. . .
Been reading a relative lot lately - I think it's been a good way to not have to obsess too much about my interior, everpresent monologues that I can't shut off or make any sense of right now.  So I've been lucky and reading some excellent material:  Half Life by Shelley Jackson was first, and just excellent, excellent.  She has this liquid way with the grotesque, at once making it lovely and horrifying and identifiable.  She's one of my absolute favorite writers, and that's not just because I have a word of hers tattooed on me.  Read Life After God (Douglas Coupland) last night, which was sad and funny and good escapist material without being devoid of useful thoughts for me to let run around and skip in my head.  And read the first two (of four) short stories written by Yann Martel (who wrote Life of Pi, which is still one of my favorite books that I have read this year).  Reading, I had forgotten, almost, allows me a structure of time and thinking that is especially comforting when I am confused or having bouts of insomnia or both.  So it's been hard to put down my books to do my schoolwork... especially now that I have 9.5 more books bought in San Francisco to read that all sound equally enthralling.

I am nearly done with the graduate school application process.  I need to update my CV with conference information, but otherwise, my statement of purpose and my writing sample are just going to have to stay as is, as I am exhausted of looking at them myself and have gotten as much feedback from others as it seems I am likely to get.  I am excited, and terribly impatient, and wish I knew where I was going to be a year from now.  I have a potential career opportunity opening up that would be something that I would love, am passionate about and even could be good at - but it would mean not going to graduate school, at least right away.  So it would, of course, be nice to know where all my options lie. 

I find myself looking for patterns and meaning and signals in all sorts of ridiculous places.