Last night, after typing my last entry, I stood outside my college, watching the lightning flicker across the lake. I've never seen thunderstorms in February, although it's been unseasonably warm. I managed to get halfway home before the rain came pounding down, making it difficult to see even with the windshield wipers on "high". I found myself speeding to get home, away from the downpour. This morning, the fog swirled around the streetlamps in the predawn glow. Passing them on the highway as we sped toward the city, I wondered at the difference.
I've actually started reading other online diaries, and have come up with a new mental disease--Journal Syndrome. Some of these people will tell you in detail about their eating and sleeping habits. Others will continually mention how boring their lives are. Still others will philosophize endlessly about the mentality of people who write online diaries. Some do all of that. Do these people really have nothing to do? Do they really find dullness enthralling?
I usually have problems writing faithfully in this diary, simply because I am so busy. For me, more than anything else, this is an exercise in responsibility. My friends read this site to keep current about what's going on around here (especially the ones that are off to college) or just for shits and giggles. They don't want to be updated every time I go to the bathroom, nor do they want a complete listing of every song I've heard in the course of the day. And, hell, I don't want to know what time I woke up and went to bed. Thinking about it depresses me.
I also try to steer away from putting my poetry on the site. It's a cheap way to get your work shown...but really, there are a lot of poetry sites on the Web. And most of them are awful. Mediocre poems about vampires, pathetic love poetry, and poems of gross self-glorification. Who needs it? I'll stick to reading the work of published poets, thank you.
I'm thumbing through Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil), looking for a poem to send to my friend. He's one of the few people I met online that I still talk to. I feel, lately, as though the distance that has been growing between us is unsurmountable. I do not know what to do. I do not know what to say. I'm not certain what he saw in me in the first place, and apparently I've lost whatever it was that made him value my conversation.
Oooh, Alex is all spiffed-up today. There's an awards ceremony, and he's being presented with an award. I'm not sure what it's for, but maybe they're acknowledging the fact that he doesn't sit at his desk and openly pick his nose anymore. He sent out a very incoherent e-mail to the rest of the staff, begging us to come see him in "his moment of glory." I'm so lucky. I can't go, because I have to cover the front desk while he's gone.
I just noticed that Dirk signed my guestbook. Isn't it wonderful when your boyfriend takes an interest in your side-projects? One day, I swear, someone I don't already know is going to sign that guestbook.