How nerdy am I?

So, you know the Potter project I'm working on this summer? Well, I'm doing some really broad research, just trying to see what kinds of papers have been written about the Potterverse. I don't want to put hours of time and effort into this paper just to find out that it's already been written. Thankfully, I haven't found anything close to what I'm doing yet, though I'm sure that at least someone has written about it.

Anyway, I was doing my research and I found an article from a book that was analyzing the score of the films. The entire book had articles like that, analyzing fantasy cinema and scores. So I requested the book through the school library just because it sounded like a really fun read.

That's how nerdy I am.

I'm going to count today as a loss.

I just have a sneaking suspicion that when I get home, I'm going to put a load in the laundry and then sit around doing absolutely nothing. Ever have those days where you just know that nothing is going to be happening for the rest of the day? Because that's what I'm going to have today. I'm going to go home, nap, and watch stupid television for the rest of the day, I'm just tired and I have a headache behind my left eye that I feel isn't going to go away any time soon.

Am I being the 'crazy girlfriend'?

Okay, so, one of my biggest fears is that someday I'm going the stereotypical psycho girlfriend who freaks out about everything her boyfriend does. That being said, I'm minorly freaking out at the moment.

So, my boyfriend is friends with some of the girls he used to date. In all honesty, I don't have a problem with that. I trust him and him having friends isn't a huge deal to me. But, there's one that he's like *really* close to. Like, she has a nickname for him and only she can call him that and he's told me that she knows more about him than anyone else and he almost proposed to her when they were dating. Being the insecure, paranoid bitch that I am, she terrifies me. It's not that I don't trust my boyfriend, but I'm really insecure and she scares the shit out of me.

Having established that, I read something today. It was an offhand Facebook comment. My boyfriend posted a picture and, I don't know if she's vegan or vegetarian or what, but she was bothered by the picture. That's not the big deal, I understand being bothered by something and wanting to say something. But she was like 'You know that I love you, but I don't like this'. And seeing that she's still so comfortable telling him that she loves him made me go into full-blown panic attack mode. And he started apologizing and saying he'll back off of it and I've been freaking out about this for a few hours now.

So, am I being crazy and paranoid, or am I justified in being uncomfortable with this?

Positive Changes

For years, I've been trying to lose weight. When I say "For years" I mean that I was nine the first time I ever called myself 'fat'. That's kinda fucked up, but that's not the important point. What's important is that I'm finally making some positive changes in my life. I just want to get to a place where I like my body and can wear a bikini without feeling like shit. I want to be able to go shopping for a pair of jeans and not end the night depressed and hating my body. So I'm fixing it.

I've started running and working out in the mornings, and I've started to watch what I eat. It's small steps at first, but I feel really good about what I'm doing. I'm the kind of person who will set a plan for herself and then get super discouraged as soon as I don't rigidly adhere to it, so I've had to work on that. If I don't get up one day to go running, I have to realize that it's not the end of the world and I'll go running again tomorrow.

So yeah, that's going on now and I feel really good about it. Hopefully I'm finally able to stick to it, because I can't count the number of times I've tried and failed to start something like this.

Studious Avoidance

I live in an environment where I'm constantly having to avoid people for fear of angering them or just plain not getting along with them, Today, for example, when I got home from my run, my mother was already storming around pissy about something or other, so I showered and ran upstairs, and I've been hiding up here ever since. 

It's sad that I'm constantly having to sneak around my own house. It's not as if I'm afraid of confrontation, but my mother doesn't really handle things like an adult, so she'll just stomp around and be downright vile for hours and no one will have the slightest clue why. So, I'm staying up here for a while. Hopefully I can hide until I have to go to work.

It's funny how much I work on being out of the house or away from my family. It boils down to the fact that I don't really feel safe around them. Not unsafe physically, but emotionally and mentally. When I hang out with my family, there are usually three things that happen to me. My dad will make a joke at my expense, my mom will get angry at me for something, and my older sister will make a demeaning comment about something I like or something about my academic career. So I try to work as much as possible, and have plans to be out of the house or have Kenny over here with me as much as I can. And when I'm here, I'm up in my room or sitting somewhere with my headphones in.

Summer Projects

I don't know if I've mentioned this or not, but this summer I'm pursuing a few personal academic projects. One of these is a research project looking at the portrayal of mental illnesses in the Harry Potter series.

Basically, I'm arguing that a stigma exists around mental illnesses in the Potterverse, and characters who display mental illness symptoms are seen as weak. I'm focusing on Harry and how he displays a lot of symptoms of depression, including self-harm tendencies and suicidal thoughts.

My argument will mainly focus on books 4-7, but books 1-3 may set up why Harry develops these problems. Anyway, my first step is to read through the series and mark it up. I have colored tabs denoting the different aspects of mental illnesses, like depression, suicide, child abuse, etc.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is to say that I've finished the Sorcerer's Stone. I've tabbed and annotated it and taken notes about specific points. I'm relieved that I've finally made progress on it, so now it's just to get through the rest of the books, hopefully by the end of the summer.