May 29th 2014

Well, it's been a week or so since last semester, which was the Spring of '14. It had been a particularly painful semester in that I was all alone in my apartment without any friends who came over; I didn't have a large TV, and I had a laptop. It was isolation to the fullest extent, and I would never really feel at peace at my home. Later on during that semester, my dad visited me during lunch hours, typically, which was memorable, because we talked about what our plans are for next semester, my finances, and our vacation plans to visit Mexico and Atlanta, particularly. This conversation mostly entailed how we would not visit until December, repeatedly, as I had asked the same question more than once, which had irritated him. I had hoped we could go visit Mexico City at least--my top choice would be either Acapulco or Cancun, though. I also thought it would be a good idea to go on a bus ride through the scenic mountains on towards the Yucatan penninsula, which is very beautiful and handsome. He said that was impractical because it would take the better part of a day, so if we were to go from Mexico City to Cancun, it would eat up a large portion of the limited time we'd have for vacation with everyone--everyone includes whoever would want to go with us.
This Summer session was going to be different in that I was going to take an English course at the UI for four weeks, but feeling lazy, I decided to drop it--especially since I had worked darn hard the prior Spring semester. No one in my family objected to it after I broke to them the news. In actuality, my grade point wasn't as good as I had reported it to be, on facebook, because I had received a C average. My UI gpa as it stands right now is a C+, though. My relationship with the various professors had been strained that semester, I felt, and I had lost a lot of my will power to do better in those classes because of it. But, I would be unfair to blame everything on them (for essentially killing my desire to learn with their strict policies). I was an idiot to have registered for so many classes at once, thinking myself Godlike or a genius when in actuality I'm not.
What makes this nice month-long vacation before the main Summer session, which starts on June 16th, so nice is that, I will have a chance to visit my mom, sister, stepfather, step-grandparents, and my brother-in-law--Ted. It was rather unplanned, and I sensed right away that people weren't really enthusiastic about my decision to visit for a week and three-fourths. (I would return on the 15th via airplane and then drive back down to Atlanta with my Dad and Marcela on the 18th. How long we would stay there, I don't know, but my sister wants my Dad to stay longer so I guess I will have to stay longer myself too given that I can skip a day of computer science courses if there's no quiz).
I've set a few goals for myself this month-long vacation. One is to lose twenty pounds by reducing my carbohydrates intake and increasing my proteins to the point that my fat percentage is below 10 percent every day. This can be done, but the last few days has been difficult to break from my prior habbit of not thinking about my long-term goals. Second is to finish reading what was required for me to read last semester: Mary Kingsley's Travels in West Africa, William Morris's News from Nowhere, which is a Utopia-themed novel, and lastly, all the readings I was supposed to finish before the final exam for Intro to the English major. I care deeply about my learning, much more than what the grades show. It's just that I take a little bit longer than everyone else to get the job done.

With that said, my long sabbatical, if I may call it such, as a half-informed musician due to being there half the required time to receive my degree from the well-esteemed Florida State University school of music has helped me be more creative than ever. Perhaps I had written and composed more music with my lowly status as an uneducated, unproven pianist, than I would have had I stayed in the music program, giving the piano faculty my all, we'll never know.

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