Mind don't move.

I figured it was about time I wrote something. Just haven't been in the mood. Kinda low, lately, you know? I went on a little road trip manic spree, preceded by large birthday extravaganza. Coming down now.

I'm reading a lot. Haven't been reading as much as I want to. Been working on Bill Bryson for about six months now...but learning A Short History of Nearly Everything is overwhelming. I mean, it's nearly everything in one book. A lot is covered, believe me, and it's like, I can read about a chapter a week, if that, because of grad school and all. And what with all my back issues of National Geographic and The Nation, since I've been ignoring them since like August...fucking Myspace. Cuts into my reading time.

Worst part about it: I'm getting slower. Stagnant. Can't remember things. Starting to sit around and feel sorry for myself. Happens when mind don't move.

Jealousy is coming back. Jealousy of friends, of family, of their successes and relationships. Badness. Need to crowd that out, because jealousy leads to paranoia and self-doubt and meanness. So there I was, thinking I was all unimportant and expendable and I stopped calling my friends and relations because I feel irrelevant (when in reality it's not true, and although I know that now, I'm only in the jealousy phase.) But once you start feeling irrelevant it most definitely is true, and it's pretty much impossible drag relevance back into your life in under five months.

And those five months are horrid and so not worth it. Because in that five months, not only are you depressed, but your brain is not properly functioning because it's so crowded with lack of literature* and self-loathing that you take it out on those closest to you and are just all-around mean, and then you lose friends.

So basically, I just need to prevent the feeling of irrelevance. I can do this by reading and taking my mind off of feeling sorry for myself. Therefore, I can only conclude that it's time to start reading again.

The problem with reading, of course, is that I'm going to start getting all political and angry again, because I always try to read things that are historically heavy so I can appear knowledgeable and brilliant. Like when I went on my Muckrakers kick in the summer of 2004 before the election: how annoying was that? I fucking sucked. And anyone who has met Political Angry Rassles doesn't enjoy her company. Because she starts arguments and is definitely a self-righteous elitist.

I need to find my way back to Enjoyable Chill Rassles, if she ever existed. I think it's about time for The Seventeenth Annual Re-Reading of Winnie the Pooh**, because it's my favorite, immediately followed by a lengthy PG-Wodehouse-a-thon, because I need some clever British light-heartedness.

*when I say "crowded" I mean, your head is full of the absense of rational thought. Anti-thought, we'll call it. All of the thought you can conjure up is so skewed by your insignificance to the rest of the world that rationality is pretty much impossible. Hence, anti-thought and self-loathing. If that makes any sense, which I doubt. In my head it works beautifully.

**Re-readings are always fantastic because you know what to expect yet you're on edge anyway, and always enthralled by the words. And then you read sentences that you forgot were ever there but you remember you loved them every other time you read them. All throughout a re-reading there are two essentials: (1) a book that you have previously read and loved, and (2) hot chocolate. If you do not currently have an annual re-reading, I suggest you find one. Preferably a book you loved when you were eight. Chances are you still love it.

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