Then I remember a night, shortly before finals in my college sophomore fall, I happened to see him at a gas station near my college. We exchanged stories of how he was taking dual enrollment classes (he was two years behind me) and I was getting ready to transfer to UCF. Those pleasantries.

He then mentioned how his older brother and his wife had a son. “Another one?” I asked. No, my ex was talking about his brother’s first son (though they’d since had a second).

The one he and I, along with his parents, drove seven and a half hours for so the family would be there for the birth. (Why I was included to this day eludes me.)

I reminded him of this. Turns out he completely forgot I was there.

If he didn’t remember me at such an important point in his life, I seriously doubt he’d remember me now.

But I think I accomplished enough to make someone happy. (Not me; I’m never happy with anything I do.) The sum total of my accomplishments can be summed up with this: “This is where I am right now.”

It’s something my dad told me to keep reminding myself when I get a bout of the depressive crazies over whether I’m doing the right thing right now, or when I doubt everything I’ve ever done, or discount a lot more than last summer’s swimsuits. Nothing is permanent; we’re fluid creatures on a fluid continuum, like the gas bands on Jupiter. We drift through a changing world and hopefully we change with it. (Example: I heard the Great Red Spot doesn’t exist anymore! What the hell, man?)

I’ve been feeling pretty punk about my lack of artistic endeavor lately. So when a friend had a similar problem, I gave her advice I should probably listen to (because, weirdly, I have some pretty good ideas): Art reflects the artist’s “now”, where she is in her life at this moment. Therefore, she must evaluate herself and her life to understand the direction her art needs to go in. And do it.

Here are some things I discovered about my “now”:

• I’ve come to terms with and accepted my social anxiety. (How to correct it, or if I even want to, is the new mystery.)
• I may or may not still be depressed, but I’m not as bad as I was in high school (always a plus).
• My writing is my focus right now, though I still love photography and graphics/drawing.
• Saying of photography, historical buildings are my current muse.
• I’m a “realistically optimistic cynic”: If it looks good, it probably will be, but I still have my doubts.
• …and all of that is okay, because things internal and external can and will change, for good and bad, and so long as I can roll with it, it’ll be okay. But I still have my doubts.

Ultimately, who I was in undergrad has combined with who I was in high school (the more tolerable extreme) to make the person I am now. And she’s pretty cool, I suppose, if you can get past her self-deprecation and her dark humor. But I don’t think she’s gonna change anytime soon. With grad school around the corner, I don’t think she’ll have time for anything.

And it’s this: Love is History.

I don’t mean it in the sense that I’ve given up on love. I haven’t. Really! (Yet.) The only thing I’ve given up on as a result of this trip was my ability to stick with the promise of not eating crap while on vacation. No, it’s a simple statement that finally, after all this time, may just tie my art and my studies together in a perfect little package.

Lately I’ve been in a funk where nothing has been inspiring me or giving me any meaning. I don’t mean I was looking for something life-changing or to totally change my outlook forever. It’s more like my battery had stalled and I was waiting for ALA (American Life Association) to come by and give it a jump-start. I mean, I pay top dollar for this membership; the least they can do every so often is be on time and jump-start my damn…

Um, sorry about that.

I know from previous experience that I tend to do most of my creative work either during or when I return from a vacation. I really try my damn-dest to get inspired here but it never clicks (excuse that photography pun; it’s totally unintentional). Save for me maybe not trying as hard as I should/could, I’ve been questioning myself too much, questioning my decisions that normally I felt really confident about or consider the best move. And I hate questioning myself because I tend to bring up alternatives that I can’t necessarily act on immediately, which depresses me further.

I brought along my good camera (Canon EOS 40D) and tried taking pictures of St. George St., St. Augustine’s “historic” shopping district (I highly doubt they had a Birkenstock store near the Oldest Schoolhouse way back when, but I’m probably splitting hairs), and save for some decent shots in the morning – before the tourists woke up and tourist-ed up the joint – I still wasn’t feeling inspired. I went to the Lightner Museum downtown, which was beautiful but I didn’t really get inspired to take any shots until after I left – and by that time, the tourists had come out of hiding, so that was out. (Looking back I really wish I had stayed around and took some shots, but that’s what “next time” is for.)

By the time I got to the Castillo de San Marcos, the old fort I’d wanted to visit since I was a kid, I’d finally been bitten by the “inspiration” bug and was taking gorgeous pictures left and right. That’s when I felt energized, when I felt like I could stay out far longer than I did taking more pictures. And the best part? Save for some debris on my lens that can be easily Photoshopped out, I succeeded. I didn’t take the precise shot I had dreamed of – the architecture wasn’t what I thought – but I got even better ones.

Later that night, at the hotel, as I was watching “The Office”, I was hit again by the Inspiration Train: A story idea that took place in St. Augustine, a “roncom” and a departure from what I normally write. But it was a story idea. I hadn’t got a new idea for a story since I started writing aimlessly just to “see what happens”. I’m going to get started on that after I finish this.

On the one hand, you can’t wait for inspiration to hit you – sometimes you have to scream at it, kick and punch it, and do whatever it takes to get it fired up. But on the other, I hate that idea. When I walked down St. George St., I didn’t feel as inspired as I did when I was at the Castillo. I tried to force inspiration beyond what little I did get, but I didn’t feeling anything…and I hated myself for goading a miracle that may not have happened on its own. It almost felt greedy.

But at the Castillo, I discovered my niche: historical photography. Not so much documentation or preservation but for artistic purposes. I saw photographs at an antique store near the Lightner Museum that both inspired and challenged me, the feeling where I love the shot but know I could do the exact same thing if I were there. And sure enough, when I was at the Castillo, I did. Maybe because I’m not finding the type of history I’m looking for in my town (founded in 196x), the type that looks regal, worn down, and intimidating.

I’m not out to make these historical buildings and places look “as they were” or some other sort of artsy-fartsy horseshit. Most of the time, my pictures reflect the first time I see these buildings. It’s my way of saying, “Look at the way the light comes in through this window! See how that cannon is positioned to the city – isn’t this cool?” And I’d love it if you agree with me.

I’m not sure if there’s any sort of job out there where I can spend most, if not all, my time traveling to different places and writing about my adventures or taking pictures. Aside from travel journalist, that is. Even if I’m not getting paid to write or shoot or do anything aside from stand still and look pretty, the life on the road is the one for me. The road is where my inspiration comes from, the world beyond my city limits. Regardless of whether it’s the nation’s oldest European-settled city or the LED lights in Time Square, if it’s not something I’ve seen before, I want to see it. And I want to share it with you.

Take my writing, for example. The earliest I can remember writing anything was in first grade, when my story about two cats discovering a flower won a Young Author’s award. And I’ve been writing on and off ever since.

As for history, my grandmother, my mother, and I took a trip to St. Augustine when I was six or so. I don’t remember a whole heck of a lot, sadly. But what has stuck with me was how upset I was that we didn’t see the two Spanish forts, the Castillo de San Marcos and Fort Matanzas. What six-year-old girl remembers being cheated out of visiting two old forts? It’s a nerd grudge!

Technology, though, is another story. On my first trip to Boston, where I was maybe nine or ten, our tour guide pointed out MIT and said that was where many astronauts had come from. I distinctly remember thinking, “I want to be an astronaut. So that’s where I have to go to college.” And from fourth to ninth grade, that was all I wanted. It’s probably the closest I’ve ever come to knowing exactly what I wanted to do with my life.

But then I got to high school. My grades, particularly my math and science grades, began to fall. So I gave up that dream because I thought I sucked at math, and from then on I’ve drifted down career paths with nothing as definitive as “I will go to MIT and I will be an astronaut”. It’s depressing and disappointing at the same time.

When I got to college, I told a friend (a math major) that story. He said, “Maybe it’s not that you’re bad at math; maybe you just had bad teachers.” The truth is, I may be slow to solve math problems harder than 11 x 9 (and boy does Mom, a math person, love teasing me about that), I’m not horrible in math. I wonder, if I applied myself, if I’d be working for NASA instead of contemplating popular culture in modern America.

The problem with having multiple interests and multiple things you’re “good” at is you never know which thing to ultimately pursue. Society seems to place more emphasis on choosing one skill over another, but in an era of convergence, I think it’s time to bring as many talents as we can forward, fling everything we can at the nearest wall, see what results from the mix, and build from there. Let’s see the MIT nerds do that. In space.

I currently have seven piercings: three in each ear and one in my navel. And I certainly want more – nothing more radical than a nose piercing, mind you. At most, maybe I’ll get an eyebrow done. I’m not exactly “punk;” I probably fall somewhere between preppy and artsy. But I won’t lie and say the “punk” style doesn’t appeal to me. It certainly does. As a history major very fascinated with modern American culture, in all that statement’s murky glory, why wouldn’t I be?

I picture myself getting a job at some alternative newspaper or magazine as an editor/writer or at a contemporary art museum, like Detroit’s MOCAD or Boston’s ICA. Some place where, theoretically, I could get away with a nose piercing and not be judged negatively for it. With my master’s degree and (maybe) a PhD, you can’t say I’m stupid because I have a microscopic rock in my nose. That’s pure, unadulterated bullshit and should be illegal (although, if we did criminalize pure bullshit, Congress would shut down).

But the truth is, it won’t matter if I write the Greatest Thesis on Earth or produce the Greatest Novel Ever or take the Most Spectacular Photos you’d ever seen. If I have a piece of metal sticking out of my skin where it logically shouldn’t, or if I have a tattoo in a place that’s too “conspicuous”, people may view me as trash. Yet when I used to substitute, I’d see office workers with more ear piercings than I. If they can do it, why can’t I? Oh, right: Because I’m young and stupid and they’re older and have the benefit of “years of experience”.

(On that note, I’d also like to know why some of these school office workers wear things I’d only wear if I were going to a club. No adult wore such tight, revealing outfits when I was in school. Unless I’m repressing that memory.)

The biggest argument against both is the job aspect. Though I do think it’s pure BS, I gotsta work, and if either may stop me from getting work, it ain’t worth it. Those alternative rags, or those art museums? They may not be hiring. Then what? I see people with body mods at the places I frequent. But do I see myself working at Subway, or Starbucks, or the Apple Store? Well, save for the last one, no. And what if I want to get into acting? Tattoos may rule out a lot of roles unless I become skilled with Dermablend (or become Angelina Jolie, whichever happens first). Piercings won’t help, either.

When you get down to it, I am an artist. Whether it’s my writing, my drawings, or my photography, that is who I am. If I can work in an environment that’s conducive to that, all the better. If my choices include piercings (which I still want) and a couple tattoos (which I’m still considering), I don’t want to be written off as someone who isn’t intelligent, who didn’t bust her ass to get through graduate school, who isn’t creative, and who isn’t a valuable person. I am an artist, an academic, and I want to be accepted as that, no matter where I work, what degrees I get, or how big the hunk of cubic zirconia is in my nose. I won’t embarrass you with my appearance (there are worse people, I assure you).

My personality, though, is a completely different story.

The other day I was talking with someone via Facebook chat, and this normally talkative person…wasn’t. I was searching my brain for things to say, and as I searched and got more uncomfortable with his silence, I came to a conclusion.

I read a great quote, I believe from Plato: “Wise men talk when they have something to say; fools talk when they have to say something.” I guess if I had to pin down the one thing I believe in, that’d be it. I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember: if I have nothing to say, I won’t say anything. I’ve lost track of times people have commented on my silence or just flat out told me to say anything. Okay. So I do and I’m met with a bunch of questioning looks. And I clam up again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Maybe it’s because of my introversion, but I very, very rarely start conversations with people for no reason (unless I know the person very well). The strange part? I teach and I also love acting; I have no qualms getting up in front of a group and, if need be, falling on my ass to make a point. But take me off the stage and out of the classroom, put me in a party, and watch me clam up and spend my time eating hors d’oeuvres at the buffet table. You’ll have to approach me first to make me talk (even if it’s to tell me to lay off the cheese cubes).

Ever worse is when I manage to turn the conversation back to myself. It makes me sound conceited, which I’m not (don’t let the blog fool you). I’d much rather split the difference (you talk about yourself, I talk about me) than to hear myself go on about how I’m thinking of getting my Ph.D. in the field of Sub-Atomic Bullshit at the University of East Jebus Nowhere (south of Kalamazoo, MI). So I clam up and wait for you to say something or find an excuse to end the conversation.

Oh! Another thing: If I see someone I know in public, unless it’s someone I know very well, I pretend I don’t see them and walk past. Again, it has to do with my aversion to small talk, not that I dislike that person. Obviously I will stop and say hello if they say something – I’m not a complete bitch. But the truth is, as cliched as it is, it’s not them…it’s absolutely me. Sometimes I will literally go out of my way and hide from this person so they won’t see me. Bizarre, I know.

My therapist said I should probably work on this, and I’m inclined to agree with her. But when I hear some of the people I look up to are the exact same way I am, I don’t care so much. I sometimes wish I could meet all those famous people who are successful in light of their shyness, but I can’t imagine that party. The crickets would die of exhaustion.

Maybe I do have social anxiety, and if you see me in public I apologize for my asinine behavior in advance – it’s in writing, it’s on the web, so you can’t hold it against me. I don’t mean to offend or concern, really! I really am a funny person (verified in a few states and a number of small protectorates) and am nice once you get to know me. Just don’t expect it to happen on day one.

It sounds a lot colder than it’s meant to be, but the truth really is that simple: I have too many friends on Facebook that I don’t care that much for. Maybe it’s because I thought it’d be cool to reconnect with someone I haven’t spoken to in years. Or maybe it’s because I can’t let go of a person I barely spent five minutes talking to in real life.

I think the explanation is a combination of two reasons. The first is that I’m a collector. Not anything in particular (save my Sailor Moon collection), but random little bits and pieces I can’t bring myself to part with. I’ve always been this way; my mom can tell you how my room would look like a bomb went off before a category 5 hurricane blew through, spawned tornadoes, and triggered mass looting. I’d come home from school and be greeted by an army of stout, black bags on the curb waiting for the garbage truck. It annoyed the hell out of me, but my room looked pretty, so everything was okay! (For about a month.)

Thankfully I’ve gotten out of that phase, but I still have a ton of stuff I can’t bear to part with (it’s just hidden now). Common reasons include: “I may need that later.” “That’s from (event/person); I can’t get rid of that!” and the all-purpose, vague-as-hell “I just…can’t.” I have a duffel bag under my bed filled with things I should get rid of. A dresser drawer filled with junk that doesn’t resemble clothing. My MacBook Pro’s box. Canvas shopping bags I never use. Et cetera.

The other reason is more guilt-ridden: I can’t bear to hurt people’s feelings. Which is laughable, since a good number of these people probably won’t realize I’ve unfriended them either because I’m also a blip on their radar.

When I first got on Facebook, I wanted as many friends as possible. If I ever knew you, even if it was back in elementary school and you barely remember me, I wanted to be friends. Now that I’m older, I’m far more selective over whom I add as friends (people from more recent times, former professors). Most of those others are “hidden” from my status feed, which seems disingenuous; if you hide what’s going on in their lives, why exactly are you friends with them in the first place?

Of course…it’s Facebook. Am I making too big a deal out of this? Not really. I’m in a new phase in my life that doesn’t necessitate having over 9000 acquaintances in my life that I don’t talk to or don’t care to check their status updates. I’m not obsessed with quantity, just quality (which I do have in spades).

Sure, there are friends on Facebook that I’d be sad to lose for whatever reason (they delete their account or they unfriend me). I’ll be upset but I’ll move on (I speak from experience). Mostly, though, I’m looking forward to the new people that’ll come into my life, the ones I’ll meet in school or on conferences or at work…wherever my life will take me next.

“Unfriending taboos” aside, as a good friend of mine once put it, “If I saw you in real life and wouldn’t stop to say hello, I’ll unfriend you.” Maybe we need to go back to when we only kept in touch – really kept in touch – with a small number of people. Being overly connected to people you barely know, for whatever reason, seems closer to a digital popularity contest than genuine friendship. I’m not sure which way society will ultimately go, but I’ll work to find a comfortable median between the two.

Since I’ve been doing this college thing for a while, I feel more than qualified to give the next generation of college students (and, hey, maybe some old salts as well) the ten best pieces of advice I learned on my journey and some things I wish I learned sooner. Some of it is silly, some is serious, and some is nonsense. If it helps one person, I’ve done my job. Either way, good luck!

In absolutely no particular order whatsoever:

1. Grades and honors aren’t everything. (Okay, I lied; this one is the most important.)
2. Read The Fucking Syllabus.
3. Respect your professors, for they are people, too.
4. Keep an open mind. Exposure to new ideas is why you came here, amirite?!
5. Intern, intern, intern. This is that “learn the real lessons out of school” crap you keep hearing about.
6. It’s okay to lose your sanity every now and then. Just remember where you put it.
7. Find and enjoy the absurdity in life, your subject, and everything.
8. Determining what time of day you function the best will save you many all-nighters and 8AM classes.
9. Take notes on your laptop (and go over them after class). Easier to read, edit, and send to the people who missed class.
10. Make lasting memories with your friends. You never know when you’ll see each other again.

It’s coming to the end of my time with my trainer, and for the most part I’ve been pleased – but not pleased enough to fork over the additional money to keep the training going. Why? Aside from being a poor graduate student and how I’ll be on the main campus four days a week come August, I have the suspicion my trainer has no idea what a vegetarian is.

I’ve only recently (read: October, 2009) switched to vegetarianism. It wasn’t because I grew outraged at the slaughterhouse practices of the industry (though that now plays a minor factor); I just outgrew the taste of most meats. Fish has never appealed to me, poultry became too bland and tasteless, and the thought of a hot ham sandwich made my stomach retch. The only meat that still tempts me every now and then is beef – I’ve always loved cheeseburgers – but I gave that up, well, cold turkey (I tried avoiding it, I really did). Even though I’ve slipped a few times (recently I had a bit of Jell-O before I remembered it has gelatin – that’s horse hooves, y’know), I’ve done pretty well.

I’m what’s known as a lacto-ovo vegetarian: I only eat dairy (cheese, mostly, but I also have ice cream, yogurt, and milk) and eggs. Everything else is veggies, fruits, grains (bread, rice), and proteins (beans, tofu, peanut butter). Some vegetarians don’t eat eggs, some don’t eat dairy, and some don’t eat either. Further down the road is veganism, which is foregoing all animal products. I may get there someday but I’m just taking one day at a time.

Suffice it to say, it’s difficult at times to eat at restaurants that serve mostly meat-based dishes. Sometimes the only option is to eat French fries (which I adore, but not as a meal in and of themselves) or a salad. Other times, when I’m shopping for frozen dinners (when I’m too lazy to cook), the only vegetarian options are pasta slathered in a cream sauce, or something coated in cheese, or beans. And as a poor graduate student, getting the “organic”, “all-natural” frozen dinners, though good, is not always feasible. Vegetarians and vegans deserve a quick, cheap, and easy meal option, too!

So, anyway, the trainer. From the get-go, I told my trainer I was a vegetarian. The diet plan this gym uses is very meat-based; apparently, one can only get protein from meats or protein powder. There’s also the “carbs” part of the diet, which I can take care of just fine on my own. My trainer emailed me two recipes that were salmon-based. Face, meet palm.

Yesterday I sat down with my trainer and hashed it out with him. I had to explicitly spell out that vegetarians, under no circumstances, eat meat. If we did, we wouldn’t be vegetarians. It irks me that some people think that, if you’re a vegetarian, you can eat fish. Never mind that a vegetarian that eats fish is technically a pescetarian, but I won’t split hairs. And there’s nothing wrong with that if that’s what you’re into. Since fish disgusts me, that’s out.

“But you eat eggs?” my trainer asked, somewhat perplexedly. “You eat aborted chickens?”

Head, meet desk.

I’ve thought of going vegan someday. Maybe after a few years as a vegetarian. Yes, I know what eggs are – we hatched chicks in fourth grade. But to put it in so blunt of terms was a bit shocking. It shocked me speechless, at least. I was under the impression that eggs were unfertilized chickens anyway, not aborted ones. Forgive the nasty, but it’s just like a woman’s period, am I right? Of course, I don’t have a degree in nutrition (like my trainer does), but I could possibly tell you the history of chicken farming if you’d like.

If a person wants to eat meat, by all means. It’s not my decision to enforce on others. After all, I’d want an omnivore to treat me with the same respect. And this may anger my fellow vegetarian brethren, but if I absolutely had no say in the matter and my life depended on it, I would eat meat to survive. But given the choice – and I do have one – I’ll stay vegetarian. I’ll stick with the Weight Watchers points diet (which gives me a little more faith in my ability to choose what types and how much food I can eat in a day – hey, it worked in the past!) and take a few classes at the gym until I go back to school. My goal is just to eat better and keep from getting too lazy over the summer. And I’m pretty sure I’ll do better on my own.

But if you were to ask me if I wanted to be a mom or a wife, I don’t remember that thought crossing my mind. Sure, I stuck the sofa cushions under my shirt and pretended to be pregnant, and when my friends and I played “House”, I was always the mom. And I hated being the mom. I wanted to be one of the kids. As for being a wife, I thought of marrying some boy I was sweet on, and as I started dating I imagined marrying the guys, but never gave it devoted thought.

I was reading When Everything Changed: The Amazing Story of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins, and it got me thinking about the life of a professional mommy. She’s working for a major company and she gets pregnant. She loses time and money, potentially her status. She has to juggle her job and her child in addition to making everything work at home. Who’s to say her husband will even help out?

I’m not disparaging motherhood or children or marriage. I’m just voicing a thought I’ve been thinking. I’ll be 25 this year, and I’ve still got a good deal of school ahead of me (especially if I decide to torture myself for a Ph.D.). I’m in no rush whatsoever to settle down and raise a family, and given that I want to have a stable job and have a great career before that happens, I don’t know when that may happen. Maybe it won’t.

I wonder sometimes about my parents. I love them, of course, but what would they think if I don’t have kids? Mom sometimes teases me with the idea of my having kids that are “just like me” (Bill Cosby’s so-called “mother’s curse”), but what if they’re not? I’m not expecting a Mini Me to run around (which would just be scary, even for me), but what if she doesn’t turn out like I did?

I’m fairly strict when it comes to my students, but in the end they either love me or hate me. I hate to think how I’d be as a mother. I see myself being almost too strict with my own kids, expecting them to be “in line” and not mouthing off to teachers or rolling their eyes. Then again, I did my share of eye-rolling. Sometimes I still do.

I guess these are the things you need to think about and either take the risk or don’t. My kids may hate me (so the general consensus is among my friends). I may be a good teacher but a bad mother. I know I’m not always the most patient person on the planet, and I get frustrated when others aren’t learning or doing what I need them to.

I’m still on the fence regarding both kids and marriage. Maybe neither will ever happen – and that’s just as “okay” as if both do.  Maybe it’s because, right now, I’m too focused on building my own future as opposed to building “our” future or “the baby’s” future. There are times where I see myself with a daughter of my own, and hell, maybe she’ll come around someday. I just don’t know now.

Or maybe I’ll still be an astronaut and study history…in space!