i hate cooking

What happened to me? I used to claim to like cooking - I didn't know how to cook and I still don't. As a matter of fact, I hate cooking. All those threads on Reddit I degree with. About why would anyone spend all that time and energy doing something boring for only five minutes of eating.

Update

Nature vs. Nurture

I just went to the Greenery with Olivia, Dulcie and Marann. It is Marann's last day here. She's going back to New York State and not returning until next year. Tasha already left for Spring Break and Naomi is going to move out to off campus and not take class during Spring Quarter. Olivia and I leave for Spring Break on Wednesday.
Olivia said she is going to transfer to PSU next year and then transfer back to Evergreen and graduate here the next year. Her saying her plans really inspired me, opened me up to a world of possibility. I thought I was stuck here. Evergreen is really not what I expected it to be. I recalled browsing fancy prestigious girls' colleges on the East Coast during Thanksgiving Break. Olivia really has a plan. I thought I did too -- but it turns out I don't know what I want. I tried to explain what that meant to me when Dulcie asked us what we thought Evergreen was going to be.  and I had trouble describing it. I thought I had finally found where I belonged,That was the whole plot of my adolescence, my Personal Statement... But I guess I still have some figuring out to do. Not even that though, because I thought I already knew who I was. I was so. sure. I had a strong sense of identity before coming to Evergreen... now I just feel frazzled, disoriented, empty, I just don't know myself anymore. I like who I was before. Now I'm no one. I don't like it. I can't stand not being myself every day. I thought coming to Evergreen would only reinforce my beliefs. I can't stand all of this. Life is so drab.
I get panic attacks all the time. There are so many things I don't know or know how to do. I have failed at things, being on my own. I thought I would love living by myself. I don't like living with my family either -- I don't know where I belong. I don't ever feel at peace, no matter where I am. I am not me anymore
Don't even get me started about time. It scares the fuck out of me.
The world seems so small now. It is not magical, no big deal. I looked at the world with awe and wonder before... now, I am so desensitized and nothing really surprises or appalls or phases me anymore. I hate that. I can't feel anything. It takes so much for me to feel normal emotions, and yet it takes so little to feel anxiety or panic. Today I went on a jog around the soccer field like I like to do, and I looked out onto the field... and I felt a glimpse of that old feeling. I felt the biggness of life, the vastness. There was someone walking across the field, and they were so small compared to the field. I wish the world was like that field again. I was doing PMNA work today and I hated it at times, it was so boring and it's like I'm It scares me that before, when I was me, I would look at these websites, these institutions, this work, and be starstruck. I would fall in love. I have no capacity for love. I have no passion anymore. They say college is the place where you find yourself; well, I have lost myself.
I was in the Women's Resource Center today and I looked at some books in the library. I wish I was a competent reader. There are so many books there that I want to read... Gloria Steinem, fertility resources, responses to the Men's Rights Movement (I've been researching MRA viewpoints and have developed a huge crush on this one MRA on YouTube named Josh O'Brien, he's so dreamy... we will have a son named Oliver, I've decided).... Maybe the problem is that the covers look really good but when you open the book, it is intimidating as fuck. That's what happened to me today. I want to read these books but I know I never will, or at least not any time soon. There was a time when I had ambition. Now I just come to terms with the fact that I will never have my shit together to read these books like I want to. I wish I could love reading like Josh O'Brien does. My new life goal is to have sex with this guy, I've declared.
I had sex with some high schooler I met on Tinder last night. It occurred to me that this was my first encounter with someone not out of high school, including myself. It seemed so strange to me. Can the two mix? Sex was only something I dreamed about in high school; I never imagined that a high schooler would be competent enough. I don't know, like sex was something so incredibly out of reach and the two worlds don't mix. High School and sex life were two different dimensions that couldn't exist simultaneously: they were mutually exclusive. I don't feel like an adult. But I don't feel like a high schooler. I don't feel like myself. I don't feel.
Someone posted in the Graduating Class of 2015 Facebook group asking what everyone has been up to since graduating last spring. I read through everyone's comments... people are moving all over the place, getting engaged, completing trainings and getting relocated for the military, buying houses, getting legit-ass jobs.... I don't know what to say about this. I'm kind of indifferent. My old self -- my self -- would be proud of my peers and write a poignant blog post about it, like the one about my 18th birthday. But like I said, nothing phases me. It takes a whole lot of stimulus to trigger me; it's like I have pornography-induced erectile dysfunction and can't get it up with an actual partner. Er, wait. Yes I just made that analogy. Deal with it.
Remember when a kiss was a big deal? I kiss everybody all the time now. And I don't feel anything. That scares me. Will I ever feel the joy and wonder and excitement and mystery of the world ever again? I remember my mom saying the last time I saw her that she actually believes "being promiscuous" is damaging to oneself. But the thing is I don't know how to love. I am making up for lost time not ever getting any action in high school.
I saw Julian in the Greenery today when I was having dinner with my suitemates.
My mind feels bigger than my life, time travels too fast that I feel like time has become an illusion and this could be last September or in the future and I wouldn't know the difference. I can't become absorbed by one thing, I always am outside of myself. I think that is nature -- as opposed to nurture -- because I've felt this way more and more gradually since sixth grade; when my brain starts developing.

My Evergreen Dream

I used to believe that the universe has a force that either hates you or likes you.

All aspects of your life followed this swinging in and out, there was a rhythm, a yin and yang.

Now life has no meaning. I feel hopeless. All. The. Time.

Sometimes I get glimpses back to my old life, like today when I was reading my old blog from a year ago, and I feel the magic that life had. I don't know what happened.
I was positive, I could feel it: this is where I belong. This was going to be the best year of my life. I was feeling everything falling into place... Intuition.
Depression for no reason. So many things are going perfectly in my life, but I can't get psyched about it. I am sad all the time and I don't know why.
I recently lost my job with the Food Systems Working Group. Two years ago I would have taken that as a sign, that I got involved in the perfect opportunity right away, a dream come true... and then it not be what I thought it was going to be, not vibe with the work, and end up being fired. I would have taken that as a sign. That the universe hates me.
I have lost my passion. For anything. Over Winter Break I worked on my beautiful planner, but I felt like I was just going through the motions. I remember looking at the glorious binder and being like, I don't feel anything. This fat booklet is what I have been dreaming about and working for since last year, and yet it brings me no joy.

1. Jacques and Tasha. I had sex with Jacques on the third day of being at Evergreen. As the school year progressed, he started dating my suitemate, Tasha. I would always see him in my suite and he and his friends regarded me with awkwardness and immaturity. I am the one-night hook-up, guys really want girls who they can be friends with. I don't know how to make friends. I guess some things never change. I think that's why I like pole dancing so much; it takes away having to talk; it lets you communicate with your body and movement... I much prefer that method of communication to actual talking. 
2. Anthropocene. Everything seems so much smaller. Nothing has wonder.
3. I miss my family. Which is understandable emotionally but not mentally. I thought I could manage grief of drastic change in a healthy way. I thought I was over the hump of the realization that my life is going to go through the biggest change it has ever gone through. 
4. Turning it off, like with Mom. Emotional numbness.
5. "College Hyper Speed." No familiarity, no home. The people I know I have only known for a short time and will only know for a short time more. Friends move around. I will live in this room for one year and move out, and then move out of my next apartment after one more year. I finally am a gypsy, but I don't like it. It is not romantic or empowering, it is uncertain and scary. 
6. Sex, marijuana, alcohol, exposure to other "adult things." I have friends who are 25. I had a wine tasting unit in class in addition to drinking at dorm parties. I have slept with so many guys. EVERYONE at Evergreen smokes marijuana and/or psychedelics, for the record. There is a world of a difference between under and over eighteen. A year ago, my 23-year-old cheer coach was so high above me. She was professional, out of reach, distant... she was an adult. Now, I have friends who are older than her. I have slept with guys closer to her age than mine. I worked on a class project with a 26-year-old classmate. I'm in her peer group now. I'm an adult.
7. I experimented with cannabis, and I have a hunch that it can explain why I am depressed and anxious all the time. 

Is my Evergreen Dream still alive? Can it still take place and be a reality? Perhaps if I think of myself as a gypsy, that romanticized idea of a young woman moving away by herself to follow her dreams.... I could be more at peace. Maybe if I remind myself more often what it was like to be that dreamy, ambitious, grateful, starry-eyed girl I was before coming here.

My Reality Check

I just had a meeting with my outgoing Real Food Calculator campaign leader and mentor Jesse, and she said she was worried about my capabilities as the Vice Chair of the Food Systems Working Group. My motto this year was to just jump in, and that's what I did. It was overwhelming and intimidating, but I got up courage and took risks. But even if people are strong swimmers, if the currents are too strong, they still drown.
Sometimes I need to know when to step back. It's difficult to know my limits though. Steve, one of my professors, recently said to me to deny more projects to take on so I don't spread myself to thin. "You get really good at doing a shitty job at a lot of things, instead of doing a really good job at a few things." He was gesturing to my new internship at Permaculture Magazine North America. Oddly enough, my other motto was "You can do anything, but not everything." That's why I stopped writing in this blog.
This year I found myself a small entity in a vast, cold empty void. I had a lot of things to do but didn't know where to start. I ended up soothing my poor overwhelmed brain with free days of knitting in my dorm and listening to Lana Del Rey and Marina and the Diamonds.
I became hopeless. I wasn't passionate anymore, I didn't know what was going on. Health problems layered on top of school and work. I became depressed for no reason. I have everything I've always wanted but I am not phased by any of it. The world suddenly looked meaningless to me.
The difference is, I love my internship job. So much better than the FSWG job. We don't do anything in FSWG - we just talk about everything - and work in the magazine industry is so fast-paced and we get things done. I have specific tasks that I know the purpose of.
My other professor, Sarah, scared me shitless the other day when I was asking her questions about my ILC project: "No, you can't do this. You're not ready for that." She was basically yelling at me. In the real world, you need to grow a thick skin. I was aware of this. I am working on it.

After a Quarter at College

I just finished vomiting the contents of my heart out onto my mother. It was awesome. I felt so refreshed afterwards, almost like I was my old self again for a moment. Sometimes I try to write what I'm thinking because I need to release my thoughts and I feel like if I work them out and organize them I will be more put together and what will result is a powerful, effective piece of writing. My brain goes too fast for my hands to type. Or my brain works in a scattered random way and my page ends up being a list of random thoughts. Or sometimes I don't even know what genre I'm writing in, where I can't decide if this should be a blog post or a poem... or if it will be more effective read on a page or heard out loud. This time the predecessor to the written word had to have been speech.

I don't know shit about art. Do I have the right to enjoy music when I don't understand it? The only thing they teach us to analyze in school is literature (which is taught because it is an extension of reading and writing which are basic core subjects we learn in elementary school, yet it is an analysis class, which ergo I argue is an art class, I digress). I also learned to an extent how to analyse music because I was in band. I wasn't in AP Music Theory, but I was in band, so I did learn some about how to analyse music. And there is a lot of information no one knows about. There is a scientific theory behind music. Contestants on The Voice should sing and be rich and famous because they have the "talent." In any other field, for someone to be that successful, they would have had to go through years of schooling, extensive experience... but our culture capitalizes on image, and marketing milks boy bands for every teenage girl's mom's dollar (ahem, my sister...). Can I decorate my dorm with minimalist hipster canvas art that only mimics the ingenuity of DIY Culture from Office Depot of trendy symbols like the "&" sign plastered against a white 6 x 6? What does that sign even mean in this context?? And what?? It is literally just a swirly symbol of the word "and" randomly placed in my bedroom! Is it supposed to be some sort of romantic gesture to literature or journaling? Is it supposed to symbolize connection? Hopefully by now you can see that sometimes I wish I would stop thinking quite so much and go back to living in ignorant bliss in my bubble of a world filled with meaningless swirly gold "&" symbols.
What if I had been taught to analyze, say, paintings instead of novels? I don't know why certain colors look good together--I don't know the logic behind it. And I know there is a science: I had a taste of it when I was really interested in fashion design when I was in fifth grade. I had a design book that taught all about different styles, techniques, prints and the color wheel. So there has to be more than that. Can anyone just put on an outfit, or do you have to be qualified in order to look good?
Moreover, do I have the right to enjoy music if I don't understand it? There are some popular songs that I do like. Can I indulge in cheap pop culture if I like it or am I just manipulated by market?
It is immoral to eat animals, but it is how the world works and we just need to accept it. The wrong thing to do is the correct thing to do, and it depresses me. We can be happy or we can be real. The act of eating itself has become a tragic oxymoron.
I feel like I'm floating. Floating with my thoughts... I feel so distant from everything, with my mirror. I almost expect to wake up into my old life tomorrow. At the same time, I am having a harder and harder time remembering what my old life was like. It seems so foreign now. This is reflected from my physical existence: I am in my first year of college, swinging back and forth from my dorm at Evergreen to my parent's house in Sequim. I don't have a home. This is kind of what I wanted--a gypsy, living on a dream and a dream alone, my spirit enough to sustain me. I guess my young adult idealist girl ambition wasn't enough.


During this talk/vent with my mother, I realized a few things:
1. This is called thinking critically. It is what liberal arts schools are supposed to teach. This is what's supposed to happen when I go to Evergreen. Phew.
2. I say, "I feel like I'm braking everything I used to be down and starting from scratch." My mother says, "I don't think you're starting from scratch. I think you are growing."

Turns out I'm not always right. Turns out intuition is bullshit. Turns out that feeling was wrong.

Last year, whenever I would tour colleges, I would get an overwhelming feeling of anxiety. "I am scared." I wrote a whole blog post about this phenomenon. Every thought would end abruptly with a quick dismissal, leaving my brain empty and lost, like a mousetrap snapping the thought away. Now, I have that feeling to some degree every day of my life. College is like a radioactive magnet that turns my brain into a frantic mess the more I get near it. I am not passionate and ambitious and grateful and wholesome like I used to be. I have seen the real world now. I am tainted. Snap!
College is where you open up your mind to new ideas. I fear that I am questioning too much that I am going backwards.
When I would get bored and/or homesick, I would do one of my old dances from a company I used to be in. Now that I am home, I still do that dance. I was home again, but a piece of me is still missing. I was not homesick; I want my old life back.
When I climb the stairs, I go right out of habit towards my old room only to remember that I don't live there anymore.
"How is college?"
"Is it everything you wanted it to be?"

The people I meet at Evergreen are some of the ugliest people I've ever met. Yarden has hideous skin and is chubby. Emily has glowing skin and some extra pushin' for the cushion. What we look like and our health is luck of the draw. I have put all my faith in food to fix all my problems.
The fifties was a gilded time, a facade.
I fear that my career choice is based on a lie.
I am not passionate about things I used to love. I spent all day yesterday papercrafting in my planner. As I looked at it, full and fat with gorgeous goodies, just like I dreamed of since last year, I felt nothing. It was just like the plannergirls' planners that I would ogle over all the time last year. I have everything I wanted, and yet why am I so sad? I go through the motions.
Sex is the only thing I. When I fell sad, I just think I'll have some more sex and I'll feel better about myself. Like I am doing what I am sure of. People don't think of women when they think sex addiction.
And that's another thing. I lost my virginity four months ago, a month before I started at Evergreen. Sex is something that I have always knew would be my savior. The first time was everything I wanted it to be.
I have experienced strange health problems. I sometimes get lightheaded for no reason. I get anxious, sometimes nearly to the point of panic attacks.