I thought I had better friends than most…?

March 7, 2003

It has been a long week so far. My goal of read/write/read/write hasn’t exactly worked out, but don’t let that fool you; I’m still ahead of the curve. My goal was to have at least 15 pages to turn in next week as my first draft, preferably more, and I have 12 already. Yup, you heard right, twelve pages written already. Aren’t you proud of me? And this is with watching more TV than I usually do and a few movies, too. I plan on getting another three written today, and that would put me at a decent stopping place. I need to go back through what I’ve written and do some straightening up. When I get my language cleared up, I think I might print out a copy of my essay, cut the pages so the paragraphs are separate, and then move them around so I can see the whole paper at once. It’s hard scrolling through your paper when you already have more than six pages single-spaced. I don’t see how authors can do it. Maybe the hardcore writers like Stephen King use separate documents for each chapter, but I guess that would be just as hard. The longest paper I’ve ever written I think turned out to be about 17 pages or so, give or take a few, but this will exceed it by a bit. SO MUCH ORGANIZATION. I don’t think my brain was meant to work this way, honestly. Short quips, short papers. Maybe that means I’m fit to be a top executive and just get executive summaries of information.

So last night I had a big fight with someone over IM, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a resolution either in sight or even possible. The details of the fight are irrelevent and private, but needless to say it’s had me thinking a lot. The person I was talking to “hung up” on me once, called me a liar more than once, and basically told me that my opinion of what we were discussing meant nothing to them, and then they forgave me for upsetting them in the first place. They did what? They forgave me? I offered my thoughts on something that in no way affected either party involved (I was neither of them, by the way), no way insulted either party involved, in no way even put either of the people in a bad light, was based partially on my own experience with similar matters and partially with the experiences of my friends, and the whole thing got thrown back in my face like I was too stupid to understand what was going on and that my thoughts meant absolutely nothing. The other person made it into a big fight like it was a right/wrong situation and I was trying to “win” the argument by being right, but there was nothing to win. It wasn’t that kind of argument. Opinions can be right or wrong, yes, but I was just offering my thoughts as I could see and understand the situation, not forcing an opinion. This is what may be going on. Accept or reject it, I don’t care, but I’m still entitled to have my own thoughts. If I had had misread the situation, all the other person had to do was set me straight. I call things as I see them, but maybe they should have helped me to see the whole picture if there were things I didn’t know about that could have affected my opinion. I thought I could help a friend of mine out, but I can now see that my help was neither desired nor respected. I’ve always taken pride in helping out my friends when they need someone to talk to, but maybe I overstepped my bounds by helping with something I apparently have no understand of. Last time that happens.

I have done a lot of reading this week. Not as much as I would have hoped, but you know, I can’t write without reading. I know what I need to do to make my paper stronger, and I plan on doing that next week. I have plenty of information about immigrants, that’s for sure, but I need more on nationalism, which is the core of my argument. I’ve been using one author that I’m familiar with as my main source of information so far, but I’ll talk to Beth, the teacher I had for my Nationalism and Ethnic Politics class last year to get an idea of some other authors I could seek out. I’m sure I have them written down in my notebook from last year, but I don’t have that here. I just need to connect the immigrant situation with how Amercians felt about them, and bingo, there’s my proof. I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the immigrant condition, but I think it’s all going towards my argument. I’m not extensively writing about the slums that many lived in, but the number coming in (14 million in 20 years!), how they wer esued in society, etc. That’s a lot of connections to make, but I think it’s like playing Boggle on something–you shake all the pieces up, and then with a little nudging, they fall into their prescribed places and you just need to draw the lines. Did I just make a Boggle analogy? OK, I think I’ll stop there.

It’s been a long week, but I’ve gotten a lot accomplished. Still more to do, unfortunately. If I can get to 15 pages today, maybe I’ll take tomorrow off. Or maybe I’ll take today off since it’s already 1:20 PM. I dunno, I’ll have to see how things go. Have a good weekend.

I haven’t shaved or even trimmed my goatee all week. Lookin’ sharp!