"I am ready, I am fine" OR "My hopes are so high that your kiss might kill me"

"Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are." - Whistler, Buffy, "Becoming: Part One" (Season Two)

This is it. This is that point in my life when everything changes. I haven't decided yet what that means, but I think it's good. I'm ready for it to be good. I think I'm finally ready for my life to happen. I'm finally old enough and wise enough to be me at my age. Ready or not, here I come.

Sometimes I think the greatest parts of life are the curve balls - those unexpected things you can never prepare for. Thursday I'll be going before an appeal committee to try and get my financial aid reinstated so that I can stay in school and let MTSU screw me out of a degree a little longer. If they deny me, I'll probably have to drop out for a while, and that scares me, because I'm not sure I'd go back (I wouldn't be able to afford it for one thing). Something else scares me, too: I'm not sure I'll be able to handle two more years of school. Then again, I've had a lot of things happen to me that I thought I couldn't handle, and I managed to do just fine, or at least survive, so I figure I'll probably survive this, too, however it turns out.

I've done a lot of thinking lately, something I'm really good at, by the way. Here's some of what I came up with.

While talking to Cox last night, I made the revelation that it seems like I'm in a constant competition with myself to see if I can disappoint myself even more, and I'm always succeeding admirably. What has happened to me? I used to be so different, and now I've chipped away at so many aspects of myself. It's disheartening.

I can chalk this up in part to my recent health fiasco, which sent me into a hard depression for about a month.

Part of it I can attribute to people: I have a different circle here, and this is going to sound shallow, and I don't mean it to, but here goes. In high school I hung out with all the gifted kids, with a few exceptions for my theatre friends. As JR once said, "If you are stupid, surround yourself with smart people. If you are smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you." This, I think, is part of the reason why I get along so well with Robert - he's a smart person who disagrees with me. Translation: He makes me think, and I like that. My brain likes that.

But I digress. I have plenty of smart friends, but it's not the same, and I don't mean to stroke my own ego here, either: I feel that I've gotten dumber since going to college. Ideally, this just means I've realized there's so much I don't know and I've had some kind of awakening, but I don't know about all that. Mostly I just think I used to be so much better.

There's a difference between intelligence and applying oneself, and I have to make that distinction. I know plenty of intelligent people who fail to apply themselves, and vice versa.

Well, that's enough self-loathing. Let's move on to happy things.

Have you seen The Shawshank Redemption? It's my favorite movie, and at the end, Red is on the bus going to see Andy, and he says he's so excited he can barely sit still. That's me right now - I can hardly contain myself.

I think I'm finally getting my shit together. I've dropped the paper (after last semester's disaster nothing short of Sonny coming back or a hostile take-over will lure me back into the office), so for the first time in three years, I'll be going to school with only one job! This alone is exciting.

On top of that, part of my comfort zone is going to be around again: Cox has moved back to Murfreesboro, and JR is probably back on American soil right now. These are the moments I love in life - when things you look forward to actually happen.

Current mood: Ecstatic