Bolg #4 - Compartmentalize

I pride myself on an uncanny ability to compartmentalize pretty much anything I need to. But I've noticed that takes a bit more effort than usual with this blog. I keep a personal blog too. It's where I go to ran, rave, whine, complain and pretty much say anything that I wouldn't dream of saying outside of cyberspace. It's where I muse over battles won and loves lost. It's the space that lets me make yet another vain attempt at understanding the messy project that is my life. Knowing that, I make a conscious effort to keep my personal ramblings out of this blog. I try to keep it somewhat more academic. It's easy enough to do on prompted weeks, but open weeks? That's a whole other playing field.

At first I couldn't figure out why this is, but I think I've finally hit on it. Every time a professor, and it's happened a lot lately, asks me to talk about the first thing that comes to mind, I realize it's personal. Not in that "No. I don't want to share because it's personal" way. Rather in the way that has made me realize just how far inside my  own head I am. It turns out that I'm not spending my days trying to figure an end to world hunger. I'm not looking to stop global warming. I'm certainly not entertaining any political agendas. I used to. I was a young idealist looking to change the world once. These days I'm looking to survive. If I get a free moment to think straight in my head it will probably be about whether or not my car can last the winter. What will I do if it can't? Did I remember to finish that last project at work? Is there an assignment due I'm forgetting? Because I'm always forgetting something. Of course there is always time to ruminate on why no one has managed to cure the common cold or better still, cancer, but even those are strictly personal agendas. The strange part about this revelation is I've realized I feel guilty about this.

Sitting in my Communications class where the papers being turned out are full of lofty goals and ideas for "real world changes," I'm trying to figure out how much it's going to cost me to fix my smashed bike mirrors. There has to be something wrong with that right? Even now, I'm sure this post should be about my paper. It would probably be better for me later on if I were getting some ideas down, but...I've got nothing.