So, I read some more of those 115 updates per minute. Everyone was like me– rambling on about their life. What they are going to do today, writing poetry, complaining about themselves…. Any one of those journals could have been my journal.

And then there was my journal entry that I had just written! It sounded exactly like the others. Yet another journal entry pondering the meaning of life and searching, rambling on in a self-absorbed way.

This is too weird. I feel nauseous (though that could be the caffiene).

I think online journal writers are like dog breeders. I’ve met several dog breeders in the past few months and most of them are the same personality type: bossy, think their opinions are the only right ones, come off as rude when discussing their opinions in dog-related conversations. I came to the conclusion that a certain personality type is attracted to dog breeding. Don’t get me wrong, these breeders love dogs and are ethical breeders, but their interpersonal skills are certainly lacking. If a law student married an engineering student, their child would be a dog breeder.

Anyways, I’ve now decided that a certain personality type is attracted to online journal writing. We are introspective, a bit depressed, love to write, love to write with biting wit even more, creative, a bit lost.

And young. A lot of the online journal writers are very young. Of course, they call the online journal “a blog” which sounds infinitely cooler. But are blog writers just younger versions of online journal writers? Just as introspective and creative, but they are introspective about different things that are age-specific?

One of the entries I read was by a college student. She was philosophizing about herself, saying she took herself far too seriously and that she was now “over” herself. While I was reading that entry, I thought “Oh yeah, I remember going through that psychological phase in college.”

I hope I find my spiritual enlightment soon… all this uncertainty– these painful questions without answers– is taking an emotional toll. I’m exhausted.

Holy macaroni. And how many of those updates do you think mirror this update: talking about how many updates there are per minute?

We’re massive! Truly massive! The human population is a great lumbering beast.

I thought I had more to say, but who am I saying it to? You see, I read about 20 of those 115 updates and I once again feel lost. I wonder why our individuality is so important to us.

….. where is the answer….. what exactly am I looking for….

I haven’t posted in soooooooo long. To be honest, I’m not sure who reads this or how often. Am I posting for myself? Am I posting for the random person who stumbles onto this journal? Am I posting for my friends? I’ve never answered this question with any satisfaction. I have yet to understand the lure and need for the online journal, although I obviously feel it in myself. Maybe humans just need to send their voices out into the oblivion in the hope that we will connect. After all, we are, by nature, sociable creatures. But I still think vanity plays a part in the online journal as well.

I have been playing “catch up” as we all seem to do. And of course, I haven’t caught up, nor will I ever. There is too much to do in life and too little time. But I shall play “catch-up” until the day I die. Always reaching for a goal in front of me. If I ever do reach it, then I need to set the goal higher so I have something to reach for, something to dream about.

I have a new puppy. I got her about a month after Savannah died. Matt was really sweet and let me make every single decision when picking the new puppy. I choose the breed (German Shepherd Dog), choose the puppy out of the litter, and named her (Lani). She is six months old now. And she is high maintenance. I had read a lot about GSDs before getting her and every book had the same warning: GSDs are very smart and as an owner, you must occupy their mind. They will get up to mischief simply because their mind is twirling and buzzing and they have no occupation.

And sure enough, Lani’s mind is going about 100 miles an hour. I’ve never had such a busy and inquisitive dog. I figured out why people teach their GSDs tricks. It’s not to impress people. It’s just to give the poor bored dog something to do with its overactive mind. GSDs need to learn. Just as greyhounds need to run or they will go crazy, GSDs need to learn or they go nuts. They are a very interesting breed. I’ve never had a dog with a natural imperative before.

Other than that, it’s the same old same old. Trying to get the house organized, trying to get our finances in order, trying to ride out the recession as best we can, trying to keep my husband happy, trying to keep myself happy, trying to have a baby, trying to complete a novel.

In The Princess Bride, Wesley tells Buttercup “Life is pain” and I’ve been reading that philosophical statement a lot in other places lately, so I’ve been dwelling on that idea. But I don’t think life is pain. Life is promise and hope. Life can be difficult sometimes but with open eyes, dear loved ones, and a bit of caffeine, you can find the pulse of the earth and the promise that comes from simply being alive.

I’ve been getting really “spiritual” lately, but, being agnostic and having a real problem with the idea of a god, my spirituality is like the frayed end of a rope– chaotic and leading nowhere. But we’ll see where all the philosophical ramblings in my head lead me. It feels exactly the same as struggling with a difficult math problem. I’m staring at it and playing with it and rearranging the equation, but I’m having trouble finding the answer. It’s there somewhere but I can’t see it.

Hmmmm…. this has been a strange entry. But that’s the mood I’ve been in lately.

I’ve been very quiet lately. I’ve been writing!! Yes, I’m writing a romance/scary small novel (novella?). It’s not as “deep” as the other one I was writing and is consequently much easier to write, but probably not as revealing to read. I’ll continue to write the other one, but that is a much harder novel to write. I’ll post the link to the fluff scary romance as it comes along. But remember, it is a romance, and as such, hits all the romance goalposts. If you don’t like romances, you probably won’t like this one. Although there are ghosts!! How can anyone not like a ghost story? 🙂

Have you seen the illustrations for Hikaru no Go? They are very cute. I haven’t read the manga or seen the anime, but the illustrations are very tempting.

I’ve decided that if a manga has beautiful illustrations, then it will still be very successful even if the story isn’t that great. Look at Tanemura Arina, Clamp, and Katsura Masakazu, just to name a few. Their stories could be utter crap, and people will still devour the manga because the drawings are so beautiful.

So using IRC to share files is very cool but deadly slow. What I’ve discovered: I think it’s very easy to host an fserve from your home with just a junk computer and a modem/DSL connection. So there are a ton of fserves out there. There are hundreds of channels with hundreds of fserves listed on them. So you cruise the channels, and then search the servers, looking for the file you want.

It’s very very cool. Right now, I’m downloading my very first anime digisub .avi file off IRC. We’ll see how it comes out.

While learning about all this IRC stuff and digital media, I feel like Neo when he first woke up after he left the Matrix.

“What’s wrong with my eyes?”

“You’ve never used them before.”

Writing is soooo hard!!! It’s so hard!!!! How does anyone ever even write a single sentence?! It’s like pulling teeth without the anesthesia.

Pain! Great pain! :-((

Btw, I’ve been reading a lot of shoujo manga. I am sooooooooooooooo very very very sick (read: amazingly super unbelievably sick) of the “girl meets cute boy, likes boy at first because he’s cute, then discovers boy is an obnoxious jerk and doesn’t like him, then slowly falls in love with him despite the fact that he’s a jerk” story line. Bleh. Are there no other interesting stories for young girls? Why are we sticking to this formula which was a bad formula to begin with. I’ve never liked romances where the love interest is a jerk.

That’s why I’m writing my own romance. :-))

The internet is huge!! HUGE!!! I can’t feel the size of the Earth or the Universe, but I can feel the size of the internet. Once again, I’m reminded of a passage from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the description of the Magrathean factory floor:

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He continued: “I should warn you that the chamber we are about to pass into does not literally exist within our planet. It is a little too … large. We are about to pass through a gateway into a vast tract of hyperspace. It may disturb you.”

Arthur made nervous noises.

Slartibartfast touched a button and added, not entirely reassuringly. “It scares the willies out of me. Hold tight.”

The car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur had a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like.

It wasn’t infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity — distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very big, so that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself.

Arthur’s senses bobbed and span, as, travelling at the immense speed he knew the aircar attained, they climbed slowly through the open air leaving the gateway through which they had passed an invisible pinprick in the shimmering wall behind them.

The wall.

The wall defied the imagination — seduced it and defeated it. The wall was so paralysingly vast and sheer that its top, bottom and sides passed away beyond the reach of sight. The mere shock of vertigo could kill a man.

The wall appeared perfectly flat. It would take the finest laser measuring equipment to detect that as it climbed, apparently to infinity, as it dropped dizzily away, as it planed out to either side, it also curved. It met itself again thirteen light seconds away. In other words the wall formed the inside of a hollow sphere, a sphere over three million miles across and flooded with unimaginable light.

“Welcome,” said Slartibartfast as the tiny speck that was the aircar, travelling now at three times the speed of sound, crept imperceptibly forward into the mindboggling space, “welcome,” he said, “to our factory floor.”

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Apparently, without realizing it, Douglas Adams was very good at describing the internet. 🙂 Anyways, I think the description of the factory floor is a perfect description of the internet. Every now and then, this feeling hits home as I surf or investigate a new technology. And I’m feeling it again as I read about and play with IRC, and toy with the idea of setting up my own fserve.

So there were some nice pages about time management. Most of them were university pages written to help students manage their time. There was the occasional scary page that resembled a written infomercial complete with crap testimonials and bone-chilling web design created by the marketing and sales staff. But I found some good information. I wonder if I’ll get more done now, or at least feel less snowed-under and anxious by everything that needs to be done….

There isn’t enough time. No matter how I rearrange things… no matter how twist, swap, or contort all the things I would like/need to do in the day, I still am desperately short on time. I wonder what Google has to say about time management. Although I have a dreadful feeling that “time management” is just a couple of words used to sell expensive books and courses to people like me with too much to do and not enough sense to see a scam surrounded by fancy words, but we’ll see…. surely the Oracle has the answer…