Dorienne's Log

So, every once in a while I hit this sort of event horizon in my own psyche, and it always floors me. Tonight, I’ve been sitting here at four o’clock in the morning and three obsessions have sort of cascaded over one another. I’m simultaneously watching The X-Files, looking for Sailor Moon episodes on eBay and Amazon just to have while writing my SVU fanfiction novel. It’s amazing…

But, more importantly: I took a call tonight and the customer was this woman whose mother had died and computer had crashed, both on the same day, and she was telling me how, when in times of crises such as family loss, I should never make major purchases because one’s mind is clearly in a right state. At her mother’s funeral, people had convinced her to buy a Mac and proof that she was in a bad place was that she actually went ahead and bought one. Of course, she needed it for a business purpose and Macs are crap in generally anyway and the thing didn’t work. So, she was disputing the charges and what not, but the call stuck with me for the rest of the night. She was so clearly still trying to get herself stable after everything that had happened and I can remember her saying she wished she had someone there with her to help her through this, even her ex-husband. All I wanted to shout was, “Go to church! Find absolution through Christ!” but I didn’t say it. I didn’t even hint at it and now, I feel terrible. I rationalize this to myself, saying that I could have penalized at work because I revealing a religious preference and she could have been offended by the suggestion. All this not withstanding, I still feel terrible. I wanted to cry with her and tell her how she shouldn’t feel so bad if she went to church…but, I didn’t. I guess I can only know pray about it and hope for the best, but I still feel bad about it.

I hate how apathetic I’ve become in so few years. Nothing seems to phase me any longer. Take this Virginia Tech tragedy for example. A part of me feels like it’s a bit melodramatic even calling it a tragedy, even though it really is one. I read the story first on the BBC and my first thought was, “Oh…that sucks, but it was just 32 people.” I’ve become so desensitized to violence that hearing about 32 kids my age losing their lives because of some psycho barely bothers me at all. In fact, I originally thought the number was higher, closer to 38 or 39, but the fact is, it still didn’t bother me.

What did rub me the wrong way was the fact that I was so accustomed to the violence. I think ever since September 11th, I’ve never been able to see violence and hatred the same way. About a year or so after September 11th, there was a train explosion in Spain due to terrorists and I remember thinking, “Oh…only 200 people died…well, I’ll be sad once it gets past 3323.” Hearing about planes crashing taking the lives of 200 people or bombs exploding claiming another 20 or 30 seems like an everyday thing and I’m not even remotely shaken by it. That’s what scares me most. What lies in the future that will make September 11th look like an “Oh…well, that sucks” moment for me?

A part of me wonders if this is just my defense mechanism, not caring that is. Perhaps indifference is my way of handling things I see each week that are really too much for me to really handle. I keep hearing people equate present times to Gomorrah and the fall of the Roman Empire and such, but still, I don’t seem to care. Older adults around me act like the world has gone completely downhill since the 70s and 80s, but I don’t see it. People are still just as ignorant now as they were when I was a child. There are the twelve-year-old whores now, just like there were when I was in middle school and there are school shootings in places one wouldn’t expect now just as there were when I was younger. Nothing’s actually changed. The world is just as screwed up now as it was when I was born. I just think the internet has made that fact more apparent to a wider audience, and what’s disturbing about all of this is that I really don’t care.

Wow! For the first time in quite a while, I feel like I’m in a good place. Despite everything that’s gone on this week, from car breakdowns to spider issues to almost subjugating myself to less than Christian scruples, I feel like everything’s moving in a flow perfectly adjusted for me. I’m losing weight, getting my classwork done and writing more than and still have time to study the Word. Everything actually is fine…for once. I don’t even feel like complaining about all the things that had gone wrong in the past few weeks. I feel perfectly content to be perfectly content. What an odd feeling…

I’m reading 1984 right now, and I must say, it has me intrigued like few books do. There is a part of me that’s screaming, “Get on with the bloody story!” while there’s also another part of me that’s just enjoying every inch of the developing story. What has me most intrigued are all the things that may need to be changed in this upcoming book of mine. While not nearly comparable, Winston and Luka seem to ask the same questions toward the beginning, though Luka will be a good deal younger. The message in the book is completely different than what I’m going for in my own, so I’m also wondering if I can get away with slightly referencing 1984 since the rest of the story is so different. I guess it’ll be necessary to just finish the book first before wondering what I’ll be forced to change in a book I’ve not yet started writing.

Just thinking about writing in general, though, piques my interest further. I love to write. Whether it’s here, through my website or actual stories and poems. I love the written word. Over these past few weeks, I’ve come to love creating my lessons for Sunday School because I have to write out my lesson. I thought at first, I just enjoyed watching characters develop and the way either myself or other authors use dialog to further along a plot, but what I really love are the words themselves. The fact that I can read and comprehend and create with something so simple seems almost baffling when I consider it fully. Twenty-six characters can be shaped and molded into something that can have depth and take on a meaning of it’s own. Now, I’m simply rambling, but I felt it necessary to mention this, because I realized today that get so wrapped in the words that I sometimes forget it is pertinent to yield some attention to actual living people who may one day receive my words. There are many times, I’ve found, that I would much prefer the company of my own characters and inside a world of my own making rather than facing the miscreants that hold dominion over this literal one.

Adventures in Vegetarianism #5
As I approach the end of my seventh week as a vegetarian, I must note that the urges are returning. Some time on Tuesday, I nearly broke down and got a chicken basket at Dairy Queen. It was really close, too. What bothered me was that it seemed so easy to fall back on old habits. It seemed like the most natural thing to do: go to DQ get a Blizzard and a chicken basket and scarf down twice my alloted caloric intake in one sitting. But…I resisted and I feel better for it.

I’ve lost just five pounds in these weeks and I don’t feel any different, but I know there is a positive somewhere in this. The only thing I can really say to myself about this is that I didn’t put on all this weight in six weeks and it won’t come off in six weeks either.

Half of my problem is that I go through periods where I’m OCD over one food and then I tire myself out over it and I start to eat out again. It’s not as bad as my pre-veg days, but it still isn’t good. Pre-veg, if I hadn’t cooked anything for dinner, I would be at Skyline pretending that since I didn’t think of hot dogs as actual meat it was okay. At least now, I stay out of places such as that. I figured that I would have started feeling weak by now, but I still haven’t. I’m not sure why, but I suppose that means I’m getting enough protein elsewhere, I guess…more like suppose…