i hate being a girl...

on the whole, i like to think i'm a level-headed, rational person...but sometimes, my brain functions in ways that i don't understand and don't approve of. for example: when i'm being a girl. it's 10 minutes til midnight on the tuesday before christmas, and this is what i'm thinking about:

chocolate. boys (or rather the prospect of a boy). harry potter. tomorrow's weather. running. my knee, but mostly, of course, boy

i hate that i am not an exception to the stereotype that girls can while away hour after precious hour on perceived relationships and potential trysts. i, who am otherwise rooted in the cold, dispassionate world of science and academia, ought to be above worrying about whether a particular someone is thinking of me, or doubting my actions in past weeks, and the consequences of not being more apathetic or coy, or both, whatever. but enough explaining, let's break it down, shall we? hopefully, this will help me truly grasp how stupid i'm being, and all this nonsense can stop plaguing me.

chocolate-- i think about chocolate a lot. to me, mint chocolate is the epitomical smell of the winter holiday season, and it is everywhere during this time of year. i love those candy commercials with the classical music playing in the background, showing a woman being enveloped by a warm silken shawl, which transforms into a ribbon of chocolate. it looks so smooth and melty. i love the opulence and luxury the ad writers have associated with chocolate, when in our modern american society, chocolate is at best, commonplace. mmmm...chocolate.

boys--can we come back to this one?

harry potter-- i haven't seen deathly hallows pt 1. i am debating whether or not to reread the series. i really don't have time though. my time would be better spent rereading my anatomy from this semester. i hate to say this, but going back and rereading the harry potter series for my 7th time, i grew both quite obsessed with the story, and quite unimpressed with the author. i respect rowling 10000% for, as an adult, still having the imagination and plasticity of mind to dream up a world like that of harry potter's. however, the prose, you must admit is not the best in the world. when you take the time to start memorizing spells, and potion ingredients, the prose becomes in the limiting factor in how richly the books can paint the story for you. shame...

tomorrow's weather--tomorrow's weather will be perfect. 30 F, clear, no precipitation.

running. my knee-- i want to do a triathlon in the fall. is it even possible, considering the horrendous shape i'm in? i've really let myself go these past few years. what happened? oh oh that's right. i tore my ACL and meniscus, and couldn't walk for 6 months, couldn't run for 18. fudge muffins. stop the hell whining and making excuses for yourself, lillian. just man up, and run your damn 3 miles a day.

which brings us back of course to boys: i hate this. why can't i stop thinking about the boy? i really hate this, because--let me tell you how this all came about. all right? we met, we got along. peachy. i mention him like 2 times to my friends, and they go all crazy about it...incessantly asking about him. like bird in a fruiting tree...aaah. it get's to the point that i start thinking about him...a lot. not because i want to, but because...my friends are girls and i'm a girl (i should really stop trying to pin this all on my friends). all it takes is just the slightest hint of, ick, do i have to say it? "love" dropping from a confidante's lips and something somewhere (probably in the limbic system) in a female's brain ignites a vast system of cogs and levels that just keep turning. do you think we enjoy constantly worrying about "where this is going" or "what should come next?" i certainly don't, and i wish i would stop. and what's more, why the heck does thinking about all this make me nervous and sad? shouldn't i be excited? why am i still doubting myself. why am i preparing myself for something bad, when i've no indication whatsoever that anything of the sort is going to happen??

i was positive, that once the semester ended, and i was left to my own devices, that the cogs would stop turning and i would finally, finally be at peace. well, now, the semester has ended, and i'm left to my own devices. and let me tell you, life is no better. without the looming threat of exams and grades, thoughts of boys and past interactions loom larger than ever in my brain. great, stupid balloons buoyed by blank expanses of time and my own stupid, stupid insecurities.

well, being hard on myself is doing nothing for my self-esteem, which one of the things that feeds the stupid boy thoughts. so let's try a different approach: let's conjecture about what a boy in my position would do. i think these would be his thoughts: zelda. i'm being facetious, but only to a certain extent. i don't know if boys just don't show it, or if they actually aren't plagued by the same thoughts girls are. however, they do seem less likely to jump to conclusions, based on minimal information. they don't seem as prone to think that a hug means that the two of you are destined to get married (sarcasm...i'm not quite that bad), and that you need to "move the relationship forward." i totally agree this way of thinking is frivolous and deleterious. what possible good could come from conjecturing about what he thinks, what this or that could mean,  and dwelling in the world of the potential and circumstantial when the only answers you'll ever get lie in the real world?? i mean, no wonder men get so turned around by women sometimes. where ever do we dream up some of the things we do? and the whole, "inability to tell what a man is thinking" thing...i think it's entirely possible that women made that up, just so we could have something to ponder when there's nothing else with which to fill our heads. i know i'm not a complex person. and i'm pretty sure that most people aren't. and it can't...it just can't be that hard to tell whether or not a person shares your feelings of warmth for you. but you go over things enough in your head, distill the memories enough, and you could take them to mean anything....

and for me, at least. i certainly don't want my brain to act that way, but it's not like i can command myself to stop.  i really just can't help it. look, i've written an entire blog post about how silly i think i'm being, but it's not going to stop me. i don't know why. it's just the way my brain is wired. and i assure you, as all those silly thoughts are running through my head, i'm trying to dismiss them at the same time. but they just keep coming...

This is amazing...

I wish all my professors lectured this way:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_rifkin_on_the_empathic_civilization.html?ref=nf

So, I recently moved into an apartment building with an elevator for the very first time. To clarify, I've lived in apartment buildings before; they've just never had elevators. Anyways, I'm living in my brand new apartment building, and one of the things that I find most difficult is standing in the elevator with other people. I never know what to do. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that my discomfort at standing in elevators is some sort of cliché. As I was saying, I never know what to do. It's not as if we are in a large, anonymous office building, where everyone is pretending to be too busy or too arrogant to speak to anyone else on the elevator. We're at home! The place where we all ought to feel most relaxed and happy. But, in our homes, there's this tiny little box, in which a person can get trapped with total strangers. What should I do when I'm stuck in there with other people? Some people are very friendly and they say hello. Others don't say anything at all, and stare blankly at the blinking numbers, or the ceiling, or the floor. Yet others will be super, super friendly and chat with you the entire way up or down. The first week I was here, I would awkwardly walk away from the elevator, if it opened and there were people in it-- even though it was obvious that I was the one I called it. I would pretend I'd forgotten something in my apartment, or needed to check the mail. I know: I am the queen of maturity and social etiquette (that's sarcasm for those of you who are unfamiliar with my narrative voice). If other people got in with me, I would scoot to the far corner, in order to give them as much space as possible, but I now realize, it probably seemed like I was trying to get away from the dirty, other people fodder. That certainly isn't how I feel, nor the the impression I wanted to give my neighbors. Right now, I've progressed and am just one of the people who don't say much and stare at my shoes when there are other people in the elevator. However, I have to admit that I feel like an underachiever for not chatting with the other people in the elevator, like some of my neighbors do. I really wish I had enough thoughts floating around in my head, that I could strike up a conversation at a moments notice; however, for me, conversations are quite a chore. I usually need to think of a topic (and let a practiced person tell you, "how's the weather?" is one of the worst conversation starters in the history of mankind...or at least civilization), and assess how viable that topic will be, and make sure I have my position on the topic well-thought-out. I'm probably significantly exaggerating the amount of effort I put into conversations with strangers, but it certainly feels like that much effort. I am excited for medical school to begin when I really will be much to preoccupied to care about my behavior in the elevator. For now, I will just have to tread lightly, and be sure to only use the elevator when traffic is light.

Yeah, so I've been adamantly resisting using the "Design!" tool on the other blog, because I really like the green look that I achieved with that one, and I'm too lazy to sit around and manually adjust everything so that the new design will look like the old one. So that blog will just have to be old and classy. BUT! Since this blog is basically empty, I figure there's no harm in playing around and giving it a new look!

Ok...so this blog hasn't really been under construction at all. I've been busy with the other blog, and I haven't really gotten to working on this one at all. For now, I'm thinking of devoting this to short stories. Oh...I'm sorry, I've gotten your hopes up. I'm not a good writer, and I haven't written a short story since my high school creative writing course. So, please, bear with me, as I get my thinking cap back on, and slowly redevelop my creative writing skillz...

this blog is under construction. sorry guys!