So what was the culminating moment of my spring break? Me being childish and realizing I could fit myself inside my laundry basket.

Ah, yes, the joys of being stuck at home for an entire week with nothing to do and absolutely no contact with any human beings outside of my family. But now I’m back in Chambana, back in the cornfields, back to the life of procrastinating. I honestly don’t think I have it in me to do any more academics. I’m completely and utterly exhausted from doing nothing for a whole week. My alarm rang this morning at 8:20 a.m., but I kept pressing snooze and totally not thinking that I actually had to get up and moving. It was 8:39 when I realized I actually had somewhere to be. And even walking to class was an out-of-body experience. I forgot what it was like to be surrounded by hundreds of people your age on a daily basis. Walking from my apartment to the FLB was a total daze—I wasn’t aware of my surroundings at all (though, in all honesty, I was probably still half-asleep).

But I have to get back into the groove, back into some sort of semblance of an active college life. Look, I even got a haircut before coming back here to freshen things up before tackling the second half of this semester.

I know it doesn’t seem short or anything to a lot of people, but it feels drastically short to me. I might as well have chopped it all off. But the cut was necessary; if I’m determined to have hair like Kim Kardashian by the end of the year, then I need my hair healthy.

I guess it’s time to stop procrastinating and get back to work. It’s getting harder and harder to be so productive when the sun’s out even longer as weeks goes by. It’s 6:44 p.m. and the sun’s just now starting to set.

Was going through some of my old Facebook notes when I found this:

“Once upon a time, in a land far away,
a beautiful, independent, self-assured princess
happened upon a frog as she sat contemplating ecological issues
on the shores of an unpolluted pond
in a verdant meadow near her castle.
The frog hopped into the princess’s lap and said:
Sweet lady, I was once a handsome prince,
until an evil witch cast a spell on me.
One kiss from you, however,
and I will turn back into the dapper young prince that I am.
Then, my sweet, we can marry
and set up house in yon castle
where you can prepare my meals,
clean my clothes, bear my children,
and forever feel grateful and happy doing so.
That night, dining on a repast of lightly sauteed frogs’ legs,
The princess chuckled to herself and thought:
I don’t fucking think so.”

- from I Don’t Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson (p. 261)

Kudos to Iryce Baron, my ENGL 281 instructor from last semester, for opening up my eyes to the real world of chick lit. I miss you and your class!

…a lot of country music and basketball. I’ve been stuck on my Lady Antebellum station on Pandora for the past 3 days. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, but it’s become my new best friend. I know most people just can’t seem to associate Asian people with country music (they do exist, though!), but I’m growing to love it more and more. Saw both Lady Antebellum albums on sale at FYE the other day, and was debating on buying the first one because I’ve recently become endlessly addicted to “Love Don’t Live Here.” If only the state of my bank account wasn’t in shambles.

As for the other part of my break, there’s been a lot of basketball. My moods seem to fluctuate with the Bulls’ record, because right now I’m a bundle of joy after the Bulls won their second game in a row after dropping 10 straight. They’re basically fighting for a playoff spot now, but either way even if they do make it, I don’t see how the Bulls can dominate (or even compete) without a completely healthy trio of Rose, Noah, and Deng. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Speaking of basketball, my 13-year-old (it still grosses me out that he’s a teenager now!) brother’s team won their conference championship.

I was fortunate enough to watch his last two games, and honestly, I was shocked at the level of play these 7th graders were at. Maybe I was expecting something really elementary, but these guys were damn good. Posting up and passing like pros. I was so proud.

I just spent the entire weekend cleaning things up. Organized my personal folders on this laptop, swept through my websites and updated things here and there. Did a major overhaul of the tags and categories both on this here WordPress and on my Flickr. Lots of things, and now I’m positively exhausted. Talk about spring cleaning.

So while I’m at it, I’m going to do some plugging:

• Visit Stargazer! I added a couple of short stories and whatnot. If I feel like it, hopefully I’ll add more personal-y things this week.
• My Jay Sean fanlisting is still alive and kickin’, so if you’re a fan (or obsessed, like me ), come on over and join!

I’m on spring break now (hence my sudden availability to update this place), chilling at home doing absolutely nothing. There’s been Harry Potter and George Lopez marathons all weekend, so I’ve essentially wasted my entire break thus far watching all that. I’m rather upset that I wasn’t able to return to work for this week; when I called Cinemark a couple of weeks ago, they basically said that they didn’t need me that much. I don’t know what I’m going to do money-wise, because I was really hoping on that extra income.

Speaking of income, I do have a bunch of Demand Studios articles to write, but at the moment I’m so mentally drained I think I’m going to take a much-needed break from this laptop.

So spring break is coming up in a few weeks. I honestly don’t know what to make of it. I’m about 7 weeks into this semester, and yet I feel like I have not done anything worthwhile with my life in comparison to last fall. I can’t think about school; I feel like at this point I’m done with academics and am now just trying to get some semblance of a life going. It kind of annoys me that I’ve become like this, because I absolutely loved school last semester. I felt like I was going somewhere with my life, and I had never tried so hard in every exam, paper, everything.

I’m so broke. My family is so broke. Sometimes I wonder how much longer I can be in college, without draining every kind of fund from my parents I can get. My mom scolded me the other night for not trying harder with scholarships, loans, etc. Which is true. While I consider myself a responsible person, I was never really ambitious. I never applied for any scholarships before coming into college. I didn’t think I was good enough, and I never tried making myself good enough. I just…floated through. Right now I’m working two jobs here in Champaign, but they’re not necessarily the ideal supporting jobs I should be having. I’m working them because they’re good for my résumé, and I wanna see if I really want to do what I’m studying here. I’m not making enough to barely pay the bills here, and I feel terrible for asking so much money from my parents this semester in comparison to last (at least, that’s what it feels like). I’m almost terrified of applying for more loans because 1) who knows if I’ll actually get them, and 2) what if I can’t pay for them after school?

Worse, what if I can’t even graduate on time? Sometimes I wonder if I should be going away to Costa Rica next semester. My parents aren’t a big fan of the idea because they think it’s pointless. I’ll still be able to graduate on time with my English major, I’m pretty sure, but since I’ve decided to double minor in Spanish and International/Global Studies the pressure is on to get every class done. What if I can’t afford to study abroad next semester?

What the fuck am I doing with my life?!