Impossible

I have four papers due next week, three of them due Monday. I am feeling so overwhelmed, which is frustrating because I actually have been feeling creative and I can't allow myself to write much unless I stay up late. I am reading this novel for my religion class about nuns and it is wonderful. It is about a nun with epilepsy that is trying to deal with the fact that all of these "unique moments she had with God" were seizures. There is actually a kind of epilepsy that is located in the temporal lobe and a kind of schizophrenia that increases "relgious experiences." They also can open up your head and mess with these parts of your brain to make you see and believe things. This nun then has to struggle with her faith. I have to write a paper on how I feel about this kind of thing. I find it hard to believe--when the mind controls everything and if someone messes with that it can distort your personality, beliefs, and senses. I am interested to see how this book ends, because I don't think that the amazing ability we have in our minds is any sort of let down. I think it's just as amazing and divine as anything else. There was one part in the book where a nun sprays a bird that is bullying another one in the fountain with a hose and another nun gets pissed. It is very amusing and reminds me of some stories my friend, Ashley, who is in the convent, has told me. Nuns are interesting characters.

Tonight we had a tornado warning that caused me to miss half of Grey's Anatomy. I also had my window open and several books got wet, luckily I caught it quickly and could dry them off before the watter seeped in.

Today I had lunch with my friend, Heather. I think I am going to go tracking with her in January. She has motion-activated cameras now, and while she has not gotten pictures of wolves like she is hoping for, she has gotten some cool pictures of bears and coyotes. I like that she is always very down-to-earth. She talked about feeling lonely lately because she is never in one place and is constantly bouncing around from place to place, so it's hard to have a group of people to be with. I love hearing stories about lonliness. I think everyone does, because how many books and movies are out there that address the issue from centuries ago until today? People like to hear about other people feeling lonely to ease their own feelings of isolation. I would like to write a piece that addresses loneliness in addition to other issues.

I talked to my religion professor yesterday about signing a religion minor. He has published a book called "Minds and Gods," (you should check it out--It's interesting). I asked him about being published and what that involves. He said he studied creative writing and considers himself a writer before a religion professor. He said he is interested in teh fact that I am a writing major and a religion minor. I like him a lot, but I am kind of intimidated by him. He said something about how teaching is not what he does, and without thinking I said something like, "well it doesn't show." Then I realized what a suck-up that made me sound like, and I was like, "that wasn't meant to suck-up. I swear." There was an awkward, but funny moment after that. It was kind of discouraging when we talked about how tough it is to get into publishing fiction. I told him I wanted to get into creative non-fiction, and when I named some of my favorite authors he said something about how to become a writer like that people have to trust you and the way you think, which takes people knowing who you are. The way to do that is usually to start with fiction or be a journalist for a well-known magazine, which involves living the "American Dream." It is so frustrating, because it seems impossible to do what I want. He did say that once you have a phD that people come to you to ask what you are writing. He referred to academic non-fiction as, "a little boys club" where everyone knows eachother and they all make sure the others gets published. It's all about who you know no matter what profession you want to go in to.

Tomorrow Drew, Elise, and Ryan are coming up from my South Dakota experiences. It was Drew's birthday yesterday so it will be nice to go to dinner with everyone for that. It always lifts up my spirits to see people from the Omega project. I wrote Enoch (from the Rez) a letter last week, because I remembered that he loved T-Pain and he did a concert at Central last week. I miss everyone from the reservation and from our group here. I just miss all of us together more than anything.

I need to go write. I have those four papers hanging over my head so I need to take advantage of what little time I have left to be creative.