Doors and Presses

In many ways today was not only better, but more productive than most of my recent days. About two days ago I finally cleaned out my inbox. It took me about two hours. There were nearly 800 messages dating back to April. I scrapped about 650 of them and saved the rest. Some were about school, some were about projects I'm working on, some are a part of my new CYA policy. Either way, two days ago, my inbox was empty. As of right now, I have about forty messages. I think now would be a good time to remind people that I don't have Facebook and that I do not follow anyone on Twitter or whatever other things people follow people on.

This productive-ish day began at 9:00 am. I never sleep that late. I'm supposed to be out of the house, speed walking to catch a bus by 9:20. Surprise! I can deploy in under twenty minutes. I got dressed (not in comfortable clothes as it turns out), I brushed my teeth, I didn't have time to eat so I packed food, I hunted down my school crap and I was gone. What did I forget? My anti-crazy pills. Fortunately, I only had one two hour class so my crazy wasn't noticeable.

I made it to the bus stop, had a random conversation with a random girl I had a class with three years ago. She doesn't remember me. I don't remember what her name is. We talked about my bus conspiracies. You'd think that would by my crazy sneaking out, but no. That's just regular me.

How to teach history class was interesting. As usual. We got into a debate about who the top five most influential people between 1000-1999 were. I wound up having something of a revelation. No one in my class picked Gutenburg. Not Steve.

I'm talking about the earlier one. The German one who invented the printing press and moveable type. This one:

Dude was always in debt, he'd never been educated beyond his trade, he wasn't a genius, he was a tradesman. But he still made it to the top of the list of most influential historical figures between 1000-1999. He beat out Newton, Darwin, Shakespeare, Martin Luther, all hugely important, all educated, all geniuses. Why? How? Education, intelligence and money are markers of brilliance! How could an uneducated, average intelligence debtor triumph? Let's think. Where would Shakespeare, Darwin, Newton and Luther be without the printing press? Luther: wouldn't have been able to nail his theses to the Church door or translate the Bible into German. He would be a religious malcontent and nothing more. No Protestantism. Shakespeare: might be a famous playwright... if any of his limited hand written copies survived. Darwin, Newton: we would know nothing about our monkey uncles or the laws that make those uncles fall out of trees. Even if you aren't a genius with some incredible purpose in life like discovering the origins of man, you can still make an unfathomable contribution to the world. This is what I mean by working at what you love and your excellence being recognized! Anyone can do something amazing. See, mind blown. I wasn't the only one kind of bothered by not thinking of Gutenburg.

After that I made it home and resumed my email extravaganza. I need to get my grad school applications out. I was emailing profs back and forth, flooding their emails and probably making them a little crazy. I finally took my meds but I still possess the ability to make other people feel crazy. I ended up discovering that I'm now only applying to two schools. I have no idea how I missed it, but one school required me to take a test. The nearest one is this Saturday two hours away from where I live and it costs nearly 200$. Not gonna happen. Not on top of the 110$ application fee and other fees I have to pay just so they'll look at my application. I'm ambitious, but I'm also practical and more importantly, cheap. And I'm allowed to be cheap because I don't have a job. On the bright side, I don't think I ever would have ended up there anyway. It was nice to dream but realistically... I don't know that I would have handled being THAT independent well. I'm kind of taking it as a sign.

I'm now concentrating on a new door since one has been closed.

Lauren.