manic depression. or just a natural state of being human and being creative.

Sometimes I think that even though I know I have much to say, I should be picking stuff I want to say the most, and I should only say that. Like I should only be one kind of person. I read my senior year yearbook, which was depressing, not in an I-miss-those-days sort of way, but in a I’m-so-happy-those-days-are-gone-and-now-now-doesn’t-seem-so-bad kind of way, and one of the few notes I have written in there has someone who used to be a good friend saying, “I don’t know which Hannah I love more, but I know I love them both” or something to that effect.

It’s maybe not a good thing to be so many people. But can I help it?

no, i will not be vapid

The last thing I have is free time. The last thing I need is to go back to my third job when they call me. Yes, I need the money, but I also don’t, because my parents would help me if I asked, and really, I have plenty to be doing that doesn’t cost money. Homework, piano, voice, and reading books that I already own doesn’t cost me anything, and neither does hanging out with friends. Most worthwhile things don’t cost money, or, at least, if they cost money, it’s money I already spent awhile ago.

It was nice to go to my old job today, though, as I haven’t worked in months because of state budget cuts and lack of referrals. I had three little girls, 7, 8, and 10, and they were very sweet and easy to take care of. The oldest one was especially interested in music, and all three told me how they wanted to go to college where I go.

This about the only time when I am ever proud of going to U of A, and it’s very humbling to remember how lucky I am that I get to go to college, and that I get to live a pretty nice lifestyle for a college student who supports herself. Going to private school for five years tricked me into thinking that I was too good for U of A, and that I had nothing in common with anybody who had less money or education than I’ve been fortunate enough to have, because the people I went to high school with did live like that.

I can’t stand people who think poor people are beneath them, or less than, or are poor because they choose to be. I can’t stand people who think they have nothing in common with others unless they are exactly the same in socioeconomic, ethnic, cultural, and religious terms. I love that I got to do a little inspiring today, just by watching “It Takes Two” and coloring and chatting with these three very smart, bilingual girls, and I love that one of them drew me a picture and wrote “Thank you Hannah for being nice to me and for playing with us.” One of them said she thought I was mean when she saw me, but then she changed her mind. I was mildly offended, but maybe I do come off as a snob, partly because that’s just me, and partly because I was conditioned to be one for five years. Private school is excellent for the academics and the great teachers, but it is also extremely unhealthy.

I had a great morning. It went by very quickly. And I wasn’t spending all my time with the kids itching to get away, to read, or to just watch the movie. In fact, two of the girls complained that they didn’t want to watch anything, because the TV is always on at home, so we stopped paying attention and did origami boxes and fortune tellers instead.

Last semester, I came up with my professional plan for the next ten years or so. One more year of undergrad, followed by two or three years to do my dual master’s degree program in Boston. After that, a five-year PhD in New York. Dr. Hannah before my thirtieth birthday. Not bad. People ask what I plan to do with my degree in music, and I usually say nothing, not because I’m going to give up music when I graduate, but because I’m not planning on teaching or being famous (well, maybe a bit that last one. Win a Grammy and get a PhD? Pretty sweet). The master’s degrees will be an MA in children’s literature and an MS in library science. The doctorate, a five-year program I randomly stumbled upon called media, culture, and communication. Could not be more up my alley. And it’s still hard to say what I want to do with that, because it’s not a one-word job, like doctor, lawyer, or professor. And I would die before saying that I want to be a teacher, because that’s what both of my parents, my sister, and tons of other family members and close family friends do. Bleccch. But no matter how I try to get around it, I always end up back at education, because it’s just so important. Education and social services and the arts. Just hanging out with kids who aren’t stupid or bad or perfect, but just a bit at-risk, whether it’s because they are financially disadvantaged (being too poor or too rich equally leave you out of getting a lot of what the world, and Tucson, have to offer, I think) or because they haven’t gotten the best education possible, or because they haven’t had as stable a family life, or whatever it is. Thanks to my excellent parents, my excellent hometown, the excellent opportunities I had to get educated in and out of school, and my excellent job at Child & Family that I just don’t appreciate enough, I am completely preoccupied with the idea that role models, the arts, language skills, and different kinds of educational opportunities, from after-school programs to court-ordered community service to youth groups, can change a lot about people, and therefore society, for the better.

Sometimes I can’t believe that I would ever want to be so selfish as to marry well and not work (not that it’s in the cards at the rate I’m going with boys), or to just write and be musical all the time, or to be famous, because not to change things or help things almost constantly seems so vapid and boring. Getting a doctorate and maybe publishing a few books or recording an album is all the selfish I have time for. After that, I hope to find a job in a library, a museum, or a social service agency where I can work with other people who do the really important stuff and just do my part to provide really useful programs. Mix upper, middle, and lower class kids together. Turn off the television. Read books and learn to love them. Journal. Make good choices and not get arrested before age 14. There is so much good out there, and so much good to do, that people don’t see.

Wow, I’m sappy.

o português é a minha língua preferida

I’m not bad at Spanish. In fact, I generally say that I am fluent, but that gets me into trouble when people speak Spanish to me and I’m not expecting it, as it takes me awhile to ease into it. I speak it when the mood strikes. Portuguese, however, I am finding incredibly easy and natural, and I’m realizing (thanks to my teacher identifying it as so) that, while my sister may have been a heritage speaker of Spanish, I am actually a heritage speaker of Portuguese. I take a Portuguese for Spanish Speakers class three days a week, and in just two weeks of class I feel more comfortable with this language than I ever have with Spanish. There’s something about Portuguese that makes you want to speak it, whereas Spanish doesn’t have that allure.

I always say that Portuguese is like a party in your mouth, which is true. And I seem to just have a natural affinity for it, after hearing it my whole life. Three weeks in Brazil four and a half years ago did something to me, and I adopted the country and its language as something that feels most like home to me. Maybe it’s that in Brazil more than any other place, nobody looks at me and asks me questions about what I am or how it is that I am so many things. Maybe it’s because I heard Portuguese growing up. Maybe it’s just because Brazil is an excellent country. But I can see that this one semester of Portuguese may make me more of a fluent speaker than Spanish classes ever will.

the latest thing i learned

It is possible to rate a movie R for “aberrant behavior.”

2010 begins with my friends giving me princess tiana presents. at age 21, i have finally become a disney child.

Home from my propaganda trip to Israel and already fully immersed in the spring semester, I am trying to be positive, healthy, and good to myself. That means I must try to stave off bad habits and vices, like casual sex and booze, and instead spend my time actually doing my homework (100 pages of psych reading in one day, check), practicing my music (actually got accepted for voice lessons and will continue to have piano lessons, plus have been writing songs that I should work on more diligently), performing both of my jobs more professionally than I did last semester, and doing creative and intellectual things that will ultimately make me a happier and better person (I hope) than instant-gratification activities. This means I want to journal at least every other day, blog maybe once a week about something interesting and meaningful, and read lots of books. I have charged myself to read at least 40 books in 2010. I haven’t decided yet whether that will include books for school or not; that will depend largely on my progress. Thus far I have finished two: The Handmaid’s Tale and Very LeFreak, and I will follow that by another book I have to review, Wench, plus the two books I had already started reading before I began reading Rachel Cohn’s book to review, and then I’ll take it from there. I have an inter-library loan that I have to read before it’s due back (any way to find out ahead of time what they’d charge if you just “lost” the book? It’s incredibly out of print and will help me with my thesis, so I really just want to keep it forever), and I just ordered two books from Amazon along with a Norton anthology that I need for class. The books are ones I ordered in October which were “delivered” but never recovered. I am sick of the post office never calling me back when I complain about my idiot postman (he delivers our packages to our neighbors’ backyard repeatedly), so I spent $30 replacing things I should have read months ago.

Kvetch, kvetch. I should add more Yiddish to my daily vocabulary (as if I don’t use it enough) but do less kvetching.

I am taking a class called African/African American Psychology as my second-to-last general education course. I expected it to be more like a history class than a hard psych class, given that it’s listed under Africana Studies and not under Psychology, but it seems that it is more about the history of psychology and race and how they interact. Still interesting, though the first class was iffy. Can’t decide if the professor realizes that he is presenting cliches as fact, but I am willing to suspend my shock and assume that he has a grand plan for us all–after all, he has a PhD. Interestingly, when I walked in the room, I noticed that a very small percentage of the class is comprised of black students. There are maybe eight in a class of 35. A couple people have already made dumb remarks, but it should be an interesting class that should, if nothing else, make me think a lot and give me fodder for my writing. And I’d also like to use the class to inform some new projects for Hillel. I really want to create a cross-cultural discussion group with African American students, but so far all of the departments I’ve contacted have been pretty unresponsive. It’s something I’ve wanted to do all year, though, and this class has rekindled that interest. And it’s only been three days of school.

I’m also taking Portuguese, which is already painfully easy, but it’s good to learn how to write it, because that is the area in which you can tell that I am a faker and only pretend to be a Brazilian who can speak it. I plan on going to some of the discussion groups, because I feel that practice writing and speaking without lapsing into English or Spanish will be good for me. However, the class is called Portuguese for Spanish Speakers, so hopefully it will soon be a) less boring and b) faster moving. Everyone just needs to stop pronouncing words as if they are Spanish.

I originally began talking about my AFAS class because we have to do a group project, which I hugely resent, but I also acknowledge that psychologists work together. However, given that I was previously employed as an editor/proofreader of the writing of groups of social researchers, I know that this is not a good idea, because groups of people are worse writers than individual people, who tend to be terrible writers anyway. But, given that controversy with Bloomsbury publishing, and how they’re at it again with whitewashing their YA covers to make everyone who is dark appear white, I am more excited for this group project, because that could be an excellent topic.

More on Bloomsbury later. Now it’s time for Hillel research and an early bedtime. I have been sleepy as hell since returning home.

in which i begin my journey

I leave tomorrow morning for New York. Wednesday I fly out to Israel. I’m still not really packed, and I have to clean my house. Tomorrow morning is going to be a blast.

21 going on…

Every time I watch “The Sound of Music” again, I insist that I’m just a sappy dork who loves it, and it’s not actually a good movie. But nope. Wrong. It’s totally fabulous.

I am calling shenanigans on some parts of it, though. I always used to fast forward through “Something Good,” when Maria and the Captain finally get together, because love scenes were gross and made me feel uncomfortable (a scene in “Beethoven’s 2nd” also always had to be fast forwarded). My roommate and I are watching now, and it is reassuring–but also terrifying–to see that even old people still get awkward when talking to whomever it is they like. The Captain says, “You know when I first started loving you? The moment you sat on that ridiculous pine cone.” And Maria says, “I knew the second you blew that silly whistle.” Bull! There’s no way.

But in just about every other way, “The Sound of Music” most definitely deserved its five Oscars. As it happens with most films I’ve seen a million times since childhood, I notice something new each time I see it. I pick up on things that Elsa picks up on all along, and things that she kind of mentions when she and the Captain break off their engagement. I guess it’s easier to notice that sort of thing in a movie when you reach the point of your life that you can hear it in real life. You see every time the Captain does glance at Maria instead of Elsa. It makes you realize how hard acting really is. And how sad and complicated sex and love are.

jingle jingle

I’ll admit it: not only do I kind of like Christmas music, but I have an entire Christmas music playlist on my iPod. And entire Christmas albums by some artists, namely Mariah Carey and Destiny’s Child. I have just come to the realization that it is now mid-December (ish) and it is at least somewhat acceptable to be listening to Christmas music.

This is where Christian music doesn’t suck, I think. Because, having done a variety of music in choir over the past two and a half years, I can tell you that a lot of Protestant music, when it’s not of the Southern Baptist persuasion, is just not very pretty. Sorry. But it all sounds the same, and it gets boring and ugly to sing. I’m all about Catholic masses or a good spiritual, but wishy washy gospel is pretty uninteresting.

Christmas music, too, when sung by common people, reminds me of “The Star-Spangled Banner”–meaning that it can suck. A lot. Without even trying. And there’s plenty of crappy Christmas music, just as there is plenty of crappy music in just about every genre. I just finished a paper on Sephardic ballads from medieval Spain, and some of them are pretty unattractive, too. So I’m not being biased. There is always good music out there, and there is always ugly music out there as well. But people who are trained to be singers, especially those who also have some extra talent in writing and arranging, can do pretty fabulous version of good Christmas carols. And, because I am a desert girl who never gets to experience white Christmases for herself, it’s all I can do to secretly listen to carols on my earbuds.

American Christmas is a secular holiday anyway. Consumerism, pretending that Hanukkah is an important holiday, drinking eggnog AND eating potato latkes, and buying presents for everyone just because it’s fun. Finals are almost here, but at least classes are done, so I’m not going to stress. Hello, December.

three months later…

I actually update the playlist.

some say that sex is overrated

I never thought it was possible to really know that someone was “good” or “bad” in bed. But it is so possible, and it so makes or breaks your opinion of someone. Sad.