magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

the following comes out of a conversation i had with chris.k last night. we were sitting in the living room in the dark, watching the storm outside.

in high school, when i was trying to deal with my chronic depression, someone asked me what i enjoyed doing, because of course, doing things that i enjoyed would take the edge off of all the negative feelings. but i couldn't come up with anything. i couldn't think of a single thing that i enjoyed doing.

when chris was asked yesterday what he does for fun, he didn't know what to say. "and that should be such a simple question to answer," he says to me later.

and i've run up against these things again when trying to deal with my procrastination. i may have worked harder this past year than i ever have in my life, but i still feel like the biggest slacker in the world. i procrastinate everything. even the things that i want to do for fun. things like writing, and drawing, and reading.

and this is why i watch so much tv when i go home. tv takes absolutely no motivation. and very little effort. and sometimes it's artistic, and sometimes you learn something, but mostly it just fills up the time that i wouldn't otherwise have any inkling of how to fill. i'd rather be reading, of course, but reading is so hard. making the words stay in the correct order takes so much effort.

except for comics. comics are easy. and i don't even look at the pictures when i read comics. i just read the text, and then i go back and look at the pictures when i'm done. "that's what i really want to do with my life," i say

"comics? so why are you studying architecture?"

to paraphrase the "statement of purpose" that i wrote for my risd application, it's all about creating magical spaces. be they virtual, or built, or with words and pictures. or temporary.

a couple of years ago i was having this same conversation (about what i enjoyed doing) with er!n. and it occurred to me, that in high school, what i truly enjoyed doing was building theatre sets. when i was in the theatre, everything else didn't matter. all my problems, and supposed problems, and things i thought were problems, didn't exist. it occurred to me in the course of that conversation, that that was what i really wanted to do. build sets.

of course instead of pursuing that, i moved to texas.

and spent a lot of time sitting in my apartment, talking with my roommate. chris is afraid that no one would ever be interested in someone who sits around in dark rooms and has these sorts of pseudo psychological / philosophical conversations. (we've been talking about relationships too.) and while i agree that we could probably both use to be more fun, i actually enjoy these sorts of conversations.

so what do i enjoy doing? reading comics. building theatre sets. sitting in the dark and talking.