this recent all-consuming need to escape marietta can't be good for me. for the few hours i'm gone it's a panacea, it's all i need, i feel so at peace. but when i inevitably return to marietta, two things happen. i immediately become more depressed (that is not the right word, because i'm generally happy) than i ever was to begin with, and i become lazy and therefore stressed because i've put all this work off and now i don't want to do it at all.

i'm completely screwing myself over, but it feels so good.

tonight lani and i drove to athens, the nearest town showing adaptation. my second time seeing this amazing movie - between this and the hours i have a feeling i'm going to make about forty trips to the theater this month. remind me, by the way, to someday address the topics these two movies and the books they're based on have made me consider. they're important ideas; i'm just not sure what i have to say yet.

after the movie we met up with rose, a high school friend of mine who goes to ou. lani must have been bored out of her mind (i'm so sorry), but it was actually really good for me to catch up with her. i've all but detached myself from the high school gang; i rarely talk to any of them and almost never see them when i go home. i was somewhat surprised to hear rose felt the same way, that she was done with that high school bullshit, that she was having too much fun in college with rational (kinda) people to care. mm-hmmm. somehow we both ended up with the same major and minor (political science and gender/women's studies) which just blows my mind - turns out we have a lot more in common than i thought we did, or maybe we've both changed. anyway, i know i probably won't talk to or see rose any more often than before, but it's good to know she's out there, doing her thing, one of a few high school friends who i would want anything to do with.

so now it's 3am and i have done no work for tomorrow whatsoever. only the third week of the semester and i'm at this turning point: buckle down or burn out. i can't escape every other night like this - i need to accept that. i need to grow up and do my job. otherwise, i have no right to these fleeting, necessary moments of freedom.

there's not much there yet, but for any interested parties i've created yet another diary at the-hours. i don't know what exactly i'll be writing there, but check it out if you're so inclined.

and when the day is done, and i look back and the fact is i had fun, fumbling around, all the advice i shunned, and i ran where they told me not to run, but i sure had fun, so I'm gonna fuck it up again.
fiona apple