Exponential Aggravation

(I don't care if my title makes any sense or not)

This is not a particularly insightful, informative, or interesting post. And certainly don't expect me to post this regularly during the quarter. But I need to express. Let me start with this:

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!

My family -- love them, really -- are the worst people with whom to watch a movie. It's not that I particularly want to see this movie (I've seen Superman Returns three times already), but I brought it home so they could see it for the first time. So we could watch it together.

And they won't shut up. Every other line of dialog is accompanied by some inane comment by my brother; my mom keeps jumping up to bang around in the kitchen; my sister shushes my brother and she, in turn, is shushed by my dad. I could scream. Why am I putting myself through this? Why do I continue to sit, and shush, and want to scream?

I'm insane. I'm living here this summer. I want move with Laurel to Chicago, or Pittsburgh, or London (want to go to London, Laurel?).

On a side note, I adore Kevin Spacey.

Il Futuro

Near Future: I have to take an upper-level Italian next quarter. Don't get me wrong, I love the Italian language; but I haven't taken Italian in two years. "Il Futuro" is about the extent of language skills. And the Italian word il futuro is about as close as I get to communicating what my future holds.

Future: One more quarter, one more quarter, one more quarter ... and then college is over. 10 weeks -- yikes. Until this Spring Break I was so comfortable with graduation and my post-graduation plans: chill out and make some money, travel around the U.S., the world. But that particular reality-avoiding fantasy didn't stand up to Spring Break. Yes, I still plan on traveling, but I'm going to have to get a job -- a real job. (As my mom says, "someone with a college degree doesn't waitress for a living.")

It's not so bad. What do I want my future to look like? A series of adventures -- a bunch of different jobs (with theater a part of every phase). So, I just need to start the adventures!

Yeah, I'm pretty scared. I don't know if it makes me feel better that the majority of my friends are going through the same thing. Solidarity. We're gonna rock this bitch (if by "bitch," I mean world).

On an different note (Eb?), my poor little sister got a wisdom tooth out, my red-blood cell count was 43 when I went to give blood (yay iron!), my new house is freaking cool, and I'm going to Cleveland this weekend to support my friend and -- I hope -- party.

List of jobs I wouldn't mind having within the next year:

1. Working for a news radio station (Cinci's NPR station isn't hiring right now, grr)
2. Working in Development, Education, PR, or Marketing for a theatre (So far, I don't have enough experience for the theaters around the area. I might be looking at an internship)
3. Editing for a theater magazine (Dramatics is based in Cinci!)
4. Working abroad -- hostel, pub, theater(!), teaching

I need to start talking to people -- the only way to get a job anymore is to know someone who knows someone who is doing something you want to be doing.

Look, Charlotte found a picture of me online!

"Home, where my thoughts escaping"

It's strange being "home." I mean, it's great -- my parents just moved into a new house (said new house being my Aunt/Uncle's old house down the street). It's an awesome house, and the newness -- and bigness -- of it makes just being here an adventure of sorts.

However, I came home to come "home." And, even though this feels comfortable (having been here many, many times)

and all of our stuff is here (hell, I've got my own room!)

it doesn't feel like home. Not yet.

I just want home to wrap me up in a blanket and say "it's all good Lindsey. Yes, things are changing quickly, but some things never change."

What a lie -- everything changes. The trick is, I think, to change just in time with the things you want to stay the same. Then again, maybe I'm rambling out of good-old-fashion-tiredness. My bed -- in my new home -- awaits....

Procrastination Station

It is miserably early in the morning. I shouldn't be tired -- shouldn't feel like my head is a melting ball of rubber dripping down the side of my body -- because I slept all day today. In my bid to become nocturnal, I've stayed awake the last two nights.

I miss the sun.

I can't help but snicker at myself (largely because I've entered the hysterical portion of exhaustion), because I do this to myself every quarter without fail. No matter how on-the-ball I am throughout the quarter, finals week is Procrastination Station.

(Procrastination Station -- What kind of station would that be? All the passengers putting off waiting?)

Inevitably I pull an all-nighter (or two) and end up blogging incoherently because at least when I'm blogging I look like I'm working hard (we must keep up appearances for the other early-morning-library-dwellers).

But I must look on the bright side (caffeine would certainly help in that endeavor): only one more set of finals in my undergraduate career.

...If I make it through this set ....

And now, an image for my amusement:

Self-Indulgent Procrastination ("Indulgent" being the word of the day)

It's a beautiful gray, rainy day -- the kind of day where the sun is right behind the film of clouds, casting raindrops as diamonds as they ping against the window. One of those days that has Lindsey extemporizing about weather.

<-- My view, for your reference.

I had a disturbing dream last night. Disturbing in that "more real than real life" tone that some dreams adopt for the sole purpose of lingering on the inside of my skull. If you will allow a little self-indulgent relating:

I was in Washington, D.C. -- with it's great theater and energy, it's a city I would love to live in one day. I ran into an imaginary person, but it was understood that we had made friends via blogging and I was staying with her for a week. While standing randomly in a dark alley at night, she introduces me to her friend -- an actor that used to attend OU and who, I'm quite sure, represents the entire concept of acting and theater to my simplistic subconscious (he has a history of parading through my dreams). Well, the crux of the dream is that he asks me to stay in Washington, suggesting that I abandon my travel plans for now and immerse myself in the theater world. For some reason, it was a really good opportunity. But -- and here's the disturbing part -- I didn't know what to do. In this dream of mine, I just wanted to stay at home with my family in Cincinnati and stick to my travel plans. And then I was paralyzed with this fear that I was inflexible and missing a good opportunity.

It's not an impressively funky or terrifying dream, but I think it brought real fears to the forefront of my mind. We are all creatures of comfort, but in the dream, it was time for me to make a leap and I was unable to do so. With graduation comes a "brazillion" opportunities and even though exploring this world is indisputably compelling, I think I'm afraid it's motivated from a laziness of sorts. Maybe laziness isn't the correct word -- indulgence, perhaps? Or maybe it really just is graduation-induced fear: the world beyond! The great unknown! The future ... reality ... etc.

Or maybe I'm just conflicted about my decision to move back in with my parents for a bit. I certainly never thought that would happen, but it's the quickest way to raise money for my extravagant plans -- AND they just bought a bigger house. I'm also worried that if I move somewhere awesome (like Cali or Chicago with Laurel), that i'll never raise the money and just get stuck in Grand-Plans-Land.

A confession and a change

I have a confession: I don't like Jimi Hendrix. I can admit and admire his wicked guitar skills, but on the whole his songs do nothing for me. Not a thing.

Does that make me un-American? At least un-hip. Probably not racist.

Well, I'm glad to get that off my chest. I've been editing my Pandora radio preferences and feel a twinge of guilt every time I covertly check Jimi's songs "I don't like it."

[If you're not familiar with Pandora radio, please visit this site: Pandora.com. It's fantastic, free, and introduces you to a bunch of new artists based on your current musical preferences.]

Well, I've just stumbled upon the discovery that a group of my friends are using that archaic dinosaur of a blogging source, LiveJournal on a regular basis. Thus, to accommodate my new blogging community, I'm going to copy-paste my real blog posts (at lindseyfritz.blogspot.com) into LJ. Now, this somewhat pretentious declaration almost makes it sound like I blog on a regular basis, but that would be a disappointing misconception.

On that note, I should mention that I am in the thick of Winter Quarter finals. I cannot help but reflect on the past quarter (the only guilt-free way of procrastinating). Usually, Winter quarter is wretched -- the weather, the general glum attitudes, classes. But this quarter i was delightfully surprised. Maybe because this is my last Winter Quarter at OU, but I had a lot of fun, learned a lot, and got some priorities in order. At the beginning of the quarter I was gearing up for grad school auditions, now I'm applying for work visas abroad. At the beginning of the quarter, I anticipated a quiet, focused few months. Instead, the past three months have witnessed the development of some of the best relationships of my life: I started hanging out with this awesome woman Draga, and got much closer to Charlotte. If you know these ladies, you'd know it was assuredly a very adventurous quarter. Furthermore, I've really come to view my roommates as a family of sorts -- dysfunctional in some ways, but what families aren't?

Next quarter will be even better because I plan on seeing my other favorites some as well -- I'm going to go celebrate graduating with my other half (LMF1), Sama is going to come visit me (or death), and my gorgeous neighbor Carolyn is going to become much more familiar with the inside of my apartment. Also, despite my 20 credit-hour workload, I'm going to have fun next quarter! I'm going to make memories by the boat-loads! Watch out Athens -- Lindsey is sucking the fun out of you in her final quarter on your grounds.