate, it's one of those towns where everyone knows everyone. All I have to do is sit at the pizzaria or cafe for the next week. Shouldn't be too hard. It starts tomorrow, cause I gotta make money soon so I can get the rest of my film developed. Hm, plans plans...

blah blah blah

I've been back at my grandmother's in wayyy upstate NY for three days now... in that time all I've done is sit in my room, watch Buffy, scan and scan negatives, edit a few, start to organize my room... and do my makeup about a dozen different ways. The combination of being in my 10-14year old room, having all my clothes in one place (and makeup), doing a self portrait project and needing to make money... leads me to want to do just play dressup with myself in order to sell some of these clothes. I mean, there's definitely worse ways to spend my time. I really could use a tripod, though, I had one at some point but I'm pretty sure I left it in my old apartment. One of them, at least. But whatever, I'll make due with what I have. I've decided that while I'm a clothing hoarder, I may as well make some money off of it, seeing as I can't be a vagabond with all this baggage, besides, I've lost almost everything as it is. I'm really getting good at not having attachments to... well, anything... Or (sadly) anyone. I've definitely developed a good sense of loner. Now if only I could make myself go running. I fucking hate running.

Go home, Meagan

Wow. The last few weeks have been pretty crazy. I think I've drank every day, and I don't feel bad about it, for the most part. I've had a lot of fun, with a lot of different people... But I've also lost my car, my 35mm camera and I'm more broke than I have ever been. I'm barely going to make it home with what I have, and people keep asking for trade shoots, instead of wanting to pay me, which really bums me out. I love working with people I want to work with, I love modeling, I love photography and being a part of it from both ends of the camera... but I need to make money, and it doesn't seem to be happening. I'm sick of searching people out, of playing the money game... So the only option left to do is break down, go home to my grandmother's and get a couple shitty jobs and work that way. The right way, I guess. I suppose it was too much to think that this could be somewhat easy, and a hell of a lot more fun. But I've had my fun, and it's time to go home.

I've been crying a lot today, for many different reasons. I have a lot to say, but my platform seems lost to me, at the moment. I have a typewriter finally, but not I don't have the money to develop my film when I get home. I wish I had my car still, I feel really lost without it.

Why does misery bring so much inspiration? I'd rather be happy and inspired, but I don't know if I've ever been happy. I feel truly insatiable.

8 o'clock in Charlottesville

It's eight AM in Charlottesville, and here I sit at a little coffee shop where my friend works, both waiting for the time when I have to leave, my bags draped around me like the weird hobo that I am to walk to the train station and head back North. I have just enough money to get me back to NYC and not much else, and while I do worry about that, I can't seem to care much at the moment. There's no point really.

I'm sad I wont be going back to school this semester. As the dates dwindle down summer and closer to the beginning of the school year, I feel the pull to be going back. I miss the darkroom a lot, though I am disappointed in my work for the summer. I'm confused about what to do with my time, energy, money, etc. Sortof sitting in the eye of a storm and instead of preparing or ripping into it myself, drawing on it's energy, I stay there, looking up and wondering who I am and what I'm doing here.

I guess not much has changed. I try not to be down, to instead just be steady in my own somber attitude. "Serious" as my friend would say, "I'm a serious person". And I believe myself to be a serious person, too, serious thinking most of the time, at least. I think in prose and poetry and love, albeit chaotic and confusing... Sometimes angry.

Life is so full of options, you know? At any point on any day, I have so many choices to make, that I could make... some of which would change my life completely. It seems that NYC wants me though, or my heart wants NYC... Even if I long to return to the safety of my school and my hated Utica. There is comfort and normalcy in it that I love and despise there...

So much of me is a rebellious heart and soul, and until somewhere around 7th grade, I thought everyone was that way. I remember sitting in social studies and having our teacher give us this kind of sociology quiz about human behavior and such, asking what we thought was true or not. The only question I remember asked about whether most people prefered structured routine over a more spontanious life and I was so sure in the latter, and shocked to find that false.

Sometimes I think about that and I still don't know what to think of it.

Smiles

photo by David Wittig

This photo was taken in Chicago on the beach about a month ago. David and I have a great chemistry and I love the photos we've gotten.

people sure seem to love it when I smile.

Which is nice, because I want to be happy. But sometimes they are lies. I struggle with that whole "fake it til you feel it" thing. I want to be honest with myself and everyone around me, but I also know that the happier you are, the better things go for you. So maybe if I keep smiling, good things will happen?

Honestly, I feel strangely happy, though (considering). New York City does that to me.

rambling ranting ignore this entry

NOOOOO

I knew there was something else in my car that I didn't want to be losing... my super awesome biker boots. Ugh, they were one of the most expensive things I owned and I wore them every day- How it's taken me a week to realize that I didn't have them is beyond me- I guess maybe cause it's so hot out? All of my jewelry was in there, too. ALL OF IT. I loved my collection... Oh and all my clothes... I mean sure sure, I have some more at home, but some of my favorite things were lost, and I am left here in Brooklyn with no fuckin clothes. I literally have a pair of shorts, a couple shirts and two dresses. But I'm used to having a shit load of clothes to choose from! Meh. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if I had money to buy some new things, but I don't. Yet.

I'm looking at all of this as a new start, cause what else is it? I literally have next to nothing and I am just so so so grateful to the powers that be that I have my main cameras, my laptop, portfolio and wallet. It sucks I lost my car and everything else in it, there was so much in there that I really loved, but the cameras mean more, and the portfolios of images I've spent hours to print...

And I'm really going to miss my school and everything but the prospect of moving down here to Brooklyn is really amazing. I've just got to take care of some things and make money and pay my retardedly high phone bill somehow and find an apartment and and and... it's all very very overwellming but I don't care, I want it, I want NYC... Everything I want is here, everything. Most of my friends are here, money is here, photography is here, it's all here and I love NY so much it hurts...

I was talking to this painter, Dave, the other night, and I was going on and on about all of these things, telling him about how since I can remember I've dreamed of traveling and growing up specificly of NYC. Living in the same state as such an intense city, so close yet so far away... Anyone with talent and ambition moves to the city! It's obvious. And so I chose not to do it, for one reason or excuse or another, even though I've been dreaming of it for most of my life. Dave says, "people all over the world dream of moving to NYC. There is nothing like it."

When I think of these things, when I think of the mathmatical equation to lead up to me living my own life in NYC I just get so excited....

A hard route I always seem to take - but living off of dreams and love of life is the sort of freedom most people never taste.

RIP Car...

So... My car was stolen.

For those of you who know me, you know that my car is one of my favorite possesions, right up there with my camera and computer. Often it comes in first place, seeing as it can take me away- a constant real escape at my fingertips. A thought is all it takes, and I'm out the door and in my car driving down the road with the wind whiping my hair because I have no AC and I don't mind. Radio crap or driving in silence because my tape deck is broken. The dash alight with warnings, check engine and barely able to pass inspection last year but the little garage in upstate NY that I've gone to forever and so has my grandmother, they said they could pass it again this year and the sticker was there, marked July, and it's almost the end of July....

Fuck.

Honestly having it stolen isn't a bad end to the car, but I wasn't done with it yet. We were suposed to drive to California together, me and that car. We were supposed to let her die on the road, where she belongs, not melted for metal scraps and torn apart and sold and destroyed alive. There was life in her! Given, not that much, and she was kinda dangerous to drive anymore... but she was mine.

Have I meantioned I've had that car since I was 16??

It's strange, because while I am very upset about it and terribly stressed over what I'm going to do, I also feel oddly quiet about it. Perhaps "sobered" by it. Or even liberated.

It's that last kick to the ribs when you're down and beaten and suddenly you say, no no Fuck You and you realize you got a lot of fight left in you, come up swinging like a person possessed and scrapping for life, the fury really tapped into and unleashed.

Except I'm not mad. I just sorta feel like I'm watching myself, with a nod, yes- shitty things happen. Yes, you feel like extra shitty things happen to you. No, there still is no option of surrender.

If anything, this just adds to the fire.

Dear Mister,

You know... I look at your website and the pictures you have posted of me and I find myself crying, bursting into tears at the person you see me as, of who you portray me as, a person I hate and I hate you for not seeing more than that of me, of not seeing me as any sort of pretty or good person, slandering me next to pretty pictures of my sister, torturing me with regret for ever trusting you and letting you take my picture and pretend to be my friend, forgiving you over and over and putting my faith in you. I really hate you for it, I hope you know... and you're so fucked up, you'll probably read this and be happy to know you continue to cause me distraught anxious frustrating tears of regret. You are the worst thing that happened to my modeling, and I'm sure you're not done fucking me over. I am not the person you portray me as, the person you so desperately want to see me as. You are a fucked up old man and I don't know why you chose me to be at the receiving end of your nasty attacks.

and I have you blocked in my email and I think, I wonder if he's emailed me and low and behold there is more hate mail from you. I shouldn't be writing this for you to find, I shouldn't be letting you know how much you hurt me, but you do, you hurt me a lot, and I really don't deserve the hate you give me, I really don't. You talk about how much you hate me and what a terrible person I am but I don't even talk about you anymore except to tell people I don't like you because I trusted you and you stabbed me in the back and you continue to do so.. There is so much worse I could do to you or say about you but I don't.

I really wish I never met you.

Just Kids, by Patti Smith

Today has been filled with this feeling of dread and I cannot for the life of me place it's meaning. I feel unsettled and left of center, so left, I feel left- my body gone from my soul, wandering somewhere in the vast depths of my own stream of inspiration and longing, lives upon lives of options lost to me and drowning in my seemingly endless possibilities....

And I feel my ego is misplaced, or that I am without ego entirely, somehow. It is not my ego that speaks of my possible endeavors or accomplishments or success, but the knowledge of such great opposite, of such failure and inability. Wasted youth, wasted talent and space and love and everything and God, am I scared. I hate to admit it but I am scared. Or scarred? fuck, play on words. fuck, prose.

back up, Meagan...

I got a package today, it's a book and I knew there was a note inside, because the friend who sent it to me, she would never send something without a note, or maybe she would, but I knew she hadn't and I flipped through the book without looking at the cover, searching for her handwriting... and found it on a scrap of paper bag in the front, asking me to please read it- which is and isn't strange... is strange, because if you send a person a book, you expect them to read it, and isn't because she knows me enough that if she expresses her desire for me to understand something that she found in it, she knows I will put all my other books aside and I am already so distraught with inspiration and words and feeling that she is right, and I open the book almost immediately and I am happy she signed her note with love, because God knows I need real friends with real love and she is one person I know to be real and honest, like so many people are not. Honest with herself, and I know if it meant something to her, that this book will jar me in all the ways I need right now and I am thankful to have it.

God help me, I feel like I'm exploding

I am the Same

Brooke, May 2011, Annapolis

I don't know how this happens, but I've not only maintained the number of followers I have on this blog, but I've gained a few as well. How does that work? I haven't barely updated in so long... Maybe this blog is as interesting as I'd like to think it can be, or maybe my ex who tells me over and over how good it is, isn't the only one who thinks so.

So... Why don't I update very much? Mostly because I know there are at least 58 people reading my blog, which while it's nothing compaired to how many people follow my Tumblr, I know that those people (and possibly more) are actually reading and many of them still check to see if I've posted anything new, even though it's been months and months since I was actively writing. The fact that so many people are still looking to see what I write makes me very nervous, and has caused me to get stage fright, if you will. I mean, don't get me wrong, of course it's flattering and makes me feel really good that people enjoy what I write... But the whole part of a blog for me is to be able to write whatever the fuck I want and pretend no one is reading it, though with a hope that there are people out there who are and who enjoy it. Does this make sense?

Anyway, I put Finding Nemo in. Third movie of the night, and I'm feeling left of center and there's really no reason for me to feel this way. I want to cry for hours and the only explination is my over emotional girly nonsense cause I have nothing to cry about, I am not unhappy. I am actually quite content, and particularly pleased with myself lately.

Though I always feel like I'm grasping at air, that nothing can happen fast enough and that I am cursed with forever being dissatisfied. Always wanting more, always wondering what else is out there for me, and ever wanting to better myself.

I wonder, often, who I used to be verses who I am, and it's comforting knowing that my friends from growing up all say that I haven't changed at all - which I'm sure can't be true, but at least at the core I am the same Meagan Sample.

Rant first, Birthday update later

People keep telling me to go digital.

Yes, yes, I get it, I understand where you are coming from...

But when was the last time you told an artist who uses oil paints they should use Illustrator instead? Like common, stop telling me how the fuck to do what I do.

Or you could give me $2,000 and shut your face and I'll get myself a digital camera.

I LIKE film. I understand that digital is faster and more convenient and blah blah blah but I LIKE film, okay? It's not just some hipster kitchy thing I'm doing, it's just my medium of choice. Yes, I would love a digital so that I can make my turn around faster, I can test shots out and experiment, I can shoot in lower light and I can take tuns of shitty pictures without burning through my film.

See? I get it, I really do. But I dont' have the money to buy a camera, anyway. Hopefully soon I will but I live my life like a straight vagabond most of the time. Doesn't leave much room for thousands of dollars of equipment.

besides... stop telling me what to do and how to do my work.

New Year Resolutions

I never make Resolutions but I do like to think of a new year as a new start... I also think of my Birthday as a new start, as well... which is conveniently half way through the year, so every six months I get a new start, haha.

This year I desperately want to work on bettering myself. Drinking less, reading more. Being a bit less outspoken and more calm instead. Listen more. But most of all, become more positive, happy and optimistic. I want to be content with myself and what I'm doing, instead of always feeling like I'm wallowing in my self pity, loneliness and self consciousness.

I spend so much time wanting friends and a lover of my own that all the time between I'm wrought with heart ache. I think this needs to be the start of the end of that. Wake up every day for ME and doing what I want and what makes me happy- and healthy.

Perhaps having such a shitty day yesterday was a good thing, a final kick in the ass that says, Meagan, if you want it, make it.

If you want it, Make it.

So:

1. Read more, party less.

2. Speak less, listen more.

3. Sleep at night, get up in the morning even if I can't sleep through the night.

4. Work out.

5. Formal shoot at least once a week.

6. No drinking during the weeks when school is in session.

7. Quit smoking by the end of the year.

8. Travel out of the country

9. Write something daily (journal/letter/blog/etc)

10. Continue eliminating people and circumstances that are a negative influence on my life.

Sleepless

I am sleepless mostly, I mean, until I am exausted. Staying up all night doing god knows what- tonight, last night, I drank with friends thinking it would let me sleep... instead it kept me up with them until late, I think I got a little shut-eye but then suddenly I was realizing something spilled on my iphone and it's all flashing white and now wont turn on. Just my luck. I don't even believe in luck. Honestly, I know I did it to myself. Carelessness. Negative thinking. Now I'm wondering who is up at this hour, and surely, mostly, I am not. Except lately. Staying up all night, sleeping all day. I'm tired and wondering, should I stay up? I don't want to anymore but maybe it's the right choice. Sweet sleep, sweet rest- rest from my mind, the ever wondering and planning, worrying and dreaming. Nothing seems right, as if I'm just waiting for the new year, to start new and be done with whatever I've done this year. Wandering, trying to figure shit out. What will be the purpose of 2011? What will be my new goals? Certainly graduating in May. God, so many obstacles in my way- how will I pay rent? How will I eat? Food, now there's a luxury... It's funny because I feel so good in my new room, all burgundy perfect (it's called "bohemian red" how fitting) and my raised futon with all my summer clothes stored underneath and my draping sheer canopy to make me feel like a princess. The littlest princess. And I'm proud of my bookshelf, all sporting Jane Eyre and Vonnegut and, shit, a tattered Bible that's not mine but I find beautiful. A friend yesterday, who had never seen my room (and no one has seen my room look like I want it to, until lately) says "just as I imagine and artist's room to look like" and I like this idea of me, an artist.

So strange... to think of myself as an artist. a Photographer. I think I like artist better but I wonder how pretentious it is to call myself either of those things, and I don't think I've earned it yet.

yet.

Photo Journalism, C? really??

Miranda chasing after her boyfriend, Dominick

My professor for Photo Journalism gave me a C and I feel it's completely unfair. Okay, maybe not completely, seeing as I didn't exactly do many of the assignments that I was supposed to do- however, most of what I shoot is in a documentary and journalistic sort of way, or at least I think so. So I didn't shoot sports, weather or hard news, so what? I traveled the eastern half of the US as a model and took pictures most of the way- given most everyone hasn't seen most of those pictures, but so what? They're still there, and I let him look through my binders. I've shot more than anyone in the school this year, and have taken the class like five fuckin times. And I know he failed me in the past because he knew I could do so much better. But this time I spent my whole summer with Photo J in mind, and I still get a C. And you know what? That means I loose my State aid. Okay okay so it might also have to do with the Fs I got in my "gym" class and my math class. Stupid stupid stupid.

I guess on principle I feel I deserve at least a B in Photo J, seeing how much I shoot, and that I DO in fact, consider my self a "social documentary portraitists".

Watch, I fuck up so many semesters and crunch time comes along and my last semester will be stellar. I want that degree so bad it hurts.

Model and Photographer

This picture has really nothing to do with this entry, though I'm not entirely sure because, well, I haven't written the entry yet. But look how cute Melody and I are? Could those smiles be any bigger, eyes more squinty or hug tighter?! Naww, didn't thinks so.

We have a lot of problems, her and I, getting along. For multiple different reasons and such, but ultimately I know her and I will be best of friends again sometime soon, when our lives come back together after years of floating in other directions. I look forward to working with her- I want to work together as models and photographers, or some such combination.

After all, she IS the one who showed me how to use my SLR... She is the reason I took photography as a major at all, actually. In Highschool she took photography classes while I was off retaking classes, and she showed talent in it- I liked what she did so I figured that I couldn't be too bad at it, either. We ARE twins, afterall. Besides, it would be a great "backup" plan to modeling, and help me be a better model, too. You know, knowing both sides of the camera.

Fuck, man, what a good move. It's worked out pretty good for me, though is still quite the struggle. I look at all my work (esspecially lately, with the end of the semester just a week away) and I don't really like any of my work. I'm bored of it. And I don't have any one to shoot up here in Utica, NY. I don't want to struggle to get a good shot of someone, I want them to be on the same page as me, know how to move, and be unafraid of the camera.

I want models.

Melody has a lot of model friends. That'd be cool, if I were around all of them. But I'm not crazy about Chicago.. I want to be warm places!

We'll see, we'll see....

First order of business is passing all my classes this semester. Six days....

Saying

I have a lot to say, though I'm not always sure what it is that I'm saying.

Maybe I haven't been updating because I don't think it's any of your god damn business.

Maybe it's because I'm too busy living my life.

Suffice it to say, I'm pleased with this photograph. Picture. Pic. What the fuck ever.

More soon. Let's get this ball rolling again.

On your own

photo by Art Tavee

My thoughts drift away again and I'm thinking of you... Yes, you, there, in the black.

All my lovers wear black.

And they see me there... or there.... or this way, or that, and yet I feel misrepresented, is it my fault? Or are they not paying attention? I'm probably eluding them, avoiding and scheming. Can you scheme subcontiously? I think I can. I think I can read your mind, too, so watch your eyes...

And I'm thinking of you.

Are you thinking of me?

no body likes you, Meagan... It's a whisper in my ear lately and I wonder if it's the echo's off the walls of my jaded thought prison or the looks in other people's eyes, the unformed words on their lips. Are you judging me? and I wish I could seep into the background and I can't and I think it's because I'm tall or maybe it's the whole I-can't-keep-my-mouth-shut thing cause surely it can't be this face, too plain, this body, too big. You talk too much. Worry too much. Care too much. Too many mistakes. Do you remember me the way I remember you? I feel like these photographs are lying to me, all of them, and they seem not right to my memory. You in the kitchen. The smell of your hair. On the rainy streets, holding your hand, your smile. I'm remembering a concoction and it never went that way, only in fleeting moments. Remember that dinner? I remember them all.

But it's time to let that all go.

Let it go... be content alone...

A lesson I've been trying to learn most of my life.

Dawn in the Sky

It's funny to me, how different people see me completely differently. One day I have someone telling me to go kill myself, the next someone else praising me for everything that I am. Makes me wonder who actually knows me or who I actually am. I do know, however, that the person who tells me to kill myself is a cruel bastard with nothing to do better than to warp his understanding of me and take his anger and hate of the world and his own life out on me. I know that I am just fine without those sorts of people in my life, or anyone connected to them. My life has gotten much better in the last couple months as I let those people go. I'm sad to let them slip through my fingers, but relieved to be gone of one more drama or one more negative aspect in my life. Things have changed, I am changing, and I will rise up stronger and better than you. And one day you'll apologize...

In the meantime...

I've spent so much dreaming and energy into the idea of following the sunset to California, chasing the sun into the desert... That it never even crossed my mind what it would be like to experience it the other way around.... Leaving Seattle in a 6am flight, it was overcast and predawn.. but as we rose into the clouds, the light sifting through and we broke out to the open sky and the dawn staring me in the face, the colours of the clouds so close I could touch them if not for the glass.. and I cried at the thought of rising up and meeting the sun head on, of the strength and love I feel for the sun and everything it represents for me, the beauty I see in this world in spite of the ugly hearts of others.

It was the most amazing sunrise I have experienced and probably will ever experience. Words don't do it justice, and neither does this photograph. But in my head, it will stay, and I hope for all those other dreamers out there, that you get to experience a similar dawn as well.

On my way off the plane, I looked at the pilot and told him the sunrise was beautiful. All I could think of was how wonderful it must have been from his seat. He said he enjoyed it as well. I was hoping to get better pictures than I did, but this one will have to suffice. I was hoping to have copies every time I flew, because god knows, there's no way a pilot could not enjoy that. I've sat in cockpits and know that anyone who flies a plane, certainly loves it more than anything else.

I love it, too.

And I think him and I were the only ones watching.

Do you look out the window?

Two Weeks In.

This traveling bug is fucking INSATIABLE and I spend all my time planning and plotting my next moves. I've gathered my wits and I've been on fire for weeks, ever since I decided to go back to school. I make lists in my head of things I need to be doing, and on paper, and I do them! I wake up at seven am and force myself out of bed and am miserable to get out of bed but elated to be going to school and getting into the rythm of it. Three out of my four school days I have an 8am four hour class, and every other day I have a math class that takes up an hour and fifteen precious minutes of my day to torture me with little numbers and lines that make no sense to me! I hate it, but I remind myself every day that it's important if only that it'll insure my degree. Next semester is going to be insane. This semester is insane already! I'm fuckin on the ball, or so I feel. I mean, it's only two weeks in but I think the other students are getting an idea of how cool I am, and I try to be nice and not standoffish or act elitist or anything like that. Which I don't mean to do, but sometimes it just happens. Particularly at school. I just get in such a tunnel vision and all I can do and think of is my work and how best to utilize my time in the labs. Scan negatives while printing colour. Multiple enlargers. go go go. So much to do!

and it's wonderful. Really really wonderful. I feel so good about it all, and I'm getting into the right way and I feel like everything will be okay.

Next serious goal: Quit smoking.