Doing the Deed

I turned in the drop form yesterday. My schedule is now short CHI3410 and CHT3500. With both of my Chinese classes gone, I'm down to 12 credits and a theoretically much easier semester. But I still feel tense, and it's tiring me out.

On one hand, I feel really accomplished. I aced my Medieval Lit test, finished my math proofs in time to turn them in, wrote a pretty good essay for Joyce. I even sent something in the mail yesterday, and that takes stamps and time and everything.

And yet, I've shied away from several things. For example, I wanted to clean the everlasting stack of dirty dishes. In the last week or two I've shrunk into a habit of using one cup, one small plate for my breakfast bagel, and one large plate for lunch. I have one knife with butter remnants and one with peanut butter traces, and one for cheese, too. So no matter what I'm hungry for I have the tableware needed to make myself food without cleaning anything. But I don't really like that habit and think when I have the time and energy it'd be nice to tidy up a bit.

The light in my room has grown finicky. I didn't know lights could be finicky, but recently when I turn on the switch, my light will take up to ten seconds to turn on, or not at all. Right now it's unwilling. I tried to be scientific about the problem, but it's difficult when you don't know anything. The problem can't be with the lightbulb, because the light will turn on sometimes. I tested it out with the fan on and off, but that didn't do anything. So maybe there's a wiring problem that magically popped up.

There are other deeds lurking, too. I half-intended to go to a coached swimming lesson with the triathletes someone invited me to, but by the end of today I felt scared somehow. Too much assessment, maybe.

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but coming back from China has been difficult because in America it's not an accomplishment to be average. In China, me just living got respect. Now I'm back at college with thousands of other people who are also going to college and I'm drowning in normalcy. And drowning was supposed to be my comparison for my courseload before and after dropping Chinese, so it's worrying that I'm still using it.

It's difficult to read Joyce's perfect sentences, exquisitely crafted in endless variety, and with every one see my failure as a writer. Usually it takes a whole book before I admit that I can't do that. Joyce proves his superiority every paragraph afresh.

I guess I'm in a pretty disheartened mood. I used to call these 2am moods, because in high school 2am was late and lamenting my girl troubles then felt like I was baring my soul to the world. Now I do that less often.

But tomorrow I'm going to help build a wheelchair ramp, so that might be fun.