Ain't it punny.

I believe I love puns more than I ought to. There is quite the skill behind them and once it is mastered - by God (as my dad says, by the way I find that I talk more and more like him), they are pretty damn hysterical.

I received my edits back for my first draft of a story I'm working on about campus blood drives. My editor insisted on saying bloody fabulous and bloody brilliant the whole way through. I thought it was simply marvelous - mostly because the joke didn't occur to me at first because sometimes he's cheesy and foreign and says things like that. But when it hit me, I laughed and laughed and laughed...

Make fun of me all you want. I don't care.

You know what else I enjoy but hate a little bit at the same time? Irony.

Just as I've declared a different major, I finally deeply enjoy two whole weeks worth of Panther work. Amazing how the forces of the world find my incessant confusion absolutely hilarious. But no worries. Despite the fact that I have very much enjoyed the work I've done and the success I've had with actually impressing my editor, I still am confident with how I want my life to be.

Journalism is not a career, it is a lifestyle. And frankly, as much as I want to love my career and be dedicated to it, I am in no way planning on putting it before everything else in my life. Being a journalist requires just that. I actually very much enjoy leaving journalism on a happy note because I have proven to myself that I CAN do it - I am fully capable of being a successful journalist. I just don't love it enough to actually be one. I have the utmost respect for journalists and they are people who should be highly revered (only the honest and ethical ones of course). However, I have realized that I can no longer base my life's choices on the love of the IDEA of being a journalist. I have to base it on all the things that require me to actually be one. It's the difference between "I want to be that" and "I want to do that."

When I think of all the possibilities of my Art degree, I see the difference. I start thinking of all the jobs I could have and I get all sorts of excited about doing the work. With journalist career paths, I only ever got excited about being the journalist, the educator, the writer.

That was never clear to me before and I'm ecstatic beyond belief that I realized this.

And the feeling of it all? An uplifting freedom that I can only explain with one of my favorite Ryan McGinley photographs...

'Tis true.

Pain is my creativity's drive.

I blamed my lack of creativity on Journalism which isn't entirely untrue, but is, I've realized, definitely not entirely true.

I can't write anything because I have been living a robotic and slightly mundane life for the past 6 months. I'm not terribly sad, and I'm not ecstatically happy. I just am. I have happier days and I have sadder days, but nothing overwhelming. I blame part of my robotic ways on Journalism because, conversationally, reporting is an entirely different stand alone social skill that makes any other emotion and social skill drier and duller the more journalistic one becomes.

Aside from a couple memories here and there, I feel like I haven't been living. Nothing really effects me. And I don't mean that it in a way that says I'm some strong confident woman. I mean that I'm emotionally dead with the exception of my constant self doubt and stress about how capable I am.

Because of all this, I've had nothing to write about--nothing to make me want catharsis or even simple contemplation. I thought it was a good time in life that I was finally stable and okay with everything and not letting anything drive my hopes up or drive me down into a deep dark hole. But now that I have fallen into an old state, I realize that where I was, although good in the sense that I would prefer to feel nothing than what I'm feeling right now, it was a dry spell--one in which Dana is simply nothing and apathetic.

To be honest, I wish I was still as apathetic as I have been for the past 6 months. But alas, I've reverted to a previous state of mind.

All my terrible experiences and the way people have treated me in the past has, I'm starting to believe, made me incapable of being close with someone. The more I think about it the more impossible I think it all is. The idea of me meeting someone and letting myself be close with him and having him be someone I can actually be with--it's just--fuck, I don't understand how it would ever happen.

It's all just an entirely baffling, sick and twisted, darkly humorous idea.
Being robotic and empty is so much easier than knowing you actually have a heart--and a tattered one at that.

You bastard.

Journalism, you have taken away all my creative writing, mainly poetic, abilities.

I haven't had a single dawning of poetic, creative impulse for months and it feels so strange. I'm like this...robotic deliverer of information. I think it's because I haven't been reading for a long time. I also think it's because since I've been so wrapped up in school, I've been void of any deep emotions.

I find that really interesting because this semester has an emotional train wreck, but in a way I've never experienced before. It's a train wreck that I cry over for an hour and then realize I need to shut the hell up and get my shit done--stop thinking things over and just keeping working.

Normally, anything that comes over me is long, thoughtful, and causes me to dwell and analyze. I can't decide which one is better because both have good and bad things. On the one hand, I'm moving forward, but on the other hand, I'm a bit void and severely lacking in the what makes me draw and write. And I don't know whether I've changed or my experiences have changed.

I want my drawing and poetic drive back.

On another note, spring break next week is going to be so lame and uneventful. I'm going to be at work and in the MAC lab at school 24/7. Hot damn, I can't wait for summer.

Rhetorical inquiry.

Why the hell do people think they can come and go as they please?

If you want in on my life, then be in it.

If you want out, then stay the fuck out.