The Island of Egypt.

I have to apologize for my lack of posting, communication, or understanding of global events for the past two days. The internet has not been working. And by not working, I mean nowhere. In the entire country. I'm not exaggerating for comic benefit - there was literally no internets in the whole of the country.

Imagine. A whole country. Removed from contact with the rest of the world. For two whole days.

Mabrouk, Masr. You are some kind of genius.

ooofdah, fail.

way to go, Georgia.

In the past month

this is what has happened to my life.

1. I got a new sister.

2. I spent a significant amount of money.

3. I have accomplished no great feats.

4. I realized how homesick I am for Georgia Tech.

5. I fell in love with Russell Brand.

6. I have significantly freaked out more than usual.

7. I have not yet packed, or gotten any closer to packing.

8. I have read no less than seven books.

I leave Sunday for Cairo. Let's hope I don't break down before then.

On my honor I will try.

I vow to not put off my work until the last minute from now on.
Procrastination is not my friend.

yellah Masr.

I'm halfway through my application to AUC's full year program. It's terrifying me.
I hate applications, official looking forms, and the fact that I am putting my life in the system's hands. Eggs in the proverbial basket, so they say. I just hope that there is a basket there when I keep chucking eggs into it because I have no idea what is going to catch them if Egypt falls through.

Meanwhile, I feel like I am waiting for my life to start - and at the same time stuck in a limbo that refuses to let me do anything about it. A limbo of my own making, mind you. It's sad that the time when I really need the motivation and drive that a conference creates, I couldn't get myself to one. I lack everything that I need to move on - drive, determination, motivation. I don't know where I lost it, and I don't know where I can reclaim it, either.
There is this invisible barrier between me and everything I want right now, and I don't think I have what it takes to break it.

Tibet's on fire.

Pictures have an incredible power. This one struck me, much like my visit to Dharamsala did this summer. It is so violent and emotional and it makes me want to move or scream or travel to the other side of the world.

The world is swirling with talk of homelands and people, displacement and responsibility. Discussions around China, the Olympics, and Tibet in the past few days - spurring from anything like Bjork's outburst in Shanghai to Steven Spielberg's abandonment of the Olympic games - continuously remind me of my feeling of...I don't know how to put it...solidarity with the Tibetan people. To be fair, there is still so much I do not know about China, about Tibet, or about their history. And it is not just in the far east that I have found or felt this. The recent news of Israel building new settlements in Gaza also creates a similar feeling within me, simultaneously frustrating and baffling me. Kazakhstan recently mandated a "reteaching" of Kazakh culture and language, a cultural re-education that some have called dangerous. All of Africa is on fire, in a metaphorical term, and constantly people do not know homes, families are being separated or killed, and so many, so many have died. There are still people living in poverty in my own city left over from Katrina, two and a half years ago. The recent procurement of an independent Kosovo has also created a heated debate about the future of the former Yugoslavia.

I tried to explain this to someone - this feeling of confusion and empathy and anger - they were similarly confused, but not as to why people, nations, leaders allow this to happen - but to why I cared. There are people not only pushed from their homes, but their homelands. Cultures are being forgotten, dissolved, I said.
They countered - so what? I have my own problems to deal with. Like whether or not I get money for the alcohol I will be consuming over spring break.
Don't you want to learn about everything that happens beyond your own personal bubble? Or worry about the impact it will make on the world? I ask.
No. They said. And that's fine by me.

I crave to know more, to do more. Always, I want more. I have, since I was little, been trying to learn all I can. I constantly attempt to educate myself - though not always in the way Georgia Tech insists. I want to create an impact, to create a legacy that will change lives and conceptions and nations. I want to be old and look at my life and think that it had been greater than the sum of its parts. This person, in previous conversation, had said that they wanted to live as they did now, with children and grandchildren and never have to leave the country. But how can you not be curious about what happens to everyone else?

Curiosity kills cats, they say.

Well, apathy and megalomania kills everything else.

get off your ass, woman.

or the world's gonna pass you by.

i have to get my act in gear. for real. i have so many choices to make in the next few days, and all i can find myself doing is watching the daily show, scribbling thoughts on the backs of papers, and buying movies without watching them. it's not for lack of things to do, for i have many. i am just avoiding responsibility for my life, which is no bueño, verdad.

i had such focus coming back from India. where has it gone? am i that demotivated that i have lost all interest in the direction of these next few days? weeks? years? lifetimes?
i don't want to disappoint anyone else, disappointing myself is enough, thanks. and i feel like that is all i am doing. i've swam enough circles to drown a dolphin, and beaten enough dead cows to throw me in indian prison.

i just wish i could get back to...whoever i was before i was this.
maybe i should figure out who that was. i need some definite soul searching. but, i don't think i can do it alone.

where are we going? where have we gone?

i love this organization. there is no doubt of my dedication to what we all strive to achieve with it. but it is times like this where i no longer understand why we do what we do. this is not the organization i joined. something has changed, and i wonder if i can fit into that change.

i can't even begin to understand why the hell i am so frustrated right now.

the land between the solar systems

i am lost.

not literally, of course. i can tell between left and right, know the street signs, and can decipher north from south. neither does it mean that i am hopeless or someone to forget.

i am just...lost.

maybe in thought. i have been thinking a lot, it could be debated too much, in the past few days. about the future, about me, about what i want.

i just feel that i start off in one direction, end up backtracking in the other, and then jump into another path before the ink's dry on the first. i'm so flighty and agitated. indescribably so. why? why can't i find a direction for my life, or even my train off thought, for more than ten minutes?

somebody said to me once that i was turning into someone else - it was almost scary. and it kind of killed my night - i am so frustrated with myself for changing in such a way. it has been a fear i voiced before. would all the changes i faced this summer be ones that would be accepted when i got home? apparently not.

i feel apathetic and ADD. and i hate it.

if it ain't this, it's that.

the wheels are spinning. two steps forward is three steps back. i'm digging to climb out of the hole. full speed at a brick wall. treading waist deep water. running forward by jogging backwards. [insert more clichés for futility here].


oh well, this is India.