31 January 2003 - 10:36 p.m.

Warning ... this entry will contain three completely unrelated mini-entries ...

Unrelated Mini-Rant I:

Most of the time I feel like a silly college kid. I have pink, furry, sparkly slippers. I wear pigtails, T-shirts, and jeans when I'm hanging out in my room. My music of choice is whiny boys with guitars .... most of whom have yet to break out of the demo-tape stage. I have an online diary and I use IM. I eat Ramen noodles and have all of my earthly possessions stored under my bed which consists of my sheets and a fashionable blue plastic mattress. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, an adult.

Sometimes ... though ... I feel like I am. Orchestra concerts are perfect examples of these times. I get all fancy ... wander down to a hall, do my thing and then walk home. It's those times, when I'm crossing the busy street wearing my dressy coat and black clothing's, with a cell phone in my pocket and a purse on my shoulder, that I feel like a grown-up. It's kind of silly I guess. I should feel like an adult when I go to work, or to interviews, or grocery shopping ... Those events only emphasize my youth. I feel like a little girl wearing her mother's dress and high heels, painting her little tiny lips with lipstick and playing pretend. But when I'm walking home by myself with the bittersweet feelings of pride and sense of accomplishment mixed with disappointment that none of my friends found my performance to be worth their time and I start thinking about what I need to do ... and how I can entertain my post-performance hyper little self, I feel like I'm not a little kid ... and I'm not playing pretend. And that this the very real world. I have to think some more about whether or not I like this state of affairs...

Unrelated Mini-Rant II

I have this complex that no one knows my name. I have days when I feel like I just sort of float around without notice. Today, however, I nearly died of shock when the soprano soloist at the concert knew my name ... and then David Hoose (director of the orchestra program) thanked me by name. Bizarre. Maybe I'm not so anonymous.

Unrelated Mini-Rant III

So I'm having self-esteem issues lately. I really, truthfully, do not understand why people choose to spend time with me. Yes, I do moan to Ellen about how I am "not a big giant moose or terribly stupid or ugly or mean so a boy should want to be with me," but in all actually whenever anyone says that they want to spend time with me, I'm really surprised. A few people have told me in the last two weeks that their random friend saw me speaking at this thing or at this random concert or just in the Union and that he thought I was cute or funny or whatever. I don't believe them. Seriously. I should just be able to accept the compliment. Instead, I obsess over it ... sure that they mistook me for someone else ... or that they caught me for the 5 milliseconds of when I may have appeared to be amusing or interesting or actually quasi-attractive. I live in constant fear that at any moment my friends will figure out that I am really a silly little girl. They will realize that the wit they once saw is a tendency towards being loud and annoying. They will see that I am not so cute and that my eyes are not really blue or green or grey, but some bizarre plain non-descript combination. They will see I am not so cute and that I swear too much and say mean things and complain a lot and say hypocritical things and that I'm scared sometimes and lonely and not terribly confident. They will see that I try too hard and think too much and overanalyse the world.

Then I realize that my friends already know all of this. And they're the ones who calm my frazzled little nerves ... who tell me how much they like my new haircut/shoes/shirt ... who tell me that I deserve to be happy ... and that it's okay to be scared and lonely and sad ... who are confident for me when I can't be ... who show me that my self-deprecating analysis of the state of the world isn't how things are ... who listen to me complain and cry and stomp my little feet on the ground ... who tell me that they are always there for me ... and who leave me little post-its and e-mails telling me funny stories, or just saying hi. It's my wonderful little support system of these people who are wise and brilliant and funny and probably just crazy enough to believe in me, especially when I can't, and I just want to tell them all how much I love them. Or find some way to make them realize that every day they save me from going crazy.

(Note: This message was originally intended to be cranky and whiny ... and was not meant to be something typical of me ("my friends are great. here's why"). Unfortunately, I can't save myself from the cheesiness that infects my writing. I'm sitting here at my computer crying because I realized how crazy and lucky I am.)

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