Quick Pact

I'm gonna write 25,000 words by June 30th.

I would rather stick my head in bubbling olive oil

than to finish this essay. Walt Whitman, what the heck? Even your commentators are nigh-useless in deciphering you.

Step Two

Know when you are parroting and keep it to yourself. You can proclaim all the intentions in the world but they fall away like char beside the achievements of titans.

Step One

Abandon your misery and heed the words of the triumphant.

Success proximity

Kind of tying into the previous post.

Is it just me, or is the fastest way to turn someone neurotic is to remind them of their failures by placing them close to the places they would have been had they succeeded? Whine, whine, whine, but as I'm making this update from the release party of the sci-fi journal that didn't accept my submission -- well, of the seven people present here, six of them have free copies of issue three, either because they are editors or contributors.

Make that eight. And yep, she's getting a free copy, too.

Guess who has to pay for his?

Also, most of my classes take place in Loew Hall. It's a stone's throw away from the Paul G. Allen Atrium -- the heartbrain of the university CS department, and where I know I'd be had I remembered to apply on time, before all of my grades tumbled winter quarter (and sealed, spring quarter).

Probably what infuriates me the most about all of this is that I HAVE demonstrated the ability to succeed in the past -- just not when it mattered.

Oh great, now I'm fighting back tears. I can't even be mature about this.

I dunno. I just seem to be incapable of having a good time in a place where I'm not accepted.

I get it now.

I realize why I'm so bad at letting go of my regrets. They all point to closed futures.

See, when I succeed -- I don't open any new doors. I'm not much the type to branch out and throw myself into different things. Take Newton's First Law of Motion and apply it metaphysically: I've traveled along this path of mine for a while, accelerating the whole time, so that a larger and larger force is required to deflect me from my current heading. And that changed heading feels random, uncertain, or finite. So I stick to this path, even if I feel there are others, because it feels the most stable of them.

When I fail -- doors close. Alienating friends and crippling my social development with talk of being a dragon. Misapplying to Stanford. Missing the deadline for CSE application. Missing a summer internship. Dropping grades. Now I'm an English major with little faith on the efficacy of his future degree, only starting down a pre-med track due to desperation, with a low introductory biology grade to kick things off. And I can't even get a piece into the undergraduate sci-fi journal.

My failures define me more than my successes ever have. Now that's a fine Aesop.

Slow down, bucko

So, exciting day ahead for me! And by day, I mean week. And by exciting I mean soul-trampling.

(ugh, Blogger's WYSIWYG editor is just terrible.)

Week 10 is generally the most stressful week of a UW quarter -- papers are due, finals loom like gigantic bats, finalizing classes for next quarter or applying for graduation (or, in my case, applying to postpone it). Yep, I have these, but objectively it's not bad:

• Three 250-300 word critiques of short stories due tomorrow
• 19th Century American Lit Final on Thursday
• 19th Century American Lit Essay due Monday
• Introduction to Biology Final also on Monday

Things just appear bad because my day lasts for eleven hours :D Classes start at 11, end at 2:30, at which point I work from 3 to 10. And though I have the rest of the week off work -- well, I don't expect the intensity to let up.

Really, the biggest stress is work. I'm in last place in the department in every sales metric -- protection plans, services, credit apps, internet connections. The kicker is that I'm constantly reassured that I'm presenting everything right and I'm not lacking in enthusiasm. It is true that my enthusiasm gets a little overbearing, however. But when I have the following to show to customers:

• Six months of complimentary antivirus software (pick one from four different companies)
• Paid 24/7 tech support over the phone, remotely, and in-store
• Paid protection plans covering hardware, accidents, and consumables, internationally
• Paid setup services covering AV, OS updates, optimization, and restore discs
• Paid buy-back program for technology 2 years down the road
• Microsoft Office (not included on any computer)
• No interest financing offers
• Mobile broadband/internet plans
• Bags, mice, hard drives and other accessories

and am expected to cover these points by making individual tie-ins for each and every point for each and every customer -- *inhales* -- wouldn't you be overwhelmed, too? And I didn't even cover data transfers or business uses.

My deal is that I get pissed off if I buy A expecting it to do X, and figuring out later on that A does NOT cover X, but B would have -- and I don't want that to happen to my customers, either. Hence, more explanation. Haven't yet found a good balance between brevity and thoroughness yet.

Don't even get me started on the customers. Well, I suppose an alternate title for this post could be "never work in retail." It's true. You will go crazy, and it will suck out your soul like a pool pump disemboweling a toddler.

If there's any consolation in all this -- for better or worse, I remain alive day after day. Let's start with that, and get to work.