Why can't people see??

I must be stupid. I honestly don't understand how people can't see. I'm watching the trailer for Age of Stupid (Age of Stupid Trailer) and I'm sitting there thinking "Why can't other people see it? Why can't people see that we are in a hole and instead of digging ourselves out we're digging in deeper?"

I have this weird thing where I feel like I'm the only one who sees the world clearly. Like everyone else is looking through tinted glasses or they shut their eyes. They don't want to see. I watch Advertisers target babies simply to make a few dollars, I see people still get a plastic bag for one item, I see children who are 12 drinking themselves in to oblivion, I see packets of sweets being sold with each sweet individually wrapped, I see friends buying plastic plates and they aren't even recyclable, I see parents teaching their kids to be honest and truthful and then see big businesses getting away with anything, and worst of all I see world leaders heading for the biggest converence on climate change and they are taking their bucket of sand so they can bury their heads when people try to tell them that carbon trading schemes DO NOT WORK!

Am I seriously the only one who is afraid? I'm afraid that we'll see things too late. That we'll only start being logical when it suits us which will be when we are faced with something we can't ignore. Humans are great at dealing with disasters. Look at the Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. What we aren't good at is seeing connections. We aren't seeing what will happen. We can only see what has happened.

So now what? I'm at the age where having a family is becoming more prominent in my mind but even if I did have kids what sort of world would I be bringing them in to? Does anyone actually LIKE the world we live in now? Does anyone sit down and watch the news and think "my goodness I Love this world, it's wonderful!"??? No one I talk to does so why do we allow it to continue like this? I found out that there are homeless people in my small hometown. I had no idea of this and was horrified. My home is one of the most caring places around so why do we allow people to become homeless??

I guess I can't rant on forever but I feel frantically worried and confused. I'll stop now and hopefully I'll see something which makes me feel a bit more optimistic.

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Give me your thoughts - Do you ever feel like you are the only one who sees?? Do you feel worried about where we are heading?

Conflicted - Which way?

I am so conflicted right now. As you may or may not know I've been studying with the Catholic church for a while now and have been attending church. I love the community, the faith and most of all I love the music. The basic values, particularly those of Jesus, also seem quite logical and human. (I won't turn this in to a Church obsession but I wanted to explain my interest a little.) Anyway part of my problem has been that despite my like of the Church some of its values have always irritated me. I particularly dislike their discrimination against women and the notion that Eve doomed us all.

To that end I've had another interest for a while now and that is Wicca. A bit about Wicca, before you jump to conclusions, is that it has nothing to do with the devil, killing or black magic. One feature is that it is quite variable (within certain ethical peramaters) and for me Wicca is about getting in touch with the earth. I feel that Wicca is a natural result of my interest in NOT plundering the Earth the way we so often do in modern society.

Anyway now I get to my confliction. Wicca and the Church have always seemed mututally exclusive to me. The Church is very against anything even resembling Wicca because it considers it evil (and I won't go in to the history of that right now but instead recommend 'Book of Shadows' by Phyllis Currot). But if the two cannot co-exist then how can I be a part of both? Wicca doesn't have anything telling me what I can and cannot do in terms of worship because it is respectful of all faiths. However by being interested in Wicca how can I possibly get the full Christian experience?

So what now? Can I be a part of both faiths given that they give me different things? Wicca gives me a connection with the earth I feel I need and Church connects me with people. I don't know what to do and I suppose, given enough time, I'll figure it out but until then I'm still confused.

A completely unrelated note. This morning it snowed. I needed something special after my horror assignment and exhausting final week and when Mum woke me at 6am it had snowed. I LOVE snow! It's always felt magical to me and this morning I feel like it snowed just for me. :)

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Give me your thoughts - Do you have a confliction of faith? Have you had the same problem?

Assignment Done and 2 skating movies

First of all I'm very happy to report that the assignment which has been giving me hell and driving me crazy is finally done and in! Thank Goodness! It took me until 1am last night (or should I say this morning) and then another 3 hours this morning and I can make two guarantees.

1. First of all I did not leave the assignment till the last minute...I just found it really hard!
2. I worked hard on it. I couldn't possibly have done any more, even if I'd wanted to.

This was without doubt the most difficult assignment I've ever done! Plus the class was kind of strange. I was exhausted and late and I felt like there was an exclusivity going on. I'm not sure if I imagined it, possibly, but it's something which bugs me and I really don't like it.

Now on to the second part of my day. When I got home I was totally wiped out and I'm not doing any study for 24 hours so I wanted to watch TV. I got on to YouTube to see if a clip from Ice Castles from 1979 was on there, turned out there was the entire movie in 16 parts. I've never seen it so I watched the entire thing, loading one part whilst watching the previous part (a very good method for YouTube).

After I was done I remembered my Mum telling me about a movie she saw 10 minutes of one day over lunch so I did a search and found it was 'Go Figure'. A quick search and I find it in 9 parts and so I watched that as well. Both were great. Although the filming techniques in Ice Castles annoyed me I can see why people like it. Go Figure was a classic Disney movie with one decent song, "I want you" by Hope 7. It had better skating in it and I liked the storyline. All in all I enjoyed my ice skating movie night and maybe tomorrow I'll go skating myself. But for now bed is the idea. My stress headache seems to have gone but I have some serious sleep to catch up on. Night.

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Give me your thoughts - Do you ever get that feeling of exclusivity? An exclusivity that excludes you?

Awful Assignment

Ordinarily I don't blog several times in one day (except when I've done something stupid) however tonight is an exception. It is 12:03am and I am still working on my one assignment. This assignment has been the toughest, most frustrating assignment I've ever had. For the last two nights I've dreamt non-stop, I've thought about it eating, showering, trying to study for my exam this morning and every waking moment for the last 5 days (not to mention the time working on it over the last few weeks).

Why? Because this assignment has been HELL. Ordinarily you try something, you fail, you try again and eventually you get better. Not with this. I have read, written, read something different, tried again, and again and again, spoken to my Mum, who knows a little about the topic, tried again. No matter what happens I cannot understand the topic or how to do the assignment. Yes I have asked the teacher for help and every so often, just for the briefest of moments, I think I understand it. Then something happens and it's gone. For the last few days I've felt like I've been trying to catch a bubble but it keeps breaking.

So why the fuss? Well this subject is my Major. It is what I will be studying for the next three years. So not understanding my first real test of intelligence regarding my Major is SCARY! I feel like I'm drowning when all I've done is dip my toe in and it's making me re-think everything I've chosen to do. However there is one problem and that is I don't want to change my major. I want to understand this. I want to conquer it because I suspect that when I do (which I WILL) I will feel pretty damn good about it.

In the meantime I have to leave the assignment and just do the best I can. I can't do any better because I'm clearly missing something vital and it's due in about 12 hours. So I'm going to sign off instead and get some much needed, and well deserved sleep!

....quick after note. I just noticed how bad the editor is for blogger. As someone who creates websites I am ashamed that it's WYSIWYG editor is so bad. 〈i〉 tags, 〈b〉 tags and a shameful amount of extra stuff which is entirely unneeded. I will edit my posts and fix them up for all the people who read the web with a text reader.

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Give me your thoughts - Have you had something you know you should've gotten but couldn't? Did you give up?

New Sign Up to Twitter

I've caved in and signed up to Twitter. Everyone, including the ABC radio seems to be doing it so now I'm doing it too. I'll attach my twitter to this blog so you can see my updates as they come in and I'll even use my phone occasionally to Tweet on the move.

You can find me at: http://twitter.com/totallyopenbook

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Give me your thoughts on twitter - Do you like it? Do you think it's a waste of time?

Exam is Over!

Well one of my exams is over thank god! Obviously I can't tell you the subject but as you know I've hated this class. Well not exactly hated it, just found it hard. Grrr for discourse! I swear if I read about 'othering' or 'heteronormativity' one more time....

On to my incredibly tough assignment now. My mother has been amazing helping me with this and I feel so STUPID still not understanding it. I hate feeling stupid of course but especially when I feel like I should know it.

A classmate today said they were having a worse week than me. They looked totally overwhelmed and I had NO idea what to tell them. Should I joke and try to cheer them up? Can I ask them about it? Should I hug them or just ignore it? I feel so clumsy when people tell me these things am I the only one? What do you do when someone tells you they have depression? What could I possibly say that hasn't probably been said already?

To make it worse I really like this guy. Even though I have less romance in me than a Rat he is really nice and makes me laugh. I hope I can call him a friend and don't want to see him sad.

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Give me your thoughts - Do you ever feel stupid or clumsy around people? Do you ever wonder if you said the right thing or hurt someone's feelings by accident?

Good Sunday - Bad Sunday

It’s been such a strange week. I had Mass this morning and they had a guest choir in who sang For the Beauty of the Earth and of course I cried because I love that song. It always feels like if there is a God then he is speaking when I hear that song, plus the choir sang it so beautifully! The priest did some kind of special blessing and I got holy water on me and it was the first time that had happened.

Mum helped me with some study and left just after 3pm. I kept studying on and off until about 10 and then stopped.

I took a break in my studying at one point and started to read. I was reading Phyllis Currot and at one point had this strange image. I saw myself standing alone, lost and then after a minute these people on either side of me appeared but I didn’t know which way to turn and I felt really scared and alone.

I feel like that. Wicca is one group of people, the church is the other and I have no friends to help me work out which way to go.

I’ve just eaten ice cream and too much icing sugar so now as well as feeling alone and lost I feel useless and undisciplined as well. Crap I wish I knew how to fix things. Why can’t I just get work, make money, date, eat right, exercise, work out which bloody direction I want to go in spiritually.

Bed. It’s late and if I’m awake much longer I’ll have something else to feel useless about.

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Give me your thoughts - Do you ever feel lost? Do you ever feel totally alone?

Friends & Gossip Girl

I've been thinking a lot today. It's Friday and tomorrow Mum is coming to visit for a night. I've spend the last two days watching Gossip Girl. It's a strange series with characters whom I doubt exist in real life...however having said that I wish more than anything that I had friends with whom I was that close. Right toward the end (and don't worry I won't give away the ending) one of the girls has a secret. A secret she has been carrying for a long time and what made me Jealous was the fact that she could go to her friends, tell them, trust them and know they wouldn't betray her.

I don't have that. I have friends. I even have more friends this year than I did last year however none of them are that close. I used to have two friends whom I trusted however one has moved away and the other now has a partner. I feel abandoned. Not that I begrudge them their happiness but I miss them. I don't trust easily so it's difficult to watch very good friends, like in Gossip Girl, and not be jealous.

I hope/wish/long/pray for some friends whom I can tell anything to. Without siblings, grandparents and close friends it's easy to feel alone and abandoned. I wish I could find one or two people who I connected with. I believe in soul friends. People who you just click with and feel comfortable with. But I over-think and each time I think I may have met one I am disappointed. Then I remember being about 10 or so and my best friend in the whole world telling me very seriously that she didn't want to be friends anymore. I don't think she ever gave me a reason but I was devastated. I still see her occasionally but our connection has gone.

On a lighter note I quite enjoyed Gossip Girl and at some point, perhaps after my exams and assignments are done, I'll start season 2.

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Give me your thoughts - Do you long for someone you can trust, that soul friend? Do you find it difficult to trust people?

Crappy Day - Meltdown

Had a meltdown today. I was supposed to hand in an essay and when I got to class no one was there, only about 5 of 25, so the teacher says 'don't worry, hand it in next week'. I could have killed her! Ok so not literally but I was pretty mad because I'd just about killed myself getting it in on time and I was furious that the students who had been organised and committed enough to get it there on time were just ignored.

So after my class had finally finished I tried to go to my Catholic study group, was late, out of petrol and then went the wrong way. Finally I burst in to tears and wound up sitting in my car for an hour on the phone to my Mum who, thankfully, was home and not doing anything vital. I missed my study group but it was just too much to get there this week, even if I do enjoy it.

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Give me your thoughts - Does anyone else have days like that? Just days which don't look awful but feel awful? Do you wind up in tears and on the phone to (hopefully) a sympathetic person?