2:31 a.m. x 2009-12-28

currently listening to: "backstabber" by the dresden dolls

today (yesterday now) i went to the gym with my mom and sister. my sister went off and my mom and i got on the treadmills. she asked if it was okay to take the one next to me and i said, yes, as long as you don't make any comments. she wouldn't, really - nobody would - but i am intensely self-conscious about running in public because of my chest. it's a weapon. so i started running and, of the forty-five minutes we were there, i spent maybe twenty-five running, on and off. and then my mom grabbed my arm and went STOP! and had a complete mom-moment like i was going to hurt myself if i did anymore. she was really rattled that i ran because she didn't think i could. i am not terribly out of shape. i'm just sedentary and busy. i'm also an extremely energetic person and i need a way to get that out because i don't expend energy like i need to. i wind up not and it makes me physically anxious.

i could have finished great granny webster today but i won't. i want to make it last a little longer. caroline blackwood's writing is PHENOMENAL. i want to get into miss macintosh in a bad way but i am worried because it will be like anna karenina - it's long and loses its umph when read in tiny installments over long periods of time. dostoevsky, too. i have to read his books in only a couple of sittings to feel them. so i will probably read AVA next.

i'm going back to the gym tomorrow. i have to commit to this. there are massage chairs there but i can't use them because i don't have the right calibre membership. that's disheartening. the only things that hurt at all when i was running (my legs are stiff now but they were fine at the time) were my shoulders. i felt a ridiculous pinch in my left shoulder and i have not slept well in a month, i think from all the stuff with gretchen and grad school, which, looking back on it, i didn't talk about. i am waiting to apply until after i graduate so i have the time to do that and only that, and gretchen did it this semester and she was shorn to ribbons mentally, particularly over her statement of purpose. one night i stayed up with her working on it and she screamed at me because i could not help her word something correctly because it was about her and not something on which i could speak - which she knew, but she was deranged with frustration. she apologized the next day, but it wasn't anything - i knew she was stretched very thin. and her dog died. it was an absurd time. i am grateful to not be applying now.

i think i will take classes at half-college next year because i don't like the idea of not being in school. a language or, if i am able to, a writing class. just to do it. i should take german. i have wanted to for a while now. half-college's website is terrible, which is awesome considering how computer-focused it is as a school.

i want to move to boston. i should get gravely serious about my whereabouts. if i get a full-time job and SAVE in ways that will make me suffer internally i could make enough to at least travel there and sob in the windows of places i'd like to live.

i'm sad that i didn't get to write a grant for the press for a printer, even though we wound up getting enough orders/donations which are also excellent. i still want to write for a grant. it is a valuable skill. i had no idea i could get a job with it, but lo. so that's something i'll be working on. i have to, anyway. at some point i'll need one. carole maso lived from grant to grant at one time, which i found riveting. all that without an advanced degree. she applied for grants, got residencies at universities, and wrote. that's inspiring. and it didn't all happen in a flash-bang, which is comforting.

if anybody should ask i'm going to a seminar
pieces of the moon
JOBJOBJOB
interviewinterviewinterview
sensitive heart, you're doomed from the start
(& etc)