After aimlessly flailing through the first three months of my stats class, I bit the bullet and spent a nice chunk of change on a tutor for the last six weeks of the semester.  With her help I managed to bring my F (which is what my D+ morphed into after failing the second midterm) up to a solid C.  So while my GPA is still lower than I would like, and I still have one more psych stats class left to go, I can at least rest easy for the remainder of the summer, knowing that my money was well spent and I will never have to endure that particular class again.

Summer plans: a few trips to the desert, an epic backyard party, puppy training, hiking, and maybe, kinda sorta, looking for a supplemental part time job.  Working only five hours a day isn't cutting it when I don't have class to take up all my time.

Senior Level Statistics of Psychology, also known as the class that will ruin my GPA in 2013, is taking over my life.  I was naive enough to think that once I took junior college level statistics I would never have to take it again.  I was wrong, so wrong.  Not only do I need to pass the class I am currently in, but I have to take one more stats class this summer.  I am overwhelmed, and feeling guilty.  I keep thinking that if I just tried harder I could understand it.  I keep thinking that if I was ten years younger and had more brain pathways, it would all make sense.  I keep thinking that I will never get into a good post-undergrad program if I don't pull off a C in this class, and it doesn't seem like that will happen.

I have had to strip my life down to bare bones things.  Work, school, gym, cook, over and over each day.  Weekends are not weekends any more.  I feel bad about food because I don't have the time or drive to make fun meals like I used to.  I feel bad at crossfit because I don't have the time or the drive to put in maximum effort, and I am just skating by with my lame shoulder injury and hatred of running.  I feel bad at school because I have this really pathetic American guilt complex, where I hate that so many people can't even afford an education, and yet here I am wasting mine away with a D+ in statistics.  Luckily, I don't feel bad at work, and it seems like it is the one place where I can relax and play and not worry.

I went on an ill-timed vacation in February, and since then I have not been able to get my shit together.  2013 started off so promising, and now it is going downhill, fast.  I know what needs to happen, and I know how to make it happen, but I just can't.  Anxiety has rocketed to epic new levels that I haven't seen since my early 20s, and nothing I do is helping.  My best coping mechanism at this point is to stop putting pressure on myself, remind myself that in the grand scheme of the universe I don't matter, and try to keep plugging away.  The problem with this way of managing life is that when I remember that my part in the world is very, very, very tiny, and that nothing I do really, really matters, then I start thinking, "why bother?"... I might as well not do that eight page Jewish studies paper on Sukkot that is due in 36 hours, I might as well skip this week's stats lab, and, I mean... I might as well just drop out of school and cut my losses now.  Not a good cycle.

...

This concludes my whiny livejournal entry circa 2001.

February is here, and with it I am merely days away from being thirty years old.  In my teens and early twenties, thirty was this strange, almost mythical, age that I would eventually get to, maybe, someday, way off in the future, when I was wiser & richer & thinner & happier & cooler & better.  I would probably have a child by then, maybe two, most certainly a house, a really fun artistic job that came with a huge salary, and a few years of international travel under my belt.  Reality sets in somewhere around 27, and acceptance set in a few months after that.  This is your life, you think, it is happening now, live it and don't worry about numbers, ages, months, decades, what you have, what you don't have, the future.  

When you finally hit 29 it becomes some sort of countdown, if not for you, then at least for everyone around you.  Almost 30!  One more year!  Family members will remind you constantly. THE BIG 3-0 is coming!  You hear it all, over and over.  I am certain it must be even worse when you hit 49.

In my case, I entered 29 with a new determination.  I was going to have a good year.  Not in the "this is the last year of my twenties so I better make the most of it" sort of way, but more in a "this is the groove of your life, go with it and make good things happen" sort of way.  After a health scare that left me breathless and fearful (quite literally) blew over in early spring,  I was ready to let those good things happen, stop being scared of those good things, and just... let it be.  Let everything fall into place the way it is supposed to.  From an early age, my life has revolved around worry.  I have to focus extremely hard in order to let it go.  When I stopped worrying about money, we had more.  When I stopped worrying about health, I felt better.  When I stopped worrying about school, I aced all of my classes (except that big fat C in statistics, but it was bound to happen). When I stopped worrying about my dwindling number of local friends, I met new people and had more fun.  When I stopped caring about what others thought of me, I tried new things. I wore a bikini in public, didn't care.  I started lifting weights and was the weakest in class for five months, didn't care.  I didn't get into any of my top choice "prestigious" colleges, didn't care.  I spent too much money going on trips and buying gifts for people and working out and on a new car and buying new clothes that weren't made in China and on fancy pet food and on ice cream, didn't care.  All of these things worked out.  2012 started off with a horrible bang and melted into a nice, strong flow of good things and new discoveries.

My thirtieth birthday is in six days.  Most of the time, I feel (emotionally, mentally, & believe it or not, physically) about twelve years old (although ask me this on the morning after drinking more than two glasses of wine, and I will tell you a different story).  I attribute this to spending more time with toddlers than I do with adults. I am still just as awkward as ever, but I enjoy it, embrace it.  I am not really one of those "this will be my year!" type claimers.  But if I was I would totally be declaring that right now.

Holiday party photobooth: the aftermath, the lift, the jump, the beard-off.

I am susceptible to easy obsession.  I can't just like something a little bit, whether it be a pet, a food, a band, a pair of shoes.  There is no grey area for me.  I either don't like it, or I really like it way too much and it is probably not healthy.  This frantic obsessive behavior can be good (in the case of budgeting, doing schoolwork, getting to work on time, etc.) or very, very bad (too much coconut yogurt, paranoia over the health of my dog, pretty much every boy I liked between the ages of 11 and 20: button boy, indie bitch boy, and the list goes on).  

For a very long time, I was like this about all music.  There are very few musicians and bands that I had a casual listening relationship with.  It is all or nothing.  The biggest offenders, in order of memory: Oasis, Bush, MxPx, Less Than Jake, MTX, The Plus Ones, Hefner, The Smiths, Morrissey.  It kinda stopped after Moz, because I stopped listening to music.  Really, I did.  It was a weird period in my life where I stopped having friends, worked too many hours, felt out of place, and listening to music just gave me feelings.  Too many feelings, so many deep feelings.  The last album I really got into was Morrissey's You Are The Quarry.  I listened to this nonstop for a few months on the cusp of breaking up with music.  One day I decided I hated the album, and that every song on it was shit*, I could never listen to it again, I hated all music, and the only album I have bought since then is the Sufjan Stevens Christmas compilation.  One album in almost nine years is a pretty bad track record.

Something else that happened during those nine years is that I stopped commuting.  When I was nannying all around LA and the Valley and Westwood I sometimes had to drive 28 miles to get to work.  28 Los Angeles miles is about the equivalent to 100 anywhere else miles.  And because I started to hate music, I would either listen to the Beatles (no hate for George) or NPR.  Then I stopped commuting, started walking to work, and stopped going to shows and clubs, so I had no idea what was popular, new, big, old, dying, dead, touring.  I didn't even find out about Lady Gaga until like late 2010.  That is how out of the loop I am now. I'm OK with it, but sometimes when I am at the gym, a new song starts blasting and some 24 year old screeches THIS WAS MY JAM SOPHOMORE YEAR, I feel like it is strange that I have no idea what band is playing or even what genre the music is considered. I know that I am old when I think this just sounds like noise.

When I started taking classes at community college, I had a long commute again.  My husband, in his quest for perfectly clear iPod reception, took the antenna off of our car so that it would pick up his iPod connector radio signals better.  While that was totally great for him, it meant I could only get the big stations on my drives, so no more NPR.  Also, I am too lazy to screw the antenna back on each time.  So now, I would listen to KROQ, and JACK.  Two horrible stations, but I will credit them for getting me to listen to music again, if only because I was so sick of hearing that Lisztomania song over and over, so I finally put some music onto my newfangled iPhone.

It has been a few years since I started liking music again, but now that I can actually listen to a whole album without wanting to puke, I am discovering that music is prohibitively expensive for me.  While I wish I had the disposable income to drop $20 on an album every week, I would much rather use my spending money on a fancy sweater, a new pair of CrossFit shoes, or travel.  I feel like a horrible person downloading music for free, and the guilt quickly consumes me, so I just don't do it.  I tried Spotify but the "spotty" reception bugged me, and after my free six months of premium ran out, I chose not to renew.  I guess I could stop hoarding iTunes gift cards and start spending them on songs, but really, if I am going to pay good money (plastic gift card or not) on music then I want a pretty album that I can hold in my hands and read liner notes and store it in one of the little slots of the record case that my grandfather built.  So I am basically musically stuck. At this point I am this close to sitting all day with a cassette tape and trying to record songs I like off of the radio, like we did in the 90s. 

*I still think this album is complete shit, although I am sure many would disagree.  The albums that came later are even worse.