Happy Birthday Ellen

This time last year what was I doing?

I was flipping out over an essay on John Rawls and his...something I can't remember but it was supposed to be a great tool for making decisions. The veil of unconsciousness (?): basically an alternate world where we cannot know how large our own noses are and therefore we would not pick a law or rule that would favor those with large noses because what if we didn't have large noses ourselves? That wouldn't be fair.

I would read through that essay but I'm petrified of confronting it. It's much easier to read through old blog posts. But easy isn't really the word for it. It's almost masochistic.

This time last year I think I was sitting in the HMC library telling myself that I would never go to graduate school and that I had no discipline for academia.

I was also anxiously waiting to go to Ellen's birthday party to meet everyone else. I got a taxi there with Olivia and we were super early. Way early. And I wore a jacket I wasn't comfortable in. It was an all around uncomfortable event that probably wouldn't have been if I wasn't already desperately behind in my work.

Ellen, bless her heart, invited me to her birthday party again this year. It was a little cruel but really the nicest gesture. It might have brought me as much pleasure as the first time she invited me but in a different way. Then I was elated that someone was reaching out to me for sheer kindness. That my social life was about to get enriched. Now it's a flood of sad warmth. A fond memory of awkwardly drinking a beer in a jacket I didn't feel confident in and someone striking up a conversation with an American pop culture reference that I understood. Bless James Kanimba's heart, too. I had finally started to feel comfortable when it was about time for me and Olivia to leave; she had work, too. Plus I'd promised that if she paid for the cab there I'd pay for the cab back.

Well all week I've been in this mind set. I feel a little distant from the University of Indianapolis sometimes. From the student body. From the classes and residence halls. But I think I've started to find my place here again.

And I'm still a terrible academic. Here I've spent twenty minutes writing in a blog I haven't touched since July 28th, 2009 and I've got an essay due in three hours and an honors project that needs much attention. It's good and well and coming together and it's not as terrible as I had anticipated but it requires time, which I'm good at whittling away with little conversations and cups of coffee and reading through old notebooks about Western Europe.

I don't even have all my books for class yet and it's been a week.