Finals, Camilla, flowers, shops, dresses, future, individualism, purpose, stress, practice, and happiness

I have not blogged in so long. Well, I guess it wasn't possible for me to write everyday this last week. Today was my final for ancient great texts. I have never studied so hard for anything in my life before. I reread most of augustine's confessions, the aeneid, and nicomachean ethics in a week and two days. For me, that's impressive. But I felt prepared! And I spent the hour before the test reading and talking to some friends about Camilla's awesomeness and vanity for going into battle with one breast bared. She's the Achilles of feminity! And one friend commented how she ended up dying because she was shopping: she saw an outfit she really wanted, so she just risked her life to kill for it. Anywho, she ended up being on the short answer questions on the final. And I just wrote with gusto about her awesomeness and her vanity. Even though I have had a few mental breakdowns, I think it was worth it. Even if I don't get an A on this final, it was worth it to put all that I had into something. I hate feeling as if I only put half of my effort into something and always knowing that I could have done better. But I tried my hardest on this one, and even if I fail it, that's okay. Well, I would probably break down in tears thinking of the days I avoided people, blogging, practicing, and life in general for something that I didn't succeed in. But I would like to think that I would still be happy.

Oh! I get to work at the flower shop next Thursday! They said I would start out copying centerpieces and that it doesn't pay much, but I am uber excited. I've gone to this place weekly (or biweekly depending on my time management habits of that week) for about two years, and I just love the atmosphere. Not only are the flowers delicious to smell and precious to behold with the eyes, but the people are so genuinely wonderful and the shop is in this old silo with the most adorable porch. The ceiling is draped with whimsical vines. They only just abandoned the old cash register that made a legitimate ding when it opened. I would teach violin lessons across the street, feel slightly inadequate about my abilities as a teacher, and then I would enter the flower shop. Life is good. There are flowers. And pretty shops. And wonderful people. And then I would buy a rose or a small arrangement, and then I would give it to someone random like Katy or for someone's birthday. They gave me some pink spray roses for free last week to take to my violin student's recital! She had requested to have flowers thrown at her as if she were a ice princess fairy. There are some bequests that cannot be denied. I hope I can help people fulfill dreams even during my short time helping out at the flower shop.

I love the movie Stranger than Fiction. How great would it be to start a bakery! There's just something about small shops that cater to your heart's deepest needs for chocolate chip cookies, peonies, hot chocolate, fantasy novels, and comfortable chairs that beg to be filled the entire day. Shops just invite you into their world. It's like the shop owner is providing xenia to whomever walks in. Isn't that a beautiful concept? Giving a home to any person who walks in off of the street to be taken care of for a while. It's better than an amusement park, but you don't have to pay to enter. Some friends and I have bounced around ideas where we could have a giant old house with different rooms partitioned to be a bookstore, tea shop, bakery, flower shop, and a stage where young blossoming musicians could demonstrate their work to appreciate people on certain nights. And Thursday, there would be Texas Hold'em. I need a tribute to the Java Hut. I went there three times a week, and yet, it closed. Saddest moment of my life. But I bought a chair from the Java Hut on its last day of business. It's so comfortable. It leans back perfectly from my secretary desk in a way that I can fall into the pillows on my bed and stretch my arms back to reach out for starts and stuff them back into my mouth like truffles of joy and happiness.

Modcloth has the most amazing dresses. But the descriptions are even more delicious. I feel like part of the reason part of me is willing to spend sixty bucks on a dress is because the descriptions make me feel like a disney princess. I rarely actually buy anything, but online shopping is so much more fun than real shopping. Hmm, this is in contrast to what I posed earlier. I like shopping in real life for stuff that I like to experience (not just look at.) What's fun about ordering online flowers in a box? I'm looking forward to next Thursday. I normally don't use emoticons, but I need to employ one as of now and break my precedent. :-) Are you supposed to punctuate an emoticon?

Hehe, this is the wrong one, but here's one xkcd that only has a slight similarity to this disjointed blog: http://www.xkcd.com/380/

But here's the one that also poses the question of how to punctuate an emoticon: http://xkcd.com/541/

I wonder what am I going to be doing in ten years. Will I still be in school, sitting at my laptop listening to Obadiah Parker while blogging nonsensically about nothing with the greatest thing to be looking forward to a flower shop?

I wonder.

What if I owned some marvelous shop?

What if I were an absent-minded professor?

Or if I just played in a quartet or in an orchestra?

Or maybe something like the Blue Man Group.

Maybe I would completely deny everything that I am right now and would be climbing the corporate ladder. Do CEOs dream of being CEOs? I mean, there's nothing wrong for the corporate ladder. It's just that it's not for me. I like doing nothing too much. And I like buildings that have feelings and people that are real that I can help. I like individuals, and much of a giant business is looking out for the giant business. It's like Plato's Republic, the state becomes more important than the individual. And I know it's mainly just a metaphor for the human soul, but isn't the individual more important than the whole community? I guess that's not really a practical view. After all, that view doesn't really work for the healthcare system right now. Hmm. Well, I don't know that much about healthcare other than what I hear in my house, so I'm not really informed enough by objective facts in order to form my own cohesive opinion on the matter. I'm just a wishy-washy thing floating around in the great sea of humanity hoping that it's special in some strange way.

It's so easy to get lost. Every so often, I just have a moment of total breakdown of my view of life. You know those moments when it seems as if you've messed up everything and that you'll amount to nothing and that the very breath that you're taking right now is not only contributing to the heat death of the universe but it's also stealing precious oxygen away from more precious creatures than you like ticks and spiders? Well, those don't happen too often and they don't last for too long, but sometimes they hit for very small moments that are completely disconnected from the rest of my human experience. But what if it's like the Douglas Adam's machine in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that shows you exactly how small and insignificant you are? What if my moments of disparity are reality? Of course, that's a pointless way to live. What's the point of living as if everything is pointless? Then there's not point. And I'm not redundant. Redundant.

There's got to be a point. I want to believe so hard that there's a point. However, I can I know for absolute certainty and have a deep noesis that there is a point, a purpose, a goal, a telos, some great epiphany that tells me in the sky that I was created to make sandwiches or something like that. Well, I guess waiting for something like that needs to be active. After, it's not as if I'm just at the brink of the beginning of my life and I just need to wait for it to start. My life is now. I'm not waiting for a husband or a job or that. I should be living right now and trying to make the best of the world that is around me in this very moment.

How does blogging help the world? Well, I think I'm mainly just helping myself right now. This protects what little sanity I have left. I went so long without writing that I just had a small laughing/ (maybe crying?) fit in the cafeteria last night about my gtx final. But it's all fine now. Now I can expose my soul to the entire cyber world. Who knows. Maybe this is a horrible idea. Maybe some future employer will take a look at this and think what a horribly vulgar and ineloquent writer I am. Dear reader, you must take this in context. This is the messy brown dregs being dragged from the teapot that is my mind.

What's the difference between a mind and a brain anyways? I would like to know more about that. I heard on NPR all things considered the other night that reading and practicing strengthens the white matter in your brain. Yay! That's mostly what I have been doing for the past two weeks. Well, this whole last semester. I don't have that much busy work, reading and practicing have taken over most of my spare time. I need to emotion again. I apologize. :) I like it! There's something refreshing about just playing scales in a room by yourself. There's nobody watching or listening. It's just scales. All that matters is the beauty of the tone and the perfection of the technique and the precision of the pitch. Hmm. At first it was annoying, but I like it now. I probably don't do it as much as I should. Didn't Heifetz practice something like one or two hours of scales or something every day? It's like math: it's not complicated, it's just perfect, and within the rules, you can create something beautiful. And reading. Hmm. How wonderful and easy is it to just slip into another world and escape all of your worries? Escapism is so nice. And since it can also be classified as studying, I don't feel guilty about separating myself from the rest of the world. Sometimes I just feel like being antisocial. I guess that's also a practice thing. I've been antisocial this last week, so now it feels like a natural habit.

It's like Aristotle's happiness! It's a habit that one can make. It's not just something that naturally effervesces from one moment of wishing for happiness. Apparently, I didn't mention enough about the active quality of happiness in my last paper for great texts, and that is part of the reason I didn't get an a. Which is fine. But I used the action word as much as I could in my final today. Or yesterday. What time does it stop being night and start being morning? Sunrise? Okay, today.

I should probably go to sleep. But this is such wonderful release. I feel some muscles in my back begin to relax.

Sleepytime. Itunes shuffle went to Pride and Prejudice soundtrack.

Good night, interblag!