Facebook horoscope:

"No one can tell you what to do. It's hard to make such a big decision on your own, but you can do it!"

Life is about to get big and scary, but potentially more awesome. I have a lot to write about since my last post, and I'll do so -- just not at 3:30am.

		I will marry James McAvoy.
		After a wild honeymoon, We will settle down in Minneapolis, Minnesota in our fabulous Mansion.
		We will have 1 kid(s) together.
		Our family will zoom around in a Green Mini Cooper.
		I will spend my days as a Famous Author, and live happily ever after.

Sounds of silence.
I would be interested to learn how many words I've actually spoken today. I'd be willing to bet it's considerably fewer than average. Actually, I'll ammend that statement. These past two weeks I've spoken less on average than I did before graduation. Why is that, exactly? Several reasons: 

1) I live alone now, with no roommate to speak of, or speak to for that matter, 
2) Even though I work more hours at the MLC, because it's summer there are fewer patrons, therefore less business to conduct and fewer questions to answer, 
3) Again because of summer, everyone else in all of Muncie is busy with summery-type activities, including many social gatherings and lots more free time. I have a lot of free time, but it rarely seems to overlap with that of many of my Muncie-based friends.

My birthday is a week from Monday, and I can't help but think where I was this time last year. I was in Memphis, enjoying the last few days of freedom before reporting to camp for work. I was looking forward to seeing Pubbs, Starfish, and everyone else, and I felt eager for a new camp season to begin. I was looking forward to celebrating my birthday. Birthdays are one day out of the whole year when you're allowed to be at least semi-selfish and want attention. Until recently, I was looking forward to seeing what a birthday in Muncie might be like. But I don't have a presentable apartment to have a party if I wanted, and I don't really have close friends around to celebrate with. I'm feeling a bit disjointed and floaty. My stomach is in knots.

Meyers-Briggs Personality Profile... freakishly accurate at parts.
Two weeks ago, my therapist, Adrienne, suggested I take this test so I could find out where to aim myself career-wise and why. Because I've been struggling with actually finding direction after college, she thought this would help. We went over the results together yesterday, and it was crazy how similar to things I actually feel were spelled out there before me on paper. Things I already knew, of course, but there's something about actually having it in front of you, in print, that makes it feel more real... and less like you're ranting and spitting crazy talk everywhere. I like to think I know myself pretty well, and that my ideas about myself aren't unfounded. So here's the blurb I found online about my personality type. I bolded the parts that are especially significant to me. I'll probably take the time to type up some of the more choice snippets from my actual printout Adrienne gave me, too.

Portrait of an INFP - Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving
(Introverted Feeling with Extraverted Intuition)

( The Idealist )

Unintentional Mark Cohen moment, part deux.
I hopped on my bike to ride to my counselling session today, with my ever-present headphones and mp3 player in tow, and just as I start pedalling down the cow path, "Rent" comes up on shuffle. It was a movie Mark moment, complete with me pedalling along, singing at the top of my lungs along with Mark and Roger as I rode through campus.

It was pretty much the awesomest thing ever.

Muddiest, wettest, fucking desert ever.
Yesterday was my last first day of school ever, and that's kind of scary as hell. Well, the scary part is the dreaded 'real world' thing that exists beyond this summer... you know, that time when I actually have to face the reality that I'm going to have to find something to do with myself.

So the day as a whole was an adventure on its own, thanks to phase two of the McKinley Project construction being the bane of my fucking existence. For those of you not in Muncie, let me paint a picture for you: Ball State's campus is oriented longways along McKinley Avenue. This is the lovely road that the fabulous shuttle busses ran (man, I miss them. All construction aside, they don't run in the summer. Bastards.), and is also the main walkway through campus too. My apartment sits on the northernmost corner of McKinley, and the drive to my parking lot shoots off of there also. Well, here's the dilemma: The north half of McKinley is under construction... major effing overhaul, which is definitely needed, because the road's shitty. But the sidewalks are closed, too. So the question becomes "How in the hell will Tara get to class?" Under normal sidewalk circumstances (a.k.a. the straightest way possible onto campus by foot), it takes me fifteen minutes at a brisk pace. Well, without the straight path, I had to venture into the absolute disaster of a tangle of neighborhoods just east of my apartment complex. When I say tangle, I mean just that: abso-fucking-lutely chaotic winding streets organized by the spawn of Satan. These are streets that dead end into oblivion, that change names at random, start and stop then pick up somewhere else without warning or any sense of reason at all. So I give myself a half hour to navigate, to feel my way astray and then back to campus.

Did I mention the weather is shitty nasty rainy and cold as hell, and the sturdiest shoes I've got to wear are my beloved Chucks? Basically I stumbled through the grassy field to start with, forgetting for a moment that there's a lovely toxic creek standing between me and the other side of campus. A fucking creek. Ridiculous. I trekked through wet grass and eventually some pretty substantial mud as well, leaving me with soggy, muddy, shnasty Chucks. Well, I wandered my way through the streets of the neighborhood, managing to find a lovely little pedestrian crossing bridge and ultimately making it to class five minutes late on the first day. That's right, it took me thirty-five minutes to get to class. Trying to find my way home afterwards was interesting too. That's right, I got lost in the ass-backwards neighborhoods of suburbia twice in one day. I kept scanning for things that looked familiar, but felt like Moses wandering in the desert or something. The muddiest, wettest, fucking desert ever. Of course, I got home finally and mapquested the area, only to find a relatively straightforward path through the neighborhood (yay), then promptly took my bike out of my car and discovered it only took me ten minutes by bike when I put into play the new and improved actually straightforward! path. Yes. This is very doable for this summer session. It's only five weeks, after all... and riding my bike every day for five weeks will do me some good conditioning-wise, getting me ready for the 8,000-feet elevation of the camp in New Mexico.

Yep, it's official. I've been offered the camp job out there, and I'll be flying down there on or around June 19th. I'm currently resting happily in denial that I'll have to take a hearty hiatus from the RPG in a month, and instead threadwhoring my little heart out with all three of my characters (Ben Beaty, you need to join the RP. Now.). Sandy and I have been emailing back and forth with each other, about camp and about what's going on with all my beloved camp girls. I filled her in on what's going on with Neppy, Pubbs, and Starfish. God, I wish any of them could come to New Mexico with me and play in the mountains for a coupla months, but this year it's just not in the cards. This year, Jinx is flying solo... which might not be a bad thing, after all.

So in about forty-five minutes I've got another counselling session, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about what went down in our last session... how a pretty major revelation was uncovered. You know, for a long time I've talked about my social anxiety issues, which as it turns out is not something I'm making up, but something I really have issues with, according to my therapist. But the discovery we kind of stumbled onto the other day was that I'm actually quite confident in myself, and I have pretty healthy self-esteem most of the time (I'm a big fan of myself, as I like to put it), but my problem is initiating. Once I have an 'in' into a situation, I allow myself to find a comfort zone and I use and abuse it. It's like the huge confidence-monster I am at camp, or how goofy and retarded I am around all my friends. When I know where I stand, I relax. But it's that jump-start into any new direction that I need, or else it causes emotional hangups. So what's my current issue that I need to find an 'in' into most? You guessed it -- the real world. The job market. Whatever. Somehow, the phrase failure to launch keeps cropping up in my head. I guess that's a good way of describing it.

Somehow, now that I know what the problem is, at least where initiating confrontations is concerned, I'm more anxious and worried about the future. It's not something that can just be fixed or turned around, there's no simple solution. Sure, I know what's going on inside my head, but I haven't the foggiest clue of what to do about it.

I've also found myself worrying about my future as a writer. I haven't been really writing lately like I used to. I don't know if it's because I haven't felt inspired, or perhaps because of all the time I've spent on the computer lately has burned me out so when I sit down to work on something, say Austin City Limits, for example, which is ridiculously important to me, I just can't concentrate. What if I'm just a good writer academically, but I don't have the patience or the ego that Jill says I need to succeed. I really don't want it to just be another hobby that I lose motivation or energy or drive behind. Thinking about it in those terms right now, I'm concerned. But then again, maybe I'm just thinking too much. I've been known to do that from time to time. Maybe I'll try that self-challenge again, with some sort of goal/reward system. If I two at least two pages of writing a day for the rest of this week, I'll reward myself with the new Snow Patrol album. Yes. That sounds like a good plan.

On a completely different note, I'm determined to spend the next five weeks actually doing something with my time. A lot of my friends are actually in Muncie this summer: Ben, Ann, Waylon, Geoff, Kyle Jean, Shannon, and Kristi, among others. That means there is no excuse for me to sit around my lonely empty apartment by myself. If I did that, I would be no better than a crazy cat lady with no cats. Maybe that would make me a crazy computer lady.

I won't be a shut-in. Not this time. I can't let myself be that way.

Personality dialysis.
I'm home in the Fort and I'm all blahdy again... I think it's partially the relinquishment of the freedom that comes with me being at home in my parents' house instead of in my apartment.

I'm kinda grumpy because my hair is fading to pink instead of staying nice 'n' red. But the pink is growing on me. God, I never thought I'd say that. I'm so not a pink person.

Angelica just gave me the biggest fucking hankering for cookie dough in the world. Gorrammit.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to totally dominate Maddie's London eljay icontest.

Maybe tomorrow I'll have enough of an attention span to work on Austin City Limits or any other kind of writing. Or an LJ update of any significance.

Measuring up.

ENG 300 FILM LITRTRE 9.999 B+
ENG 309 CR WR COMM 12.000 A
ENG 406 CR NFIC WR 3 9.000 B
ENG 444 SR SEMINAR 12.000 A
ITGRA 286 PHOTOGRAPHY 12.000 A

GPA
Term: 3.666
Accum: 3.463

So I'm impressed with myself this semester. Not bad grades. Not quite as nice as I would have hoped (a B in fucking Creative Nonfic? What the bloody hell?) The B+ in Film Lit was expected, that class I actually had to work my ass off for... of course, I realized the amount of work it would take halfway through the semester. But can we say "Hello, Dean's List?" You better believe it.

Camping got rained out. More of an update later. I'm gonna shower, watch me some CSI, and hug my computer.

Anthony #75 is lonely without my Kristi. Almost all her stuff is gone :(

Seeing red... and in a good way.
Tonight, I dyed my hair. Okay, to be fair, my sister dyed it for me, since I'm incompetent with those sorts of things. Here's all you need to know on the subject:

-It's bright fucking red. Borderline neon, I'd say. Not quite what I was planning/hoping for/intending on getting, but it's awesome nonetheless.
-It's permanent. It'll be around for awhile. Get used to it.
-It's one more thing on my list of things do do before I die that I can cross off. This is something I've always wanted to do, but the time's never been right. That's right, it's for me. Not to piss anyone off, not to rebel, not to make a statement, none of that shit. It's for ME.

Don't like it? Fine. You're entitled to your opinion.
But compare me to a troll doll and I'll have your head on a fucking pike.
In fact, no discussion of anything troll doll-related is cool at all. Unless it's Jimmy Fallon-related.

Pictures are forthcoming, don't worry.
(So it's kind of 1st-season-Sydneyesque. Badass.)

Twiddling my thumbs.
So I've been so stressed out and busy for the entire week, trying to get all my final projects and such completed, practically wagging my little tail off for the start of the new RP (which launched at the best time for me academically, I'll admit), and pretty much having my mind burn on all cylinders for the last week... and now I'm crashing mentally.

I've been done with all academic responsibility whatsoever for spring semester 2006 since 12:35pm yesterday. You'd think that would give me cause to celebrate, encourage me to run amok doing whatever the hell I please within the limitations of the law and all that nonsense. But I'm still recuperating. I'm kind of numb at the moment, and I don't like it. Sure, there's a feeling of relief and accomplishment at having a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. Another academic victory for Tara. But then there's the sight of the arts terrace in the quad completely covered with chairs everywhere for commencement tomorrow. That damned summer class is still lingering over my head, so me walking tomorrow is just for show. But with the cap and gown and all, it sure as hell feels real.

Not sure why, but this thought just struck me. Is this what retirement will be like? All this free time to do all things I've always talked about doing when I could make room for it... but when the time actually comes, being bored out of my skull and frustrated?

I'm sure it's just part of my mental lapse... like the recoil of a rubber band that's been stretched so far it snaps. Eventually, things will settle back into place. I'll find myself a good groove, and life will be peachy. I think life's just tumultuous from all the change. Graduation. Camp in New Mexico. The Red Mile (including my new babies). Somehow it has to all fit together again. It just has to.

Yesterday was my last ever class period/meeting with Jill. I went to her office after class to give her a SASE to return my final essay manuscript with her comments on it after she's done grading, and I brought along my copy of Darkroom and she wrote me a little note:

Dear Tara--
I feel so fortunate to have had the chance to work with you -- and your wonderful words -- these three semesters at Ball State!
With affection and admiration,
Jill

We talked about my plans for after graduation, which is probably my least favorite subject in the world, but I love talking with Jill about just about anything. She said that the first year after graduation is always a mess, and finding a good job can take years. Us writers don't have it easy, but she told me that with a lot of patience and ego, great things can happen. She then acknowledged that she knew those weren't my strong areas, but she had confidence that they would develop with time. This is why Jill Christman is my hero. I said "see you later" instead of "goodbye." I hate goodbyes. They're so final.

But while we're on the subject of goodbyes, there's someone in my life I feel I've lost almost completely. I'm not sure I like who he's become. At risk of sounding ridiculous, I won't get into it anymore, unless prodded.

Happiness runs in a circular motion
Life is like a little boat upon the sea
Everyone is a part of everything anyway
You can be as happy as you let yourself be

Oh why? Because
Oh why? Because
Oh why? Because
Oh why? Because

Happiness runs happiness runs happiness
Happiness runs happiness runs runs
Happiness runs happiness runs happiness
Happiness runs happiness runs runs.

This song makes me miss Skittles.
Writing my final NonFic Essay about camp is making me campsick.
Hot James McAvoy look-alike boy from my Film Lit class being in the same computer lab is distracting me.
Guh.

Because I'm too lazy to post this at stick_with_me.
A bit of a one-shot of fiction I'm working on for my dear beloved Jack Austin (that is, before he got revamped for The Red Mile).

( Austin City Limits )