Meanwhile, In Florida…

…it’s freaking hot.

1. The heatwave and humidity has brought the heat index to over 110 degrees for the better part of a week. It’s been between 85-90 degrees at night.
2. My car has no A/C. I haven’t been going anywhere.
3. My iPod Touch’s speaker blew, so I sent it to Apple for a free replacement.
4. I’m finishing a paper on peacebuilding in Bosnia for my Conflict in the Balkans class with Dr. Metcalf. She’s leading a study abroad group to Dubrovnik, Croatia right now (envy!), so she gave us an extra week to turn this paper in. Just when I thought my opinion of her couldn’t go higher.
5. I’m struggling to get my loan paperwork in for my own study abroad trip this fall/spring. Direct Loans is taking their sweet time getting me the loan packet, FSU’s taking their sweet time figuring out when they’re even going to fool with fall loans, and I’ve got seven weeks before I need to get on a plane—if a miracle occurs, and this works out.
6. I love Tallahassee in some ways, it’s a beautiful place (see above pic), but sometimes I feel like it’s an oasis of questionable quality in the middle of an angry desert. It’s very difficult to meet people here who are doing anything with their lives at all, or who care about anything besides scoring a mediocre job in middle management somewhere. It feels hard to be myself—I’m not fit and hot like the South Florida cuties who come up for school here, all of whom are 10-12 years younger than me; but I don’t fit in with the older people either, who have settled into somewhat run-of-the-mill lives, and look on my passion and enthusiasm as a sign of my immaturity and need to “settle down”. It’s making me hate the South, my lifelong home.
7. I guess I’m just feeling smushed right now. Like a lot of my energy goes towards just not letting my spark get blown out…let alone towards building that spark and putting it to good use. I want to be doing that right now. I’m at the age where that’s what I ought to be doing—putting my ambitions and dreams into play. Instead, I’m constantly wrapped up in defending that spark from people who seem hell-bent on extinguishing it.
8. But I still live in a free country. I can go to sleep at night, safe in the knowledge that I won’t get dragged out of bed and beaten. There is darkness in my life. I have serious opponents right now. But I also have a fair chance to defeat them, and get on with the life I was meant to live all along. My life might be more difficult than some people I personally know…but in the grand picture, it’s damn easy.

photo uploaded to Flickr by the catalyst…

Related Posts

• Pensacola Beach is Covered in Oil
  As many commentators have pointed out in the past two months since the Deepwater Horizon fiasco began, this oil spill is both a terribly physical object lesson, and an almost limitless metaphor. I...
• Fourth of July
  "Some people complicate their lives "Others keep it simple "And that's a little bit closer to the truth "That we all see..." -"Free", Mofro...
• Just what we need…more rain.
  Spring's been a bit vicious here the past few years. In '07, we had a serious drought that let to some awful wildfires in southern Georgia, and then a tornado in Tallahassee. Last year was relativ...