Matthew Harris' Journal
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Matthew Harris' LiveJournal:
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| Friday, May 24th, 2013 | | 7:17 pm |
| | 2:09 am |
I looked in the mirror today
Well, doesn't that sound symbolic! But literally. I looked in the mirror today at work, toweling myself off after my bike ride, and thought about how I was doing that...four short months ago. What would I say to my January self? | | Thursday, May 23rd, 2013 | | 1:33 am |
Learning about time and space
If you've been reading for a while, or if you've talked to me in real life, you might have noticed that I tend to rhapsodize about certain places and times in my life. Being eight years old and spending my afternoons at the Battle Ground Library reading books on dinosaurs. Being 14 and walking around Lake Oswego. I could draw a map of associations. And one of the reasons why these places, and the experiences that went with them, were so important to me, was because they were my first experiences of so many things. I was learning about the world as a whole. Which is why my memories of, say, being 15 and going to the Lake Oswego library and reading the thick volumes of Contemporary Literary Criticism were so amazing. And why none of the memories being formed now seem to touch me beyond the surface. For someone raised here, I am sure that many of the places I pass have immense meaning. For me, they are just painted on scenery. | | Monday, May 20th, 2013 | | 3:36 am |
| | Saturday, May 18th, 2013 | | 1:06 am |
I also dreamed about The Doctor
I dreamed about The Doctor. And we found out what his name was, but then he said it was "our name". His name was the password to the TARDIS, but it belonged with everyone who ever traveled with him. ...it made a lot of sense at the time. | | Thursday, May 16th, 2013 | | 6:18 pm |
Welcome back
Another LJ outtage. Another day in an empty classroom. 17 minutes in and no students. Guess I will wait another 13. And look at my Uline catalog.
Posted via m.livejournal.com.
| | Tuesday, May 14th, 2013 | | 1:41 pm |
Why punching my card is a good thing:
I said two entries ago that sometime I feel like I am just punching my card. Things aren't always exciting and meaningful to me, but I feel I should do them. Here I am in Brookings without much money, and not much to do, but I feel I have a need to put in an effort. ...even it I do feel like it is just punching my card, I feel an actual obligation, a duty, to do various things. And weirdly enough, the thing about suicide is...I have a to-do list that must be done! I have been to 34 of Oregon's counties, but I want to get to 36. I am only up to the second doctor! Only on Book II of the Dark Tower! I have a list of countries to get mail from! And, I could never die with unanswered mail! So its the idea that I have to keep doing these things, even when I don't enjoy them, that keeps me sane. | | Saturday, May 11th, 2013 | | 2:52 am |
Sometimes I feel like I am punching my card, but still:
Wednesday I took another short trip up to Gold Beach. The sunk cost fallacy is working for me: since I paid 50 dollars for that bus pass, I might as well get as much out of it as possible! It encourages me to get out and take a look around, which I might otherwise not do. Not that there is too much for me to see in Gold Beach that I haven't seen already. Two trips in a week (and once more, passing through on the way to Port Orford) is about as much Gold Beach as anyone needs, at least for a while. Today I bicycled up to the Winchuck River Campground, which is where the paved road ends on the Winchuck and which as far as I have been. So getting pretty active! Although, and I was going to say more about this, I sometimes feel that I am just punching my card when I am doing these things. Doing what I expect myself to do, because visiting and seeing and all that is...what to do. But it doesn't really excite me. More on this later. | | Tuesday, May 7th, 2013 | | 2:53 pm |
Vanishing points in life
I think for most people, life has a "Vanishing Point". Just like "Vanishing Points" in art, its where we imagine the various lines of things that we do to be going. We have these disparate plans that seem to be unrelated, but when we follow them all the way to their end, we see that they converge on something. And just like "Vanishing Points" in art, the vanishing point of our life isn't really there. Its something that things go towards, but that we never see. I have a lot of projects up in the air. Always. Bicycle rides, mail, reading books, riding the bus...all these disparate things in my mind draw together, towards a point. A rather vague point. To be honest, the vanishing point of all my life has been female approval. Maybe of the romantic variety, and maybe not. I think that I became interested in women much younger than most boys: I kind of defined myself by my crushes even in elementary school. As a teenager, this narrative was in overdrive, both because teenagers and romance, duh, but also because I was pretty narrative-crazy as a teenager. A lot of this was painted by tales of men who ENDURED and PERSEVERED and "won" women. I would be Aragorn, reuniting lost kingdoms and winning Arwen! I could say a lot more about this. But for brevity's sake, I will say that that vanishing point is still there. Even though I know it is not "real", there is still a part of me that kind of uses it to put perspective into things. "This week I posted pictures of myself at Port Orford Head and posted a picture of Dracula holding a bottle of Demerol to Something Awful's Photoshop thread! Somewhere a theoretical woman sees this as a step to me reuniting Gondor and Eriador!" | | 2:51 am |
Intractable headache
I did get my dental work done today I also had an intractable headache that I deal with with lots and lots of caffeine. Which leads to me being up late. Staring at the internet. Getting eyestrain. And getting another headache tomorrow. | | Sunday, May 5th, 2013 | | 3:24 pm |
May is the coolest month
Well, not literally. Thing I learned about Brookings: it gets hot here early. It was 90 degrees here for a few days, which is pretty hot for the beginning of May. Especially hot in my apartment, and stays hot until late, which makes it hard to sleep. Etcetera. But after an April where I didn't know what to do, I got a bus pass and decided to go out and see things. Friday, I went to Port Orford (50 miles away), and visited the Coast Guard Museum there. Yesterday a woman I met on okcupid and I went tide pooling together. The thing about the bus pass is, if I have it, I feel obligated to use it. I let the sunk cost fallacy work for me, and get out of my apartment even on days when I don't really feel like it. Hopefully May will be a month where I go lots of places. In longer term, I am still thinking about my job search, but haven't really gotten down to brass tacks yet. My own job continues to go on...slowly. I have had attendance between 1 and 3 students at my class this term. 3 students does not make a sustainable class. And...tomorrow I get the last of my dental work done, bringing that chapter to a close. After 2 1/2 months. | | Thursday, May 2nd, 2013 | | 4:46 pm |
After being on Livejournal since 2002:
Since being on LJ since 2002, I have to say that the time between December and now is the time when I have used it most regularly. And the most eloquently. When I look back to even a year or so ago, my posts were mostly "didn't sleep well, went on a bike ride". Now it takes me three paragraphs to say the same thing! Its like the last five months have been a journey of self-discovery and self-description. And even with the greatly reduced amount of users that we have, I've also had a lot of great feedback. There is a pretty good reason I have been doing this. Because I am bored. Bored and lonely. I try to do things to remind myself that I still have options. I go places. I see things. I read books and write letters and teach my class. But basically: BORED. AND. LONELY. What it comes down to is, the discussions I have here are the most meaningful communion with other people I have. And yeah, that last paragraph was a way to GUILT TRIP you into RESPONDING. | | Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 | | 2:46 pm |
Going to Gold Beach
This is going to be my first trip to Gold Beach since February and the furthest I've been from Brookings since March. Of course I will only be there an hour.
Posted via m.livejournal.com.
| | Saturday, April 27th, 2013 | | 4:55 pm |
So I decided to have a better idea:
I decided that instead of wallowing in being a shut in, I would just get on my (now functional) bicycle and RIDE. I went to Smith River and back today, about a 25-30 mile ride, which is enough to get me into the flow. The biggest obstacle in me riding isn't fatigue, its fear of my bicycle breaking. Or else having very inclement weather, etc. If my bicycle breaks 15 miles out, that equals 4 hours of walking. But I guess that is not the worst thing ever: I could have walked four hours today, came home while it is still light, and still have time to fuck around on the internet.  | | Friday, April 26th, 2013 | | 1:44 am |
My mental audience:
Pretty much everyone does this, right? You imagine yourself doing, saying, or just generally BEING witty or cool, and of course you have to have certain people, in certain situations, to witness you being cool. I do this. I do this quite a bit. Its been even more of a thing since I've been here, in a situation where I haven't had much "real" contact. I just play scenarios over and over again in my mind, of idealized situations where I have a group of people, people who are very specific to me, and who've worked into having a role in my head that doesn't really make sense as far as their actual role in my life. ...everyone does this, right? And also scenarios where I regale people with my wide knowledge of Doctor Who and Homestuck are almost definitionally stdh.txt, right? | | Thursday, April 25th, 2013 | | 2:41 pm |
I had this new plan, but it might be a terrible plan
I had this new plan, but it might be a terrible plan. I have decided that since there are now so very little demands on my time, there is no reason to keep to a 24 hour schedule. And that if I want to, I can stay up until 7 AM and then sleep on and off for most of a day. Sometimes its only after I've left the day far behind me that I start to feel creative. I don't know if this plan is working yet. Lots of things aren't working here. | | Monday, April 22nd, 2013 | | 7:27 pm |
Things I managed to do today:
Things I managed to do today: Get up at 11 AM, read for a while, fix breakfast, eat lunch at Dairy Queen, go to the library, go to the bike shop, mail letters, pick up my mail, go to the beach, go to the Dollar Tree, come home and it is only 3 PM. Watch some Wesnoth Go grocery shopping. Meditate. Watch more Wesnoth while reading Jimmy Carter's memoirs. Its only 7:30 PM I need a longer To-Do list. | | Friday, April 19th, 2013 | | 9:17 pm |
My teeth are hurting less and I am going to make PLANS at some point
My teeth are hurting me less now, although I was woken up at 3 AM by pain and had trouble getting back to sleep. I have perhaps mentioned how my life in Brookings in the spring has become rather escapist, and that apart from working 6 hour weeks, all I do is...INTERNET FOREVER. Which might seem escapist, but the thing is, I still try to do things that I think SHOULD feel meaningful and interesting. Today I bicycled down to McVay Rock State Park and walked amongst the tide pools. And...nothing. I mean, it was mildly interesting, it was nice to get out. But compared to the feeling that exploring the Bitterroot National Forest gave me, the feeling of...reality...its like this is a theme park. I do go places and do things here, but I just don't feel any connection to it. Whatever work I am meant to do, it isn't here. So I have to figure out what my work is. And where my work is. | | Thursday, April 18th, 2013 | | 10:29 pm |
succinctly:
I am in pain and very tired. ...luckily, that means things have only direction to go. Upwards. | | Wednesday, April 17th, 2013 | | 1:07 pm |
Now it is off to the dentist
Now it is off to the dentist for an operation called a "Build Up" that I am not even sure what it is, besides its something I need before the crowning, which is in...a week or so? And between the two of them they are 1200 dollars. Myeh. |
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