Organized Chaos At Its Finest

It has been a strange semester thus far.

My last semester, super excited to have it finally in my grasp, and for some reason, I’m tired all the time. I can’t stay awake past 7PM and I can’t seem to get any of my reading done. I find out I have mono a couple of weeks later, and all of it begins to make sense. I’m so behind in reading, but it seems that my body would rather nap at 4PM than read about political theory. (With or without mono, I’d rather do anything than read about political theory.)

Because of said exhaustedness, I have stopped being social. I don’t have time for it in between school, work and my extended sleep schedule. I at least found time in my best semester ever to go out and have fun on the weekends, which I now spend reading and taking naps. It’s my last semester in undergrad. I’m hoping to feel better in a few weeks and get out to do … anything.

Classes are ok. I can’t say it’s my favorite academic semester, but there is a bright light among the darkness: golf. However, I’m not supposed to swing a club for a couple of months out of concern for my spleen. Hooray, mono.

Perhaps, it’s best that I stay inside given the recent dreadful weather. Right now, it’s raining. And tonight, that rain is going to freeze. On top of snow and other layers of ice. Maybe I don’t remember last winter/spring well, but I don’t remember it being this cold. I’m fairly sure in March I was wearing short sleeve shirts and Rainbows. (Were it not for the snow and ice covering the ground, there would be some college student wearing those right now in 20 degree weather.) I have a feeling that in March I won’t be wearing those out.

I understand that we won a National Championship last year and lost incredibly valuable players (including the now National Player of the Decade), however my team, the team that I have loved since I was a small nerdy child, is failing every Tar Heel fan and their beloved coaches. I can’t watch the games because I want to cry. I haven’t wanted to cry over a basketball game in about four years (coincidentally after the 2005 National Championship team left). I need my basketball team to do something, anything, because my last home Duke game as an undergrad is approaching. I want to be there and witness a miracle.

The only thing consistent is my favorite show, Grey’s Anatomy. Whenever my life seems out of control, Grey’s Anatomy is there. I believe that’s sad in a way, but we all have our shows that we love to watch, and for me, medical dramas are where it’s at. I spent ample time after my nap tonight stalking the promos for the next few episodes.

I couldn’t sleep last night, for whatever reason. I believe  it was because I fell asleep earlier in the evening and thwarted my sleep schedule, but rather than just leave me to lay here and enjoy my comfortable bed, my mind decided to start sorting through the things I have been thinking about but have not filed away. My future, mainly. I think I was supposed to be anxious, but I was placed at ease. I get really excited thinking about life. I’m a lucky, lucky girl.

Speaking of lucky, I’m hoping that in just a week and a half, my two best Carolina girls will be here to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of North Carolina Basketball. And we can paint the town red. Come hell or high water, I will be out with them, even if they have to let me nap on the bar top and I have to drink only water.

2010 has been interesting, but it’s still living up to be one of the best years yet. I can’t let it pass me by.

Since this isn’t one of my typical posts, here’s something you’re used to. Enjoy.

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Spring – a time of rebirth.

It’s not quite spring time yet, but I can’t help but think of new warmth right after the new year has begun. Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast that there will always be a spring. As painful as making it through the winter can sometimes be, new things, and old things reborn… remade… are waiting.

I love colder weather, probably as a result of growing up in intense southern summers. The heat began to make me sick as a child, and I had to spend beautiful days inside. Whenever autumn came, I felt free again; I could run and play outside. After an enjoyable few months of calm weather in the fall, winter rears its head with unpredictable tempers. Some years in the south we experience warmer weather with few cold days, and others we spend the winters trapped for several weeks inside. Winter is part of the cycle of life, providing an opportunity to rebuild, so that when spring approaches, living things are stronger and more beautiful. It is true that some do not survive the weather. We do not always know the reasons. Despite this, they do not put up any less of a fight against it.

Much like I had as a child in summer, a time when typical children have no worries, I have placed myself behind a wall. I put up walls around my life, and at this point in the process, I don’t do it intentionally. I believe that I once did it with purpose to keep the bad away and keep the good inside, but now, with life appearing to be more gray than merely black and white, I have no idea why I filter life as I do. I filter people and experiences, believing that I’m choosing what is best for my future. It’s a risk that I take – a risk of picking the best experiences and running away with them, or letting in the worst, disguised as good, and allowing myself to board a shifting ride.

I went on a hike today, against logical judgment (given that I’m still sick with a mysterious flu like virus), and I spent hours with people that I know feel what I feel – lost, yet found; happy, but sad; amused, but fed up; adventurous, yet boring. All of these feelings, and emotions, make life an unpredictable season. (Matchbox 20 called it a mad season, and even as a freshman in high school, I agreed. Lest we not forget Kerouac’s love for the mad ones*.) This unpredictability makes life worth every second. (F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Great Gatsby, “I was within and without simultaneously enchanted and repelled at the inexhaustible variety of life.”)

I look forward to spring, a time this year when just one of many parts of my life will end (although our years as Tar Heels never end), and a magnificent education awaits. The chance to do everything I’ve dreamed of. However, between now and May, the walls I place around my life must come down. I must once again be reborn and free myself from inside the walls I have built. Albert Camus wrote, “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” Of that, I am sure; bring on the winter. This summer, I plan to go outside and play.

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* I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’. Jack Kerouac, On The Road