the thin line between optimism and delusion...

deep thoughts

September 7, 2004 by charlsiekate

I found a quote book that I had lost, and I came across this poem and I really like it. I’m sure you have probably read it before, but I am happier everytime I read it.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievement as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not bind you to what virtue there is, many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

– found in Old Saint Paul’s Church,

Baltimore, dated 1692.

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looking cute, seeing people, being out and about…..

September 6, 2004 by charlsiekate

I had such a fabulous weekend. I have kinda been down since I got back to school, and this weekend left me happy and excited about life again. Sometimes when I drink a great deal of alcohol in one sitting I end up depressed the next day, and that is when it really hits me that I am unhappy and something is wrong. I think this is because alcohol compounds the things that are bothering you and makes them worse. So, it is really only when things are going well and you are happy that alcohol can really be fun. It is also easier to keep things under control when you are happy. Drinking because you are depressed is like going under water to get some air.

I like to think that last week was a turning point in the semester. I calmed down, and got into the swing of things, and I feel better. I decided that I can’t worry about boys, that I just don’t have the energy. So lacking the energy, I am cutting out a piece of stress. Not that I’m planning on cutting boys out, just the stress of worrying about it. Things have a tendency to work out better that way. I was much better about making sure I ate enough food, I know this sounds stupid, but when I don’t eat enough I get depressed cause I am tired all the time. So I am now eating more, worrying less, and being calmer than I was before.

My parents were in town this weekend, and they were both in a great mood. I think they are excited about football season. We went to the Last Resort for dinner on friday, and it was awesome. Then on saturday they came to the law school tailgate up on north campus and that was also lots of fun. Another reason this weekend was spectacular is because Libby came in town. We had a great time, when I woke up on saturday my sides hurt from laughing all night long. I saw lots of fun people friday, one them a loyal livejournal friend, Paige, who is awesome and lives in my hometown and works at the tv station. I think people that work at tv stations are kind of famous because they control the news.

Another highlight of friday night was the easy mac that Libby and ate when we got home that night. It was the greatest thing we had ever eaten in our lives. The law school tailgate was a huge success. I am really pumped that we had such a great turn out. I want to tailgate there all the time. It is nice being right there near downtown and in the middle of everything. I have big dreams for all the other games. The game was not actually that much fun for me, it started off poorly when the ticket checker girl for our section threw Christy’s hotdog on me and I had ketchup and mustard all over me for the rest of the day. But it is at least a great story. Saturday night was a bit of a blur, We(libby, cristina and me) started off with Travers and the Augusta crew, then we went to Ga. Bar to hang out with law school friends (who were all quite lit up), from there we had a few chill moments at The Manhattan (for libby and patrick, since they live in manhattan), and then we picked up the night by heading to the dance club (I love the dance club), and we finished the night off at Tasty World, where we luckily ran into Travers.

Travers paid some random girls with a car $20 to take us home (after we dropped the girl’s friend off at boars head) and the night ending with some more easy mac and laughing. Travers slept on the blow up mattress instead of the pull out sofa because he didn’t want to wait for me to pull the sofa out. Over all it was an awesome weekend, one to be remembered for the record books. Last night we (me and Christy and Cristina) went over to Christian’s and he cooked us chicken and hamburgers and we watched the washington football game with Nick and all our law school boy friends. It was yummy. I have good feelings about this year, I am in high spirits as to the possibilities ahead of us. Not with regards to SCHOOL, but with regards to life in general and to being an overall happy and fulfilled individual. I love you all. Kisses.

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looking cute, seeing people, being out and about…..

September 6, 2004 by charlsiekate

I had such a fabulous weekend. I have kinda been down since I got back toschool, and this weekend left me happy and excited about life again. Sometimes when I drink a great deal of alcohol in one sitting I end up depressed the next day, and that is when it really hits me that I am unhappy and something is wrong. I think this is because alcohol compounds the things that are bothering you and makes them worse. So, it is really only when things are going well and you are happy that alcohol can really be fun. It is also easier to keep things under control when you are happy. Drinking because you are depressed is like going under water to get some air.

Another reason this weekend was spectacular is because Libby came in town. We had a great time, when I woke up on saturday my sides hurt from laughing all night long. I saw lots of fun people friday, one them a loyal livejournal friend, Paige, who is awesome and lives in my hometown and works at the tv station. I think people that work at tv stations are kind of famous because they control the news. Another highlight of friday night was the easy mac that Libby and ate when we got home that night. It was the greatest thing we had ever eaten in our lives.

The law school tailgate was a huge success. I am really pumped that we had such a great turn out. I want to tailgate there all the time. It is nice being right there near downtown and in the middle of everything. I have big dreams for all the other games. The game was not actually that much fun for me, it started off poorly when the ticket checker girl for our section threw Christy’s hotdog on me and I had ketchup and mustard all over me for the rest of the day. But it is at least a great story.

Saturday night was a bit of a blur, We(libby, cristina and me) started off with Travers and the Augusta crew, then we went to Ga. Bar to hang out with law school friends (who were all quite lit up), from there we had a few chill moments at The Manhattan (for libby and patrick, since they live in manhattan), and then we picked up the night by heading to the dance club (I love the dance club), and we finished the night off at Tasty World, where we luckily ran into Travers. Travers paid some random girls with a car $20 to take us home (after we dropped the girl’s friend off at boars head) and the night ending with some more easy mac and laughing. Travers slept on the blow up mattress instead of the pull out sofa because he didn’t want to wait for me to pull the sofa out. Over all it was an awesome weekend, one to be remembered for the record books. Last night we (me and Christy and Cristina) went over to Christian’s and he cooked us chicken and hamburgers and we watched the washington football game with Nick and all our law school boy friends. It was yummy. I have good feelings about this year, I am in high spirits as to the possibilities ahead of us. Not with regards to SCHOOL, but with regards to life in general and to being an overall happy and fulfilled individual. I love you all. Kisses.

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I thought I had won

September 2, 2004 by charlsiekate

I thought I had won the vending machine lottery the other day, but I think I was tricked. I guess this was probably Monday, and I was buying crackers out of the vending machine. When I went to retrieve my crackers, I found two candy bars in the machine for the taking. So I took both of them and hurried off because Shannon and Anisa were waiting on me. I was really excited. The candy bars were a new breed, some sort of M&M candy bar, called M-azing. I gave one of the candy bars to Shannon and kept one for myself (Anisa said it was okay). Then when I got back to the library I told Jimmy and Andrew about my good luck, and they told me that I shouldn’t eat the candy bar because it was probably poisoned, especially since it was a kind of candy bar that no one had ever seen before. I thought this was a little paranoid, but since I have a problem with paranoia I decided to leave the candy bar with the two of them (this was probably always the plan, like when your older siblings would talk you into giving them something by convincing you it sucked), but anyway, I fell for it. On my next trip to the vending machine I thought I would check for the candy bar among the other candy bars in the coils. And here is the weird thing, that made me glad I didn’t eat the candy bar, THE M&M CANDY BAR ISN’T EVEN AN OPTION TO BUY!! So the vending machine in which I found the candy bar doesn’t even sell the candy bar. So where did it come from? Was it a clever marketing ploy by Mars to get people to try out their new candy bar? do they instruct the vending machine man to strategically place the candy bars where they will be found by unsuspecting, hungry law students, or am I being paranoid again? I feel manipulated, or something. Any thoughts?

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football, thunderstorms, ipods, and environmental law

September 2, 2004 by charlsiekate

My current problem these days is that I don’t like the work that is required in law school. I like law school, and I love the people in law school, but I just can’t do the work. I mean, I can do the work, but when I really and truly try to get all the reading done, one of two things happen. I either spend all day in the library and don’t do anything else with my day, which leads to be me being unhappy and unfulfilled as an individual, or I don’t get all my work done, I get like 80% of my work done and I end up feeling like a failure and any positive energy gained by whatever activity kept me from finishing the work is lost in my unhappiness of being unsuccessful. This has been a very happy week for me and I have been very unproductive. So here is the question, am I lazy? Am I a waste of a human being? I hate that I don’t feel productive, but it seems better than the alternative of being unhappy. Allison says that this probably means that I shouldn’t be in law school. But then she said that she doesn’t really think that. I know I am suppose to be here, I just can’t do the work. Plus, I only perform under pressure, which is difficult in law school because the only real deadline is finals, which is months away. It is difficult because maybe I’m not cut out to be an attorney. Maybe law school is going to be the means to some other end. But I want to be an attorney. There are definitely parts of the lawyering process that make me really happy and excited. But I just get bogged down in other parts of it. The only way I am going to make it through this is if I realize my limitations, and right now, my limitations include not doing things that suck all the happiness out of my life. Is this a terrible way to think? I don’t want to do things halfway, I really am serious about being the best I can be, but at what cost? I guess the question is what does the world need out of me? I don’t know, but it is my present dilemma.

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Kallie and me on the

August 31, 2004 by charlsiekate

Kallie and me on the volcano of Santorini, if you look behind us you can see the white cliff houses of Fira, the capital of Santorini in the backgroud.

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This is the very end

August 31, 2004 by charlsiekate

This is the very end of the sunset from the porch of our cliff house in Lakithra on Kefallonia.

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This picture is a very

August 31, 2004 by charlsiekate

This picture is a very happy memory, the school took us on a boat trip to the other side of the island for dinner and greek dancing on the beach, and this is us having a drink, pre-dinner.