Ringing in the new year at Robert’s with Shriya, dubstep, and flashing lights.

Shriya’s wintergalactic dubstep party.

Debate tournaments at Ben Davis and Plymouth

Tie dyeing ECO Club t-shirts

February:

To be continued. I’m exhusted.

this is me, failing at pumping gas, captured by Shriya & her beautiful light leaking camera.

JANUARY:

Celebrated the new year at Daniel’s house with Nitesh & several others with whom I’m somewhat acquainted.

Skiing with with the French & German clubs

Donated blood for the first time

Put on a dodgeball tournament with the robotics team to raise money for cancer research

Lady Gaga with Alisa.

I don’t remember January.

FEBRUARY:

Made Nitesh a Valentine’s day card with our 11pm-7am house on it.

I went to robotics meetings  a lot. Build season…

Thought about Catholicism on Ash Wednesday

Did a terrible job at the District Tournament for Student Congress

MARCH:

Organized/put on Mr. West Side with Marlene [beauty pageant for senior boys from my HS]

Spent a week in Florida. Disposable camera, watercolors, lots of time at the beach…

Read Kafka on The Shore

FIRST Robotics Competition Boilermaker Regional; won Engineering Inspiration award

FRC Buckeye Regional in Cleveland, OH. Presented the team’s Chairman’s award submission

APRIL:

Celebrated Holi with Nitesh & Andrea

Celebrated Easter with Marlene, Nitesh & Andrea

Went to NYC with band & orchestra; aka, Nitesh & Shriya & Jae Hyun & etc. Had a wonderful time.

FRC Championship in Atlanta, GA

MAY:

Went to the prom with Nitesh

Got elected president of the robotics team

Final exams; tried [and succeeded] to not fail my precalculus class.  Finished 11th grade.

JUNE:

My brother came home from Los Angeles.

Nitesh went to India for a wedding. I spent lots of time missing him

Went to Marlene’s lakehouse with Marlene, Andrea, and Jae Hyun.

Entrepreneurship camp with Shriya. Became friends with Erika, won 2nd place in the business plan competition.

Kevin went to India with his dad. I missed him very much.

JULY:

Kevin came home, and we started a lovely time of being the best of friends while was still here.

Shriya went to India. I spent time missing Shriya.

I spent my last few weeks with Nitesh switching from devastated that we were ending, and extremely happy to be with him/to have had such a good relationship with him.

Nitesh & I broke up, and then I went to architecture camp for 3 weeks, where I became friends with Justin & Chelsea & was a vegetarian.

AUGUST:

I came home. Took a midnight walk with Robert & Kevin; began a long trend of staying out until early in the morning.

Kevin kissed me in the park. It didn’t lead us where I thought it might. He moved to Bloomington

I started my last year of high school after a night of hide-&-seek tag with Robert & Kevin & people  I barely knew.

Nitesh started college, I missed him.

The meteor shower with Kevin/Robert/Shriya/Britt

Robert kissed me in his room over a book about M.C. Escher. It led to nice talks about Canada, rollerblading, taking photos in the woods, meeting crazy people, complicated thoughts…

SEPTEMBER:

The trip to Bloomington with Robert to visit Kevin.

Went to a No Hay Banda show with Robert at 12 AM

A confusing week or so.

Nitesh & I got back together. Conflicted for a bit, but so happy. Then the  conflict dissolved, and I was even happier.

OCTOBER:

Became friends with Michael.

Took the SAT Subject tests

Traded shoes with Kevin. [sisterhood of the traveling shoes]

Made pancakes for lunch with Shriya and Robert.

Visited Northwestern in Evanston, visited Cornell in Ithaca

Helped Nitesh make a Halloween costume. Loved him a lot.

Spent Halloween with Shriya on her porch, passing out candy & wearing tiger ears.

NOVEMBER:

Got to know Nitesh’s college friends a bit more, slowly & steadily.

Went to the fall dance with Michael.

Saw Harry Potter 7 at midnight

Took a trip to a wastewater treatment plant

My birthday & Thanksgiving break… Nitesh came over in the morning, & I went to Shriya’s at night with Robert, Kevin, & Britt. Robert brought me a green tea birthday cake, which I proceeded to eat for the next week or so.

DECEMBER:

Re-took the SAT Subject tests

Took final exams. Tried [& succeeded] to not fail my calculus class.

Partied & [half-assedly/soberly] played beer pong with Kevin at Robert’s

Winter break included: exchanging gifts with Nitesh, lots of late nights with Robert & Kevin, my cousins visiting from New York & California, playing lots of piano & drawing lots of pictures & watercolor painting & trying to get my soul back.

New Year’s Eve: dressed in navy & white polka-dots, went with Shriya to a party at Robert’s. Danced to good music [dubstep mix of Stay Fly as a highlight] & counted down to the new year. Talked with Josie & Tom & Shriya & Robert & Kevin for awhile, drove back into town.

Met up with Nitesh, proceeded to bring in 2011 with lots of kisses.

1. The internet is a blessing and a curse. Thanks to strong online communities and too much time spend reading and observing and not enough time focusing my attention on my life materializes with me being really touchy about sexism, homophobia, SEXISM. I want a balance. I want to be a bro, but I don’t want to feel like I’m compromising my gender. I want to not worry about this because I was doing fine when I could just be myself and not freak out about other people offending other people. Maybe if people were less offensive this would change. Ironically, wanting equality this badly makes it really hard to work with ignorant people. Wishes for cohesion lead to lack of cohesion. How foolish. There must be a better way.

2. I want to paint with watercolors. I want to inhale oxygen and feed off of plants. I want to never eat American cheese again, and I want to drink copious amounts of caffeinated beverages because it’s the closest I can get to using drugs while being comfortable.

3. I wish I had more than an hour per day for photo class. I’m making a book right now about capturing images of people you love, and today I spent my hour searching through my old stash of to do lists and sketches and notes that I took about everything when I was younger and cooler and more of myself. I also made a blackout poem for the front cover.

4. I need to know how to study. I think I need the library. No internet, although I have a deadly addiction to being “connected” to people. Although this really only makes me strive for personal/valid connection that is so often lacking, so it’s unproductive in all sorts of ways. If I only cleaned my room… perhaps I will do that tonight. I miss having a sanctuary. I am not grounded; rather, I’m very homeless in my own home, and the lack of feng shui is getting to me.

5. Remember when I used to be superstitious? Devoted to my own astrology? I have a hard time being motivated by it, which is normal for normal people, but odd for me, and I want the forces of the universe to harness me and this is starting to sound loopy.

Going to Goodwill

Wearing my hair in a side braid…

…under my navy-blue & black wooly hat

Looking for an anorak

Wearing light brown leather shoes

Loving my boyfriend

Failing calculus

Taking pictures

Developing film

Printing in the darkroom

Turning 18

Eating sushi & pho & citrus fruits

Facebook chatting with funny boys

Drinking copious amounts of Milkis

Listening to Sky Ferreira

My teeth are rotting, my stomach is rotting. I still have homework to finish, & I have to be at school in 1 1/2 hours;

However,

Everything is wonderful, because dear Conor Oberst, YOU WROTE THIS:

The rain had started tapping
On the window near my bed
There was a loophole in my dreaming
So I got out of it
And to my surprise my eyes were wide
And already open
Just my nightstand and my dresser
Where those nightmares had just been

So I dressed myself and left then
Out into the gray streets
But everything seemed different
Completely new to me
The sky, the trees, houses, buildings
Even my own body
And each person I encountered
I couldn’t wait to meet

And I came upon a doctor
Who appeared in quite poor health
I said, “There’s nothing I can do for you
You can’t do for yourself”
He said, “Oh, yes you can, just hold my hand
I think that that would help”
So I sat with him a while
And I asked him how he felt
He said, “I think I’m cured
No, in fact I’m sure of it
Thank you stranger
For your theraputic smile”

So that’s how I learned the lesson
That everyone’s alone
And your eyes must do some raining
If you’re ever gonna grow
When crying don’t help, you can’t compose yourself
It’s best to compose a poem
An honest verse of longing
Or a simple song of hope

That’s why I’m singing, baby, don’t worry
Because now I’ve got your back
And every time you feel like crying
I’m gonna try to make you laugh
And if I can’t, if it just hurts too bad
Then we’ll wait for it to pass
And I will keep you company
Through those days so long and black

We’ll keep working on the problem
We know we’ll never solve
Of love’s uneven remainders
Our lives are fractions of a whole
But if the world could remain within a frame
Like a painting on a wall
Then I think we’d see the beauty then
And stand staring in awe

At our still lives posed
Like a bowl of oranges
Like a story told
By the fault lines and the soil

1.

2.

3.

Everyone says to be friendly, be outgoing, make new friends. & I used to accept this advice knowing I was far too shy to be anything more than quiet and full of laughs and slight sarcasm, especially around new people.

When you’re actively trying to be friends with someone it can feel so cheap. I go like a pendulum from wanting to burst like light over everyone & create wonderful experiences… to wanting to go underwater and dissolve so that I am omnipresent but invisible.  I want everything to feel like I’m swimming. No kitsch, no unnatural effort, no jokey rigid exteriors, just fluid progression that allows for both vivacity & calmness.

Being appropriate has become a general goal of mine. Not appropriate as in lacking in overtly sexual content, dirty words, violence, necessarily, but appropriate as in intentional. Why shouldn’t I try to make every feasible part of myself fit my life as well as possible?

It’s about refusal, but it’s also about acceptance. But it’s also really fucking hard to focus on streamlining one’s life when everyone around you is busy exploding in every different direction.

It’s about being honest, too. I like honesty, but I never know the borderline of when I should not disclose certain information from people. I wish that everything were how I wanted it to be so that I could live without stopping.

I want to learn to play the bass guitar. I want to learn to sing. Everything is an overload & I want more outlets.

I think I’m going to clean my room tonight.

Pictures by Magna Run & Ya

Good things:

studying/modeling/drawing/not sleeping in the architecture studio

sketching a lot & being praised for it

singing loudly all the time

playing piano for hours at a time

new friendships begun

old friendships continued

awkward friendships improved

“never sleep; ’cause sleep is the cousin of death”

climbing trees, sneaking onto rooftops, staying out all night

oil painting

dressing like it’s winter

wanting nothing to end.

Now the end of June is coming… time for a progress report. bold=success

Bake cakes.

Experiment with cooking.

Go to architecture camp.

Go to entrepreneurship camp.

walk on my hands

Daytime hammock naps.

Nighttime boys.

Long hair & freckles

Lollapalooza

Hydration

Running

Dance party

Pool party

Get ripp’d

Skateboard

Learn what a camera is

Outdoor adventures

Camping/biking/waterskiing

Gardening

Read books

Make out

Hang out by water in a hooded sweatshirt

Expand rap music library

Make friends

Stay up/out late

Take a nap in a bathtub

Morning: wake up early/sunrise/news

Techno music

Make string bracelet collection

Keep hair wavy/put braids in it

Keep curtains & windows open

Stretch

Hindi

Watercolors

Build furniture

Frisbee

Shedd Aquarium

Crip walk

SUMMERTIME. (four days until Nitu returns from India)

This is what I did today:

• Slept until 12
• Drank 2 big glasses of orange juice
• Went out with Jae Hyun for triangle rice (bulgogo & spicy tuna!)
• Continued the outing with pomegranate frozen yogurt & blackberries
• Came home to draw pictures & tidy the house.