Man, do I need a pair of gloves.

Waiting for the bus. It’s spitting rain, so I should not have the tablet out. But I’m tense.

You see, I woke up around noon, and the bus to school arrives at 12:24,  so I didn’ have much time to get ready. And now here it is, 12:35, and still no bus. Meaning I rushed around and got my ass out here at 12:15 for nothing.

And that makes me tense and angry.

If I had known I had this much time, I could have had a relaxed lunch instead of just tossing some food in my bag and assuming I would get a chance to eat it eventually. I could have enjoyed an episode of Scrubs (just started in on it) while enjoying said lunch. I could have gathered my stuff in a relaxed and thoughtful manner, instead  of  throwing it in there like the law is on my tail.

Maybe I should look up the bus schedule for today again. Maybe I got the time wrong.

Bus has arrived. More on this later.

(—)

.

After class, waiting for bus.

Class wad… Intense. For the first half, we had to partner up and do a bunch of simple sensory and perception experiments. Before we even started, my social anxiety had me in a cold sweat. I have to find a partner? Visions of being ignored and rejected and having to go to the prof and say (wormy voice) “Um, teacher, I don’t have a PARTNER” in front of everybody swam before my eyes. Luckily, I had already shared a few words with a nice East Indian girl, so it was easy to turn to her and ask, and she said yes.

So that was on terrifying hurdle overcome.

And doing the experiments turned out to be rather fun, once enough social anxiety had drained from my brain to relax a little. The most fun one was the one where we had to throw ten styrofoam balls into a basket, first normally then with these goggles on that distorted our eyesight as if we are REALLY drunk.

That was, of course, hilarious. Those goggles were quite the trip.

More when I get home.

(—)

And now I am home.

So yeah, the goggles were fun. They really did make me feel like I was drunk, although I have never been THAT drunk (well, once, but I don’t remember it). The visual distortions threw off my sense of balance as well by setting off a struggle between my inner ear and my eyes. And when I took them off, I felt dizzy and slightly spaced out.

I did surprisingly well, tho, given what a doofus I am. Got four baskets out of ten sans goggles. 1 with the goggles on. I am comfortable saying that 1 out of ten in those circumstances can be legitimately chalked up to chance.

We also did a very scaled down version of the Ames Room test. Our “room” was actually a little wooden box about the size of a birdhouse, but the effect is the same. One ruler looked WAY bigger than the other, even though they were identical twelve inch rulers. It was trippy. Then you open the door, and of course, now you can see how the thing is shaped like a trapezoid to fool you.

I have always wanting to mess around with an Ames Room, especially after seeing one in this music video :

Oh, warning : this song is VERY catchy, especially the chorus.

I apologize for whatever inconvenience having that stuck in your head might cause. Wow, that hijacked my brain!

Anyhow, the lab stuff ended, and then came the thing I have been dreading from the moment I read about it in the syllabus on the first day of class… the Annotated Bibliography! (SFX : Woman screaming, monster roar, dramatic chord)

I didn’t know exactly what it was, but it sounded so very, very Not Me.

Turns out, we have to take the subject of one of the experiments we did and find three references for it. The first one is supposed to be the “seminal” research, in other words the oldest source for whatever effect it measures. Like, if it was the Ames Room effect, you would look for the original paper, presumably by some dude named Ames.

The second one has to be something recent which cites the original study. The third one has to be a study that cites the second one. Thus we learn how to do basic psychological research and establish a chain of study leading to whatever.

I hate basic research.

And I was really not getting the whole scholarly search thing. Mostly this was due to my own tendency towards panic. I was getting freaked out and I needed several infusions of professorial advice before I could calm down enough to see that what I was trying to do was not that hard and I just had to get a grip on myself.

I really am prone to panic. I am really high strung in some (usually novel) situations, and for a lot of my life, I have let that panic rule me. I was even considering trying to beg off doing the lab stuff today by saying my social anxiety made it impossible. That’s how deep the urge to give in and escape can be.

But if you don’t endure, you can’t adapt. You have to hang around long enough to get the fuck over yourself and see that the problem is not nearly as bad as you thought it was. You can’t build memories of problems overcome without enduring the panic reaction and not giving in to it.

So I stayed, and the lab stuff was actually fun, and while I was freaking out for a lot of the time we spent in the computer lab researching our annotated bibliographies, I am now fairly certain I can do the research and find what I need, and after that it’s merely a matter of writing and following the fussy details of the AP style manual.

So I’m hanging in there, and maybe, just maybe, I will manage to grow out of my problems.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

It is a few minutes before my Creative Writing class. This seems like an approprite time to start blogging.

Got all my stuff done. Did the Post-It note thing. Forgot that the Post-it notes were supposed to be in, get this, in Haiku form.

Well fuck THAT noise.

Still, I am icreasingly aware of what a sloppy, slacker job I am doing on my work.nbsp; I did not invest a lot of effort in my assignment due today. Maybe I will get away with it, maybe I won’t. Either way, I am not proud of it.

Time to up my game and show the world what I can REALLY do.

(—)

On break now. In this class, we will be creating a concrete poem. Then animating it. Lovely.

Luckily, I have an idea that I think will work. Dunno how to make it in Photoshop, and it might be a lot of work to animate, but at least I have something to work with. And I am intrigued to learn Photoshop animation. Though I imagine it will be simple frame sequencing, with maybe a little tweening.

I am doing my best to work through my childish reactions to having to go outside my comfort zone and do something visual. I want to be more open to new things, as well as open to new experiences that will rewrite my opinion on what I can and cannot do.

I know I have a lot of artistic talent. I want to be more open to different ways to express it.

And I have so much to express. So many words left just hanging around in my brain, waiting in vain to get out, causing trouble.

(—)

After class now, waiting for the shitty bus that will only take me partway home.

(—)

And now I a home. You know, a two block walk is no big deal.

Although I am a little worried about my knee. You know, the injured one that I never got around to getting treated. It has been complaining when I am out walking lately. Maybe the cold is a factor, I don’t know. So I am keeping an eye on it. Last thing I need is to have to blow out on me and end up having to get to and from school on the HandyDart or something.

I suppose I could manage to get on and off the bus with a crutch, but I really don’t want to be waving a piece of light but solid metal backed by my weight around an enclosed space packed with people. Not with my clumsiness. That could go very very wrong very very fast. It doesn’t bear thinking upon.

They can do miracles with tensor bandages these days.

And I am needing that eye appointment more and more these days. I am getting more squinty by the minute, or so it seems. I need a strong prescription. At least, I hope that’s all I need.

Diabetes attacks the eyes, after all. Musn’t forget that.

My feet are doing okay. I haven’t had any mysterious stabbing pains lately, and that crazy hot itching sensation I have gotten in the past has only made a very brief and minor appearance.

Still, I check them three or four times a week. Don’t want to miss a dead patch or a sore spot. Diabetes is very hard on the feet, and I already know from their tendency to catch and keep a chill that the circulation to my feet is not great.

Oh. And I still have two large holes in my abdominal wall.

Honestly, it’s a wonder that I am alive at all, let alone mobile.

Had therapy today. Started off trying to talk about my mother, but ended up doing more of a survey of my childhood issues. I am not saying it was unproductive, it just wasn’t what I set out to do. But then, I rarely end up doing what I set out to do.

I am just too nonlinear. Or, like I said once before, I am very linear and my lines are just different from everyone else’s. Often on an entirely different plane. That’s why it’s so hard for people to get me.

I am too unique and original for my own good.

One thing we talked about today was my difficulty in trusting people and really opening up to them. Even with my wonderful friends, part of me is always tense and paranoid. I can’t see me ever being able to completely trust anyone. It feels like I will always be guarded and nervous and relying on my analysis of the person rather than any sense of trust.

There’s just too much ice in the way. Ice, death traps, demons, monsters…. it’s pretty much a dungeon from an RPG. And if some brave hero actually made it to the center of my maze, he may well find that there’s nothing there. And there never was.

Right now, I can be fairly sane and reasonable, but I fear what would happen if someone tried to get closer. I still have a lot of bad stuff inside me, and I might not be able to keep people from being hurt by it if they got closer than friendship with me.

And I can’t stand the thought of taking my issues out on some poor person whose only crime was trying to get to know me better. To me, that would be empathic oblivion. No matter how it happened or whether or not I was in the right or in the wrong, I would have to live with the memory of that person’s pain and the knowledge that I caused it.

And I refuse to become callous, even though it might be good for me to dial down the sensitivity a little. Stop taking on other people’s emotions as entirely my responsibility. Shut off that echo chamber in my head that makes things seem far worse than they are by amplifying the signal way, way, way too much.

But the idea of sacrificing some of my sensitivity appalls me. Even knowing it’s a medically sound operation and that I might be better off without that thin sliver of capacity.

I just can’t do it.

There has to be another way.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.