Alright, I'll admit it; I'ma Metal Ox, and my adopted father never missed an opportunity to shake his head in disappointment that, "You're stubborn as an ox," a Metal Ox, to be exact. And, as you can tell, I used to think that he was always insulting me, which he was and wasn't. I am stubborn, and stubbornness, like all things, has multiple facets to its "is-ness."
With that said, my Metal Ox did her thing last week.
As a thirty-eight-year-old woman (i am nearly across the finish for another lap, but i ought not jinx myself by proclaiming too loudly that i am nearly my-next-age, etc., the humbler the better, as one ages, i've deduced, as i've aged, etc.), I know better than to reason with the Ox. She is stubborn, stubborn as a Metal Ox. And so, I had to just sort of go on with my life, knowing that she's putting up a fight for some reason while acknowledging and remembering that this train needs to keep moving forward. I am stubborn toward reaching my goals, also.
With all the diligence I could muster, I suffered through a week of that goddamn GRE test-prep book. Fighting against myself every day for a week.
And then, my Metal Ox went from digging her heels in to outright sitting her fat-ass down. Any attempt to sway her was futile. And so, I surrendered. In so many words, I told her that she'd won; we will not be doing any GRE math today, and I wrote some fiction instead.
[begin fiction from that day]
She looks up, and directly overhead, the moon shines bright, and as she tilts her head up, up, upward toward the moon's fat face, around the rim of her sights are the trees that line the island of magic, and as she swings her eyeballs around their sockets, she sees the moon as the nipple of a giant tree-boob.
How could she inherently know or understand that she is a nonlinear time traveler? First, it would require the existence of another nonlinear time traveler to bump into her so that she could be recognized as such, one imagines. Also, she lived linearly for a long long time without knowing that she could live nonlinearly but more importantly, that she has.
&Find out she did, cause find out one must, cause when the past &or future comes to haunt you, it's best to know what happened. Although, to be honest, she's pretty sure she's never actually traveled to her future, cause she's fairly certain that she's from "the future" from whenever she consciously remembers existing, etc., and so, she's generally confident that she has yet to "return" to from when she came, etc. Nevertheless, she has become aware of the fact that she is a nonlinear time traveler, in this current lifetime in which she's existing, etc.That being said, she finds it difficult to wrap her mind around the fact that all people do not travel through time nonlinearly. This was, obviously, the assumption she had in her head about all of this, for many many years, and yet, the Truth is that it's very rare to encounter a nonlinear traveler of time, and she's not yet quite sure as to why that is. She has her theories, obviously, but they are all trite and rudimentary, etc.Her homunculus is a shining beacon of her Metal Ox"Stubborn" is the word familiarShe learned the lessonsShe lived the taleand yetShe strives to acquire that which she stands againstThe unfairness of it allThat cruel & "infinite jest"But it's not a jest.
[end fiction from that day]
And then the bodybuddy/lifemate and I went for a run, and on this run, I admitted a lot of things out loud. Some of which revolved around the fact that I felt like I was wasting my time studying all of this stupid math for the GRE. I couldn't admit this out loud, because I didn't want to sound like I was copping out. I wanted to do this thing that I said I would do, and what this thing requires is my brushing up on my math skills. I'd also been lacking a lot of confidence with regards to taking the GRE because of the math. I honestly think that I could do alright, and I even know that the math portion isn't even that important, because I'm trying to go to law school, not medical school, or whatever.
And then I admitted that I felt really stupid for not just looking into the LSAT right away. The test has no math section.
When you begin the law school application process, the entire process basically begins with your LSAT score, and yet, I was, for some reason (namely I had already purchased a GRE test-prep book, so I didn't want to waste the money, ugh, being poor sucks!) going against the grain. I don't have an existing GRE score. I've never taken any standardized tests for a graduate-level education. Why was I so fixated on suffering through the GRE?
And so, if I'm already spending the time studying a subject for a standardized test, shouldn't I simply study the subject that I hope to study in school? So I perused the LSAT for Dummies at our local B&N, and then I answered a few questions outta the practice tests, and I got the right answer to all of them. Not that I feel confident that I will do well, but at least the LSAT will actually test the skills I "need" to succeed at law school, theoretically. Whether or not I do well should suggest whether or not law school is really for me or not. But I gotta say, the questions were right up my alley. The sections of the test are what I want to spend my time studying. I WANT TO SCOUR WORDS FOR THEIR MEANING! And that's all the LSAT is ... word work, cause that's all "lawyering" is ... word work. And I'm good at word work. My obsession with and bottomless, enduring, ever-growing love for word work is WHY I WANT TO GO TO LAW SCHOOL! Duh. It's so fucking difficult to remember who you are sometimes *blech*
It all clicked.
Ugh, and I felt like such a moron (and i'm not beating myself up about it, too much, but still, how stupid), so we're on the same set of tracks, but now we're in the caboose instead of a pickup truck. I'm going to take the LSAT, and the whole testing date situation just so happens to perfectly align with the law school's admissions deadline, etc., etc., etc. That's right, folks, a ripe-old moron is making her attempt at law school! If I can do it, so can you! But now I have almost exactly eight weeks to really buckle down and get this shit done, but at least now, thanks to my stubborn-ass homunculus, I'm excited about it.
In other news, all of my transcripts have been received along with my Number Two letter of recommendation. I've also requested a third letter from an old friend/mentor/leader (who this person is might need a whole post of its own), but the Time Tide is really doing its thing on this one, which is totally fine, cause really, I'm being greedy even asking for a third letter.
*sits and thinks if there's anything else she wants to remember*
I guess that's it. Jobbing and Studying schedules have not changed. Sat down to rest my weary soul after a long week, flipped on the tv, entered tubi, and one of the first movies on the first screen was Legally Blonde. Obviously, we watched it.