Monthly Archives: March 2003

Moving Towards k

I’ve come to a point in my life where I’ve achieved my sta­bil­i­ty. That’s not to say that it won’t dis­ap­pear once a new sit­u­a­tion aris­es, but it seems that my loss of bal­ance has giv­en me prac­tice in regain­ing it.

The future seems so uncer­tain. I don’t have a room­mate for the sum­mer, and I don’t even know if I need one. Everyone is talk­ing about mov­ing in with each oth­er, but none of our leas­es end on the same month. I might not be grad­u­at­ing in a month if I fail any cours­es, a very dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty. That means that my grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny would be delayed, and I would need to reg­is­ter for a sum­mer semes­ter. I don’t even give a shit about the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, but it’s not like I would be going for myself. I don’t even have a job lined up any time soon, some­thing which I am des­per­ate­ly in need/want of.

Yet in the face of such uncer­tain­ty, I have been able to remain rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble. I’m not sure why this is. Possibly, the taste of good liv­ing I had last sum­mer has cre­at­ed a kind of hope in me, a hope with no-strings-attached.

What an odd turn of events, that hav­ing a con­tent sit­u­a­tion (and even los­ing it) has made me “hap­pi­er”. I won­der if it’s just a phase, that I’m still rid­ing off a store of emo­tions, and that once the store in drained, I’ll become a bit­ter per­son. Somehow I doubt it, but one can nev­er tell.

I can now safe­ly say that I am a bet­ter per­son, although if his­to­ry has taught me any­thing, it’s that any­thing can change.

And yet there is still a wish for change.

Days At Trolley's, Phases, Etc.

I woke up at 3:33 ante merid­i­an and, unable to sleep, decid­ed to write.

I’ve been busy. I spent the last three days at Trolley’s, sleep­ing on his couch, and gen­er­al­ly stay­ing up late play­ing Wind Waker. It’s been an amaz­ing game so far, and even though it seems to be too short, it’s been an unpar­al­leled expe­ri­ence. I met Adam and Matt on Friday, so we went out to Minglewoods and sat out on the patio, even though it was­n’t quite patio weath­er yet.

Dolly and Nala did­n’t get along togeth­er well. When they saw each oth­er, they tried to stare each oth­er down. Nala’s tail dou­bled in size as she made a low growl. Dolly just hissed back. Apparently, cats intro­duced to the same liv­ing envi­ron­ment are sup­posed to spend around the first two weeks with­out face-to-face con­tact. Dolly stayed for a few hours at Trolley’s any­way.

My trip to Hong Kong has been can­celed, due to the lung virus that’s been going around. Yet anoth­er time that my trip has been can­celed. Visiting Hong Kong at least once more has become one of my goals in life now, some­thing I feel the need to do before I die.

I am now offi­cial in one of my typ­i­cal “Jeff” phas­es, where I start to freak out near the end of the term. Progress on my final project has been dif­fi­cult, not some­thing which is not com­plete­ly (or at all) my fault. I found out that I was too late in request­ing a marks shift in my graph­ics course, so my 35% midterm now counts. This means that I will need rough­ly an 80% to pass the course. Since this is my final term, I may not be grad­u­at­ing until I can make up the three cred­its. I believe I have a back-up plan, which involves tak­ing a soft­warre engi­neer­ing course dur­ing the sum­mer that I can use towards my total cred­its. I think that means that I won’t be attend­ing the grad­u­a­tion in July. Things seem very fucked up for me aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly right now, and I’m wor­ried, one of the many rea­sons I can’t sleep.

I tried rock climb­ing on Tuesday, and even though my left fore­arm was dead from hit­ting the L trig­ger too much, I was still able to scale a few walls. It was a great time, some­thing that I could def­i­nite­ly see myself get­ting into. Even the act of belay­ing is fun, in the sense of a trust exer­cise. It’s just not some­thing that I can get into right now with­out a job, or any con­ve­nient way of get­ting to the rock climb­ing stu­dio.

I Cry

I came home yes­ter­day with a note on my desk, and it said that Dolly was being tak­en for a walk.

My first reac­tion was dis­be­lief. I could­n’t under­stand how some­one could just take my cat for a walk. I was beside myself with shock. I felt vio­lat­ed. I felt insult­ed. I felt ter­ri­ble.

I had­n’t walked Dolly yet, for sev­er­al rea­sons. First of all, I did­n’t have her microchipped, so any chance that she gets away would be dev­as­tat­ing. Secondly, I had­n’t decid­ed whether I should take her out yet, since she might miss being out­side too much after her first time. That was a big deci­sion for me, one that I had­n’t made yet, but one which was made for me.

The most impor­tant point is that Dolly had her first walk with­out me. I was­n’t there to see how she reacts with the world, I was­n’t able to be the first per­son to let her out­side.

I stood in my room for ten min­utes in dis­be­lief. I could­n’t even wrap my head around how some­one could do such a thing, to walk into my home and vio­late my feel­ings in such a way. I put on my head­phones, put on my fuck off playlist, and sat under my desk, shak­ing my head. This was the most offen­sive thing any­one has ever done to me in my life.

When the real­iza­tion that there was no oth­er first walk sunk in, I start­ed to sob. The shock segued into depres­sion, and I slumped onto the ground, pulling my hair, still in dis­be­lief. I cried for a good while, some­thing I haven’t done for eight or nine years. I cried so hard that my tear ducts felt like they were being sucked of their flu­ids and the walls were start­ing to touch each oth­er. By the end of it, my eyes had the old famil­iar swollen feel­ing, and I was exhaust­ed. I show­ered and tried to wash the mucus from my hair.

The whole sit­u­a­tion has made me more ful­ly under­stand how much I care about Dolly. I already knew how much I cared about her, and I appre­ci­at­ed her before, but I nev­er real­ized the extent of it until now. I don’t see her as a pet. I see her as a child.

It’s also made me think about the nature of good and bad, and how much of a bal­ance there is. I nev­er real­ly believed that either exist­ed, since one bad thing gen­er­al­ly spawns a good thing, such as mur­der help­ing to con­trol over­pop­u­la­tion, or geno­cide lead­ing to beau­ti­ful art/culture. Of course, I’ve nev­er been through either, so my thoughts are quite lim­it­ed.

I just can’t see the good in this sit­u­a­tion. I can’t see how this can be any­thing but bad. I haven’t learned any­thing from this, one of the only pos­si­ble jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for it hap­pen­ing, and I have lost even more faith in human­i­ty.

Seeing the good in this would be healthy for me.

Honours Project, Wind Waker

I’ve been get­ting a decent amount of work done late­ly. I’m pret­ty much fin­ished my graph­ics project, a week ahead of sched­ule, and it looks pret­ty sweet. I haven’t had enough progress on my hon­ours project yet, since my super­vi­sor isn’t very good at giv­ing direc­tions. I’m pret­ty wor­ried about my pre­sen­ta­tion for it next week. It’s sup­posed to be 15–20 min­utes long, and I feel like I only have 10 min­utes worth of mate­r­i­al, but more impor­tant­ly, that I’ve exhaust­ed all aspects of the sub­ject. The essay is sup­posed to be 20 pages sin­gle spaced, but I can’t see that hap­pen­ing with the amount of infor­ma­tion out there on Rubik’s cubes.

The Wind Waker comes out tom­morow at 9:30 am, and I’ll be pick­ing it up before meet­ing with my super­vi­sor tomor­row. I’ll be try­ing it out for the first time in the pres­ence of Trolley and Wheaties, and pos­si­bly Aaron and Dina, dur­ing the night. We’ll be pick­ing up some alco­hol, and I’ll be stay­ing the night there. Trolley has a car, so he’ll be able to pick me up, and dri­ve Dolores to his place as well. It will be inter­est­ing to see how she and Nala will inter­act with each oth­er.