Yet another weekend spent doing anything but what I’m supposed to be doing. I keep telling myself: it’s just about mid-semester. (March 8th.) It’s okay. I have plenty of time to catch up and crack down on the workload to finish the semester—and my college career—with a bang. It’s all right, I remind myself. The words ring hollowly. I know myself. But I also know that my budget will allow for fewer distractions—namely, I can’t have a repeat of the last five days.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
I started Ship of Magic on Saturday 22 February. I finished it on 1 March, last Thursday. I had to read and read until it was finally finished—I had spent a lot of time reading it instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing throughout the week, anyway—and then started Mad Ship, the second book of the trilogy, on Friday 2 March. I finished that on Saturday. Then I began Ship of Destiny on Saturday and finished that this evening. The books were good. Surprisingly plotted, exquisitely characterized, brilliantly woven together. My one objection was the span of time for the story—about two years in the plot. I’m trying to piece together where the other years went between the Farseer trilogy and the Tawny Man trilogy (there are fifteen years between books) because I sort of expected more time to elapse. I wanted to see more of these characters’ lives! I also was expecting a The Blue Sword wrap up chapter—“And then they got married and had X number of kids and they traveled and saw these characters and had a good time and all was well for years afterward…”—but no. It just sort of—ended. Not that I blame her for doing it that way (admittedly she did tie the plot strings together and left it open for logical speculation). I just… I’m just saddened to leave the world. It’s so vividly imagined but the world’s big plot is resolved in the Tawny Man trilogy so that it’s sort of unnecessary to tack on further to that whole world with those characters anymore after that. I already miss Althea and Brashen and Wintrow and Paragon and Etta and everyone… so sad! I’ll have to reread it soon. (I always tear through books so fast on the first go-round—the plot suspense kills me—that I need another read or four to enjoy the subtlety and language on a sensual and academic level.) I liked this world and its characters more than Buckkeep and Chade and Kettricken—but not Fitz or the Fool! (Never!) or Molly!—and the rest of the cast from the Six Duchies books… But I ramble and you don’t understand. Back to self-pity…
I couldn’t stop reading this weekend. I mean, I might have, but I just didn’t want to. I kept telling myself, No, it’s okay, keep reading. You’ll catch up with that incredible workload all of Sunday. No, all of Monday. No, Monday night. Now it’s pushed to tomorrow night. Again, I have put off working on my thesis. Baaah! Peggy will get it on Wednesday morning and the onslaught of guilt between now and then will shred my insides. But I’ll pull through. I can at least depend on knowing that I always pull through in the end. It’s not comforting to realize that. It’s sort of depressing because it’s always the perfect excuse: why do now what I know I can competently do at the last minute?
But I digress and wallow in self-pity.
Other highlights of my weekend are vastly more interesting! Or at last “aww”-able. On Sunday Bryan and I celebrated our third anniversary together. (It’s an odd story, the reason why we settled on 4 March for our anniversary, considering our first kiss’ anniversary was 6 February. But I’m not going to tell it.) We kept saying all weekend, “Wow, it’s been three years. Wow, we’ve dealt with each other for three years.” We went out to brunch at the Walnut Grill, a local restaurant with a killer Sunday brunch menu, then went to Ali Baba, a middle eastern restaurant, for dinner. It was pretty good—the whole day. Relaxing and really unmotivating for homework. I love Bryan :)
On Friday I woke up early and wrote a paper in two hours for my English class (on authorship) and it sort of flowed. Now, why can’t I do anything else that efficiently? Oh, yes. It was due at 2pm and I printed it at 11am & got it into the box by 1:30pm. Cutting it close, eh? See, that’s what gets me to work efficiently—cutting it right to the last minute. But that’s so, so terrible for, well, everyone. Including me!
What this weekend showed me really was that I am looking forward to graduation more than ever mostly because I won’t have to be responsible for anyone but myself or Bryan. I don’t have to show up to work anymore or hand in papers or do anything for school again—it’ll all be on my schedule at my whim. Well, until things change again, because they always do. But until then I am just desperately wishing for the day when I can put school aside and just breathe. Really just take a breath and realize Wow, now I finally have time to do what I’ve been shirking schoolwork to do for the past ten years—write for me. Not for an assignment or for a professor. For me!
How desperately do I wish that it were the evening of 20 May 2007—after graduation, after the family leaves, after responsibility to everyone else leaves me to be with only Bryan, our soon-to-be vacated apartment, and the future. Never have I so desperately wished I could seize hold of time and crank it forward to meet me. I’m so impatient and frustrated. I want real life to come to meet me! Perhaps senior year of high school was this bad—No, it was different. I correct myself there. During senior year of high school I was desperate to find answers to my questions and prove I could be responsible for myself. I found answers—what will I do after graduation? What shape will my future take?—but I was still content to be shaped by school and formal education. I just—I’m clawing at the walls of the bubble. Throw real life at me! I’m ready!
Maybe I’ve been writing and reading too much about youngish characters who seize their destinies and prove their competency to survive in a complicated, ever-changing world. I’m more than ready for my next adventure. College has been an adventure, but I feel like I’ve conquered it. I’ve changed. I’m not that girl who held the Carnegie Mellon acceptance packet in her hands and thought, “But this isn’t Princeton…” This is me, a decade it seems, later. Now I’m in the calm before the call, the stasis before I’m yanked off to face my destiny. (Oh, thesis. How I love you.) The good part is I already have my man, my other half, at my side, so I don’t have to search for him along the next heroic cycle of my life. We get to experience that segment together.
Wow, how tangential my rants get… Hehe.
