I really can’t help it. Blame the upbringing. I embrace Spam in all it’s sodium-packed goodness.

It’s a damn close second to bacon with my eggs in the morning. And don’t forget the rice!

I suppose the worst thing about Spam is its high-sodium levels. The saltiness requires as much rice as I can stuff my face with in one sitting. Which, if you must know, is quite a bit.

Gah. I just want Filipino food. The lovely greasiness of it all. I’ve been deprived of it for the last six months.

—–

I spent the better part of my day adding a blue gradient tint to 11 pairs of eyeglass frames. How thrilling. You see, I didn’t mind so much because I treated it as a game. A challenge. Will I be able to tint all 11 pairs exactly the same color? Well, damn if I didn’t try. And I did a fair job of it too. I hope Ms. Lee (or was it Li?) enjoys them tomorrow morning.

And now I am sitting at my dining table, neglecting my dinner, and typing this malarkey with blue tint-stained fingers.

It’s a wonderful life.

—–

Another semester has begun, and I am slightly more optimistic this go-round. This is due in large part to the fact that I am finally beginning to feel more at home on my campus. It’s taken about a year, but eh, so it goes. There are many friendly, familiar faces all over the place, from my Nature of Religious Experience class, to the vortex that is the [X]press newsroom.

This strange rush of homecoming is a bit refreshing. I haven’t felt this way since perhaps high school. I never even felt this way at El Camino; I loved the paper and the journalism kids, but to be honest, I never felt any allegiance to that campus.

We shall see how long this lasts. I’m going to be extremely worried if I feel jaded within a month or so.

—–

This is the first time in a while that I’ve been in the apartment all by my lonesome. I’m rather enjoying myself. Of course, I’m not doing any of the work I ought to be doing, but eh. I just got home from work. I’m gorging myself on Hawaiian BBQ chicken, and Danny is online. Too many worthy distractions.

Looking ahead for the next few months, I mostly feel apprehension.

Although I was initially thrilled to receive my Moleskine daily planner in the mail yesterday, that excitement soon morphed into a heady fear. The planner, which allows me to schedule every single day of this year, is a gargantuan devil.

Avaunt, foul beast! Leave me to be the keeper of my days!

Yeeeah. Enough of that, I think.

Carrying around such a planner simply means that I have come a long way from the fairly carefree teenager I was merely five or six years ago. I prefer my days to have some sort of order, some obvious sense of rhyme and reason.

Occasionally I get this intense feeling of disgust deep in the pit of my guts. I’ve always had an old soul; countless people have told me this since I was perhaps five years old. But lordy, I think my heart is starting to catch up with my soul. And that frightens me.

I see my father, a man in whom I sporadically see an intense spark of curiosity especially when it comes to biology, living his life in this sickeningly circular routine. Moreover, he now has to live his life this way, if only because he has children who need as much help as he humanly can give.

As much as I love and admire my dad, I don’t want his life. Kudos to him if he’s happy, or even content, but because I love him so much I wish he had more. I wish he’d done more.

It isn’t as if his life is over, but it can be conceived as such in so many ways.

The main problem for me, however, is that I can’t seem to settle on anything I actually want. I think that word is the culprit.

“Settle.”

I never wanted a cookie-cutter lifestyle. I don’t believe anything should necessarily fit a mold or pattern. I have always felt that I don’t.

There are periods, phases, that I go through. Moments in which I rattle all the cages I’ve built around myself and cry, “This is not so!”

Or, more accurately, “This should not be so!”

I want to move through this world as a ghost, briefly touching and affecting lives as I float onward. Recognition is unnecessary. I want to move beyond the confines of the ordinary.

But it’s all so unnerving. The older I become, the more willing I am to *gulp* settle. I also have to add there is absolutely nothing wrong with settling. Whatever makes you feel fulfilled.

I just never thought that was me. Though, I suppose you never know.

Hell, in my Batman fantasies, I’m the dutiful housewife who patiently waits for him to come home from a long evening of crime-fighting. He can have all the adventures, if only because he’s just so much better at them than I’ll ever be. I must add, too, that there are never any children running around Wayne Manor. Just so you know.

And sometimes when I’m with David, I can all too easily envision how the next few years with him will pass. They will be good. They will be all too satisfying.

I’m reaching the breaking point though, clumsily poised on the cusp of two disparate lives. The two irreconcilable desires will eventually clash, I imagine, in a most horrible manner.

Fun times ahead.

I want to be brave. Sometimes I believe I am. I just hope that when I finally fall, it will be due more to a fierce fearlessness than an apathetic acceptance or simple stupidity.