In 2003, Lieutenant Dan Choi graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point.  The Academy hopes to graduate “commissioned leader(s) of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country.”  Immediately upon graduating, Lt. Choi lived up to these values.  Fluent in Arabic, he served as a platoon leader, a battalion and brigade staff officer, and a reconstruction engineer serving in South Baghdad, Iraq, known as the Triangle of Death.  He returned home after his tour of duty humbled by those along side whom he had worked.  But while in the States, something changed.
    Lt. Dan Choi fell in love.
    But Lt. Choi fell in love with a man.
    Under 10 USC 654, commonly known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, anyone who “demonstrate(s) a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts” is prohibited from serving in the armed forces of the United States because "it would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.”  Enacted in 1993, the policy was viewed as  a compromise measure and was crafted by Colin Powell under the approval of then president Bill Clinton. Lt. Choi was forced to conceal his first love from his closest family, friends, and most importantly, fellow soldiers.
    The United States National Guard soldiers creed includes the phrases “I will never quit.” and “I will never leave a fallen comrade.”  The US Marine recruiting website states that “you will be measured not by what you have...Not by your strength but your honor.”  Each branch of the armed forces promote similar morals among its recruits and soldiers.  Above all in the military, honor is upheld as one of the highest virtues.  Such belief contradicts directly with the idea behind “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.  Under DADT, soldiers are told to lie directly to those around them, conceal themselves from the men and women alongside whom they work, fight and possibly die every day.  The value of honor is compromised directly by orders from the institution that values it so highly.
    Faced with a difficult morale decision, Lt. Choi decided to remain true to those values he had learned at West Point and among his fellow soldiers in Iraq.  On March 19th, Lt. Choi appeared on “The Rachel Maddow Show” and said three simple words: “I am gay.”  A month later, the Army notified Lt. Choi that it had begun discharge proceedings against him, claiming that he had “negatively affected good order and discipline in the New York Army National Guard”.
    Despite President Barack Obama’s promise to end the 15-year-old DADT policy on January 13th, its rule remain effective.  A model soldier such as Lt. Choi, who was one of only eight soldiers from his graduating class who majored in Arabic and fought bravely in one of the most dangerous locations within Iraq, is still dishonorably discharged at a time when each soldier matters in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has failed our service members by undermining the ideals, people and military in all forms.  It forces good soldiers to hide themselves in isolation from their fellows, and possibly lead to depression and suicide.  No one is able to reconcile DADT with the high value all soldiers place on honor.  Lt. Dan Choi should be exalted for his loyalty to this country’s highest ideals.
    On October 11th, schools, groups, and individuals around the world with be involved in National Coming-Out Day, including Northwestern’s own Rainbow Alliance.  People around the world will be revealing their sexual orientation and showing pride for who they are. Equality Across America will be leading a march on Washington, DC to promote equal protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in all matters of civil law in all fifty states.  Lt. Dan Choi supports and encourages this march.  Hopefully this national and powerful demonstration will lead to the reforms long overdue in our great nation.  And at the forefront of the repeals? Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

 Currently, I am typing this entry with my voice. No hands. Just sound.

 Okay, I do have to press enter when I want a new paragraph. However I got the software today and I'm still learning the voice commands.

 Since my entry, I've been seeing a therapist at the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder clinic at Duke. And if I may say so,  life has made a lot more sense. I've always been focused on organization, because if I don't organize I forget important people, dates, and tasks. And those are rarely forgotten with impunity. Behavioral psychology explains my morbid fear of forgetting things I don't write down. But now, I have someone -- someone professional -- who notices my flaws and asks me questions, probing to help me find solutions. And with her guidance, I've been able to find solutions to my many problems of efficiency. It's been worth it simply because my stress is less.

 I've known for a while that I write best with a pen and paper. The physical feeling of writing, the motion of my hand, is enough to focus me on what I want to say. I've drafted all my best papers, and all my best thoughts, on paper. That's why I don't think this journal is my best writing. But the problem with writing on looseleaf is that I have to transcribe it into a document on a computer and that is tedious, and contrary to the way my mind works. Through the miracles of modern technology, I have found this software and can read whatever I write right onto the computer screen.

 As I speak, I feel as though I have a debilitating muscle disorder, and unspeakable power.

I ordered custom jewelry for it too.  Basically a single spiral going though both holes.  But the internet was right - snugs HURT!

Also, I stretched my lobes from a 22 to a 14.  Which stings.  And makes me squeal like a girl.  Oddly enough, now that I've had lobe earrings (hereafter referred to as "earrings"), I've been feeling feminine.  I've got matching ball closure rings (14g, duh) through both lobes. They are the first dangly earrings I've worn since....graduation? A year and a half ago?  And having relatively feminine earrings in makes me feel...feminine.  I've felt more like a girl in the past two days than I have in years - and that includes the recent "birthday dinner" I went out to with Max.  And that was a formal date, appropriate dress and suit and all!

I'm waking up at 4am tomorrow to hop a plane to JFK and a bus to Montreal.  I'm spending eight days with none other than Peter/Franck.  We're going to nerd it up, starting projects and finishing projects, and generally being quite fantastic.  I made some huge errors planning the trip but it's happening (and for under $300!) and I'm thrilled.

I know that this trip is the last relaxing time I get before the transition to NU.  I know the last week and a half Sveta is going to be in town.  All of my friends except Max and Katy will be away at school.  And I'm going to be panicking.  And honestly, love Sveta, but she never ever ever listens to anyone ever. And the week before I head to college is not the time when I can focus on her and her desires to travel. 

Oh Canada.  Take me away!

 I don't normally use this phrasing, but I have a mental disorder.

Attention Deficit Disorder is in the DSV-IV, although officially as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. I've been diagnosed since third grade, thanks to the wonderful teacher that I've had at the time.  I've struggled with medication (mostly the side effects) but since the diagnosis, I have been thriving at school and beyond.

I have not been thriving.  I excelled at school. But I realize now that more went on that I did not realize.  Throughout high school I battled a feeling of utter confusion.  I had my schedules, my lists.  Every other week I had another way of organizing my life, writing down every thought so that it would not escape, posting brightly colored pictures of events, and writing encouraging signs to myself in order to remember testing strategies.  Each would receive obsessive attention, work,  and be replaced with another technique within days.

I survived because I obsessed.  I have a morbid fear of disappointing people.  And I struggled desperately to hide how disappointing I was.  No practice or habit ever survived in my life for more than a few weeks.  Regardless of my location, school was always on my mind.  Terrified, I knew that if I stopped thinking for one second, all the dates and facts and skills would vanish.  Paper and pen were the only way to preserve any information.  My mind was a black hole, and I hated it.  My thoughts controlled me constantly.  I would sit down, determined through and through to write my paper.  Methodically, researching deeply.  And after three sentences, my mind would think "What math homework do I have?" and unwilling, my body would draw my soul in the direction my mind had suddenly turned.  I worked in the middle of my floor, surrounded by every piece of paper I had written on that year.  Once every five minutes I would rotate to study a new subject, completely abandoning the previous mid thought or sentence.  I was successful, yes, but I knew I was a fraud.  Those around me achieved success through discipline and hard work.  I was always amazed at the success I managed.  I had put in an equal amount of time, but so shallowly. How could I have studied any topic in depth when it received only minutes of attention at a time?  The world saw what I produced and cheered, while I saw my potential, my intent, what should have been produced instead, all my passion abandoned and starved and I cried in shame.  My desires spanned such a large width, how could I be anything but inches deep in anything?  

Each day was a house of cards built on a foundation of sand.  Vacationers wandered by to enjoy, but I stared in horror, waiting for gusts of wind and tides that came and left me weeping over physics projects and history papers.  I felt so detached, trapped in a body and mind that I honestly could not control at times. That I could not control when I most wanted to.  I felt insane.

I found something today.

A book.  A genius book.  "Delivered from Distraction".  It told me exactly what I had been feeling for so long.  It described how hard I had been fighting, and feelings I thought could never become words.  That deep pain that I thought came with being human.  Something I never thought I could change.

More than anything, knowing that something I've known all along - I have ADD - could really be the cause behind everything else.  It's not just that I have trouble focusing sometimes.  All my worry and fear, my obsessions, my conflicting emotions and spectrum of ideas.  It's explained.  And more than that, it can become my asset.  There are ways of relearning how to learn, how to work, how to think, that will free me from my house of cards.

But it's the knowing that I'm explained.  It gave me so much hope.

 The Twitter Project begins, but only because Franck is now on the team.

I told him the ending.

People in Canada never share secrets.

***WARNING: crazed irrational rant to follow***

Okay kiddies.

Maybe it's because I've been living in a house with a dog that I'm 87% sure is going to rip my face off at any moment  (no, really, I spend eleven minutes of every hour in that house crying), but how is Twilight popular?

Don't worry.  It's a rhetorical question.

It's nothing more than bad fantasy mixed with bad teenage soap opera.  The relationships are shallow, the dialogue is unrealistic and involves characters stating their motivation to the camera ("I'm torn between loving you and eating you!!").  The story just jumps over big things (Why is the vampire family going to school again and again?  Why do they accept Whatshisface's love for Unenthusiastic Trap when she has nothing to offer any of them, puts them in useless danger and he's only into her because he can't read her mind (there's nothing to read) and her blood is specially seasoned?  Why are the other vampires posing as foster children AND openly dating each other if they are trying to maintain a low profile?)  Emo and monotone are the whole universal acting elements.  And impossible stakes (1) issues surrounding immortality 2) at any moment half the cast is going to eat Trap) are just brushed aside. 

It's just bad acting and bad writing.

And don't even get me started on the tech aspect. (DEAR GOD SOMEONE EXPLAIN WHY THE ENTIRE MOVIE EXCEPT FOR ONE RANDOM SCENE IN A RESTAURANT WAS COLORCORRECTED TO LOOK AS IF IT WAS SHOT UNDER FLORESCENT LIGHTING???  NOTHING LOOKS GOOD UNDER FLORESCENT LIGHTING!!)

And now for the rhetorical answer.

The movie is popular because Whatshisface is romantic.  Unentusiastic Trap is his monotone soul mate.  And once women start bleeding monthly, they start looking for someone who will stick around to raise their children daily.  Myself included.  All my romantic urges are powered by my evolutionary and biological desire to procreate, continue the species and give my kids the best chance of survival by finding a dad to stick around.

Romances never deal with longterm relationships.  Just stupid mistakes that make women think the man isn't suitable to protect the kids from predators.  Issues of longlasting love, human happiness derived from the interactions in our deepest relationships.  THe things that separate us from the animals isn't our sudden infatuation - it's how we can be happy with someone just sitting on a porch. 

Nope.  Just good kissing and saying the right thing.  That's what makes a movie popular with the ladies.

I'm not blaming Twilight for its fanbase.  I'm definitely blaming Twilight for its shitty self, but the idiot girls who plaster their walls with Whatshisface's face are a different matter.  I even find myself among them at times.

But I would like to propose my own future experiment.  Once I get a big budget.

To make a movie - well or badly made yet to be determind - in which the main character is stunningly goodlooking.  Through the movie he finds his soulmate, protects her from evil, sweeps her off her feet, the whole shabang.  But inbetween those times, he plunders villages, tortures chiildren, rapes women, and eats babies. And the woman knows, and just stares lovingly into his eyes.  As long as he pulls out some adorable hattrick at  some public venue, publically declaring his love, she'll go back to him.

I want to see if the same bimbo reaction occurs.

 I worked at work.

That's weird.

Michael Jackson died.

That's weird.

I drove to a movie theater.
I got a ticket.
I sat in Theater Three.
Other people sat there too.
We all watched a movie that I wrote, directed and produced.

That's....weird.

 I've never seen a pair of eyes I didn't think was sad.

 

 And yet again, I prove myself to be the biggest idiot I know.

It's about time.  I was almost self confident, there.

 I curl around my monitor.  His arms embrace his somewhere else.  We twist together, grab phones and push buttons together.

Go.

If you see the same things, do you think the same thoughts? We whisper in each other's ear across the miles. I spend my evening dreading the morning while he monitors the light.  

My thoughts are not complete here.

I sat on the remote and pressed mute on my voice.  I smile and wave and dance and have nothing to say.

I'm going to get my strength back.  I'm going to get stable, get ready.  Get going, get on, get more, get better, get old, get buzzed, get mauled, get gutted, get get gotten gone.

And right before Northwestern, I'm going to get a hair cut and dye it for the first time all summer.  And I will know, for nothing else could happen.

I have two goals this summer:

1. Develop discipline in the areas that I want to improve, in order to prepare my working habits for NU.  Since I plan to enter into NU with ridiculously high expectations of myself that I will almost certainly never reach, I want to give myself as much advantage as I can before I fail.  Because in my mind, I have no value if I settle for mediocrity, and anything less than perfect (which I have never achieved, not once) is disgrace.  And yet again, I reach towards perfection.

2. Deepen my faith with the hope of reaching a place in God where I finally believe that I am worthy of the unconditional love I receive and do not have to prove my value.

Max and I are beginning a project together.  Zombies.  We did a test shoot on Sunday.

I love me this way.

 Get into the rhythm.

Its harder than it looks.

 Sent in my housing app for NU!

1. Communications Residential College (editing suites, two screening rooms, right next to classes)
2. International Studies Residential College (room with a Russian speaker maybe, chance to practice English)
3. Interfaith Living and Learning Residential Hall (live with other religious crazies!)
4. Chapin Hall - Humanities Residential College (where I stayed during my overnight, they have an ongoing epic waterfight where they have started buying and then rebuilding waterguns to be customized to their preferred style of attack.)
5. Public Policy Residential College (I like arguments and I really want to live in a res college)

I can't wait to learn who my roommate is!  *girlish giggles*

Working officially for Duke Poli Sci again.  An undergraduate and I are conducting the graduate students' experiments while they are gone for the summer.  Plus independent data collection and organization for extra cash.

Plus working with Rain again.  We have so many projects lined up, I cannot wait!  Hands on experience!  It confirms my love of filmmaking.

And yet parents still worry about my money situation.