Appetite is getting better, but for some reason all I want to eat is cucumber kimchi. Sadly we don't have any more at the moment.

Yesterday was my first day back the the church where I used to work... I'm in charge of a class of two year olds now. There are 16 of them on the roster, but I think we had... 12 or 13 of them on the first day. It went pretty well! We have quite a nicely behaved set of kids. Probably one of the only "bad" things was when I was changing diapers, and one kid just... man... it was like an explosion in there. My co-teacher and I were frankly shocked, because we hadn't smelled it or anything. And... there were no gloves, so I was using a pretty thick wad of baby wipes to clean it up. That kid's parents need to adjust his diet, because yikes.

A few of the kids were clinging to me almost the whole time, and when we took the class out to the playground (they get a half hour on the playground with another class of the same age), a couple kids from the other class decided they wanted to hang out with me as well, haha. One little boy just stood near me the whole time and showed me a flower he picked, then kept staring at me until I was like "what's your name?" He said "Nathan," so I told him my name, and then he smiled and kept staring at me. It was kind of weird, but cute, haha.

I've been looking at the analog glitch art of this guy named Rob Sheridan, and he linked a cool video on his Tumblr:

"INORI (Prayer)"


Also looked at the Flickr of the guy I'm doing the writing partner thing with... man, some of his photos of things are just stunning. I've been seeing some really beautiful things and I feel sort of inspired?
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I've been trying to find this one song I heard at the gym for awhile now and it's proving to be very difficult. :(

Decided to take a break from the search and just looked up some old stuff.

"This Time (Klaas Remix)" by DJ Antoine.

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I did end up going to cycle class. Didn't run afterwards though. Felt kind of lazy for just doing the one class and nothing else, but it was cardio + upper body so... I dunno, that kind of helps.

Birthday is in two weeks and thinking about it is kind of stressing me out. I need to plan it and tell people so that they can mark it on their calendars, but I feel overwhelmed by the logistics.

I feel like one of the big differences between "I feel fine" and "I feel terrible" is how hard things seem. On a good day I can go and wash all the dishes in the sink, clean the kitchen, cook for myself, and enjoy the whole process, but on a bad day, even thinking about doing any of those things makes me feel anxious and exhausted. Maybe I just need to work on forcing myself to do them instead of thinking about them. The thoughts are draining.

Still need to write up a critique for my new writing buddy and write a piece in response to the prompt he gave me... I haven't really been feeling like writing anything long, although I have still been jotting down snippets of poetry if they come to me. I have some ideas floating around in my head for the story I'm going to write, but nothing too concrete. Then again, I rarely plan out what I'm going to write. Things just... come to me. In a way I feel like my writing process is incredibly lazy and thoughtless, because I kinda just go with the flow and rarely edit, but... people seem to be okay with that. -Shrug- I'm lucky that people think I'm already a good writer... really not motivated to get better at it. >_>

Finally went grocery shopping with my dad today. We hit up Grocery Outlet and I got five boxes of Power Bar protein bars because they were $3.75 for a box of 15. Hell yeah. This might help with my energy levels at the gym, since I've been struggling to eat enough to have adequate energy for workouts.

Here's a song Youtube has been pushing at me for awhile:

"I Miss You So" by Salami Rose Joe Louis.

It sounds like sitting in a quiet, dimly lit coffee shop in the city by yourself, stirring the lukewarm remainder of the drink in your cup, and alternating between staring out the window at the streetlights and across the table at the empty chair in front of you. It's almost closing time, and you can't stay here forever.

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I got logged out somehow after starting to write this entry, so I lost the entire thing and now I have to rewrite it.

"Strict Machine" by Goldfrapp.


I really don't feel like trying to rewrite everything I had before, so here's the summary:

-Ran three miles yesterday. (Ran 2.25, took a break to do Bosu plank, squats, burpees, ran 0.75).
-Might go to cycle class tonight but I dunno, we'll see.
-Downloaded a 90s dance hits mix that made running easier.
-Running longer goes better when I set a goal (e.g. 2 miles) and then stretch it a little when I get close to the goal ("I'll just go to 2.05," "Might as well go to 2.15" etc.). It's easier to go farther when you're already really close to your new goal.

-Conversation last night got me wondering if I'll ever feel some of the things I used to feel again, or if I'm just a different person now.

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"You Never Knew" by Negative Gemini.


I thought a lot about dying today. I mean, compared to normal, that is. I think about dying all the time, but today I thought about it more frequently. My parents drove down south to visit my aunt and uncle at their new house, and I had to take them to my other aunt and uncle's house so they could carpool. Coming back from there meant driving along the road where I got into the accident last year. Although I'd driven that way by myself since the accident, it had been a pretty long time, and my mom kept asking if I would be okay. I told her it didn't really matter, because I get anxiety now whenever I go around a curve anyway (it's just that the amount of anxiety varies).

The whole way home, I imagined what would happen if another car hit me on the road, or if I didn't brake in time and slammed into another car. When would my parents find out? When would my friends find out? Would I die on the road or would they cart me to a hospital first? I thought about what it was like to be in the car for the accident last year, and the noises, and hearing myself screaming without realizing that it was coming from me. When the car landed upright, I sat there staring ahead, gripping the steering wheel hard, my whole body rigid and tense. When I heard someone calling out to me, asking if I was able to get out of the vehicle, it was like waking up from a dream, and I couldn't really understand what had happened or how I got there. Then I realized that the radio was silent.

It's hard for me to drive without music playing. If there's nothing to occupy my white noise thoughts then there's more space for anxiety. I guess music is kind of like a security blanket for me in that way. It helps drown out the bad stuff in my head.

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My friends were busy tonight, so I went to the art walk downtown by myself. It was... a strangely emotional experience. In the quilt and textile museum I saw some quilts that were the winning pieces in the Japan Handicraft Instructors Association, and they were absolutely amazing. I don't think I've ever been so stunned by quilts before. I wish I had taken pictures of more of them... I only got one picture, of a quilt named "I touched your scar in the dark". For some reason beyond my descriptive abilities, the name of that quilt struck me deeply. It evoked this intensely intimate, vulnerable imagery, as well as feelings of loss, distance, loneliness, and pain. It reminded me of lying awake in the dark next to a sleeping figure, physically close but... alone.

I think, no matter what I might feel for the person sleeping next to me, if they're asleep and I'm awake, it is lonely to be the only conscious body in the bed. The separation feels so profound, even though I know that in theory I could wake them up if I wanted to. It feels like an uncrossable distance, a metaphysical Grand Canyon. Seeing as how I find it very difficult to sleep around other people, I've been in this lonely spot a fair number of times, now.

Despite my dislike of platitudes, there is something I find fascinating about clichés, and I often find myself unraveling them in my mind. "So close, and yet so far" is such a tired and overused expression that it's practically meaningless, but it does succinctly describe the feeling of being awake next to someone asleep, in a way. I mean, it takes all of the emotional complexity and depth out of it, but it does apply. I've had this longstanding habit of using these kinds of sayings and aphorisms as axioms in the logical propositions I spin for myself about life. I don't know why; I guess maybe I just like to reinterpret what I know until it makes sense within the current framework of my life. These little sayings are like shortcuts, verbal placeholders in my philosophical formulas.

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I think, once I have some spending money, I'm going to get this book:

The Lover's Dictionary: A Novel by David Levithan.

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Last night, after my weekly Skype call with friends, Sean and I stayed on for awhile and talked, just the two of us. I ended up opening up to him about a number of things that have been on my mind, and... it was hard, and it was sad, but I felt heard, and that was nice. Back when we first became friends I felt like I could be open with him, but there was a long period where I didn't feel like he was really listening to me, so I didn't talk to him as much about things, and I felt like we grew a little more distant. But yeah... last night was better. There's no resolution, but I didn't need a resolution, I just wanted to feel understood, I guess. That's all I really want, most of the time. It just happens very rarely. Sometimes I wonder if the part of me that lets me feel connected to other people broke a long time ago.

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