I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning. I think I’ve been saying that for awhile now, but I am doing it. Really. I figured I couldn’t really clean and organize the spare room until I had made "spare" room elsewhere, so I started working on the bookshelves in the office. I’ve been doing it for about 3 days now. It’s weird how a bunch of shelves with stuff neatly piled in them, or haphazardly stashed in this case, can conceal just how much junk is really piling up. I’ve been tossing all kinds of stuff. I was able to move some books from the spare room into the freshly organized shelves in the office. In the spare room I found all the binders from all the research studies I’ve ever worked on. Wow. I also found all the papers I wrote in college and my GRE scores, which I thought I’d left in Seattle somewhere.

I looked over the old papers and cringed at how horrible many of them are. They are all so short too, with bigass fonts and double-spaced lines. Couldn’t I write enough? These days I have to cut pages just to make the length reasonable. I don’t know. Obviously, my writing improved. I think writing daily like this has helped considerably. Days like today, when I really don’t feel like writing but am doing it anyway, I can feel that the words aren’t coming. Other days, things flow and the only problem is that I can’t type fast enough to keep up with the momentum. I guess I’d call times like that "my voice." The thing about writing every day - I guess - is that now I can tell when I’m on and when I’m off in more subtle ways and without losing confidence in my ability to bounce back. I know there’ll be a better day down the road; I just gotta hope it comes before any kind of deadline. Of course, there are no such things as deadlines in my life right now, as far as writing is concerned, so I’m pretty much stress-free. This has been well documented, yes?

I was happy to find my GRE scores, though not so happy to know what they are again. I thought I was going to have to send away to that blasted big brother-type agency and I’m glad I don’t have to. What can I say? I’m way average. Average doesn’t cut it, you know? I mean, the schools I dream about going to want a 600 average between verbal and quantitative. Yeah right. As if. Mine is like 550. Pff. (I got 680 on analytical, but I heard that doesn’t count.) So should I re-take it? I’m thinking about it. Not looking forward to studying again for that useless piece of expensive crap. I did well on the psych subject test, which is cool; but not all schools look at that and anyway, it’s never weighted as heavily.

Earlier, just after looking at the scores, I was thinking I really should take it again and I should really study really, really hard and get above 600 on the v’s and q’s. Then I could go to school anywhere. Really, I could. I’ve done a lot of extra crap above and beyond my degree, I think kickass GRE scores would pretty much mean near total access. I was thinking about how I want to go to a school with prestige and get a degree that carries status so that I can use those tools to implement change. In the end, I’d like to be able to influence things like public policy and I think that the right title from the right school will make it that much easier.

Hubris?

Maybe.

Maybe it’s just pragmatic.

Basically, I’ll take what I can get.

I read three papers today. My head hurt afterward and I felt kind of ill. All of these papers are written by people and about people in Asian countries where all the names are really difficult to read and pronounce, much less edit for correctness. It all just makes me nuts after awhile looking at all those foreign phrases italicized and all those names I don’t know. That’s why I don’t feel like writing now.

On the way to the bus from the center, and in a daze, I noticed that I was almost hit by a police car driving on the sidewalk. I thought to myself that it might be kind of cool to come home and write in my journal that I’d been hit by a car, and not just any car but a Hyundai Accent prowler. I was still fantasizing about what I would write when the very same police car shifted into reverse and promptly backed into a craggy curb, puncturing the left back tire with a loud POP! SSSSS! Scared the shit outta me, man. It was a fine example of the police force in action: A man in blue, scratching his head and staring at the tire. "How’d that happen?" he seemed to be thinking. Passerby giggled and pointed: That’ll learn ya to drive down a crowded sidewalk.