excerpt from letters written 21 Oct. edited for content.

"Hi ~
Just got off your blog...Sounds very intense...almost of the type of intensity that threatens to hold one's head under the water...for a bit longer than anticipated and then one comes up sputtering and spewing...

Did you select a thesis theme? And New Zealand????"

Hey ~
- I guess things have been rather intense - I've rather come to the conclusion that I need intensity in my life, or perhaps to help define my life... Without it I feel as though I were heading down a long road without any destination or end in sight, there is no reason to keep on going other than I was in motion already. That is simply not good enough for me. I might end up a bit breathless and scared sometimes but that seems better than the alternative of placidity. I am trying to fill my life with as much of what I love about school and being in SoCal as possible before I leave it behind. It's odd - on one hand I feel so very ready to simply be done and leave it ("it" being school and the life there) all behind. I want to move on. And yet, I know if I did leave now I would feel an incompleteness and would always want to go back and fix it. So I keep on, striving after something that I only see "in a mirror darkly" - to quote one of my proffessors.

My thesis on work - my official thesis question and statement is:

Is proper for the liberal man to manually labor? What is the work and leisure proper to the liberal man?
Manual labor is one of the works proper to man, for it is an integral part of the attainment of leisure, both of which are a foreshadowing of the rest man shall possess in the Beatific Vision.

I've done a bit of work on it (not enough for how late it feels). I am very pasionate about this topic though, so it shouldn't be too hard to make myself work on it. All it will take is a bit of dicipline and making myself work in all of the hours during the week that I have blocked out for it.

New Zealand is still the plan. G. and I keep telling each other that we need to e-mail them and request more information... Right now homework, thesis and everything else I keep runing off to do (such as running off to San Fran, or DC) keeps getting in the way.

hehe, this was supposed to be a short note, because he wanted to look at pictures from today's Ren faire. But he seems to be occupied with instaling anti-virus stuff on his new toy... (yes, I am out in DC at the moment... he helped to fly me out for a visit... *sigh* but I have to go back tomorrow...)

I am feeling down and I can't really say quite why... It probably has something to do with having to ask my parents for a loan that I won't be able to repay until sometime next summer... I think it might have been possible to make it through the year with out borrowing money- if I simply stopped doing everything else and simply holed up here on campus. I would become rather depressed and go nearly crazy, but at least I would not be further in debt.
*sigh*
Money is evil...

It's the first of October... I don't know where the time has gotten to. It is already to the point in the year when I can look down the road and count off the weeks until the year is ended and name off the activities that are filling almost all of those weeks. I feel like my life is slipping through my fingers and I am not being able to do anything about it. So I am trying to do the most with it. That is in part why I asked for money - there is so much I want to be doing while I am still here. And doing requires funds, which at the moment, are sorely lacking... So am I being selfish or imprudent? I don't know... I don't think so - but I am getting the feeling that my parents think I am. (Though I generally get the feeling that my parents disapprove of my decisions... well perhaps "withhold judgment" is more accurate...)
*sigh*
perhaps those who say money is the root of all evil are right...