the classy take things in stride.

This week has been really good. I was angry yesterday, sorry about that. Sometimes I just wish people would listen a little bit more, because I feel like information isn't being processed fully.
It's a funny feeling, when disappointment and relief collide.
I have no idea where I'm going to live in the fall. Like, not even what state. I'd narrowed it down to three colleges, two of which are at least seven hundred miles away, and one of which is in state. The in state one is a really, really good school, I was really surprised I'd even gotten in, but I have never had any desire to stay in the state of Texas after high school graduation. The two out of state schools were both far, and big and beautiful, where it's cold and they have real seasons, and I was really set on them for a while, one of which because of a particular major and the other because my dad was pushing for it, because he's an alumni. Tonight I got the score report from the one I'd really wanted to go to, and they're offering a little over eight grand a year, which is a fraction of what I'd need to be able to go there. My chances for attending that particular school are officially slim to none, and I don't expect the other out of state school to be hopeful. Now, in reality, if you exclude those two and the in state school I'm looking at, I have six other options, but they're not good enough, they're not what I really want. I want something very specific out of a college, and those two out of state schools had it. They were perfect. But now I'm narrowing down my choices. It's funny, because I feel like I should be upset, but I'm not. I think it's okay.
Money is a strange thing. It's not real when you're young- you're told about it and you hear it brought up, but it's something your parents deal with, never you. You're happy to get three dollars a week for allowance and you're entire psyche lights up at the sight of a stranded quarter. Twenty dollars is synonymous with the word rich. Then, you get a little older, and you start going to the mall with your friends. You take money from your parents, and you spend it. You begin to need more and more of it, and while you begin to feel a pull from it, it's still purely good, because you haven't yet seen anything that would tell you otherwise.
You hit your teens, and you get a job. Now, assuming you aren't like 65% of the city I live in, your parents stop paying for everything. Maybe your parents are divorced, or one is sick, or ones lost a job, and money is tight. You begin to understand what it's like to spend money that's yours, and it hits you that all of the money you have churned out since the day you were born has belonged to your parents. It's a strange sense of independence, the first time you spend your own paycheck, something that is to your name and no one else's. Then, along comes a day when you run short on money. That is where the true understanding begins.
It's a vice and a drug and a terrible thing, but it's necessary, and that's the most despicable part. We have worked the idea of currency so thoroughly into our society, so much so that it is the greatest motivation and the most intense form of temptation. It can make you jump through hoops and do horrible, horrible things, because a lack of it is the only thing that will separate you from what you want. We want and we want and we want, and money is all that lets us take, and so we will do anything we are told to get our hands on it. It's a disgusting thing. Unfortunately, the only thing that would seem to be worse than a world that trips over itself in search of cash, is a world that attempts to live without it.
I prefer hand writing things. Today I got some entirely new stuff down- by entirely new I mean like a new chapter or something. I don't really know exactly what it is, but it's a part of the general project I'm working on right now. My mind works in bursts, and I'm sure that eventually everything will come together. It's funny, the things that give you inspiration; this particular burst of writing was inspired by a random house about twenty minutes from where I live, and a conversation on a charter bus on the drive home from an orchestra competition with a girl who I have a long, slightly vague and relatively checkered history with. Actually, I guess it's not funny, but it's on my mind.
Everyone is out of town for spring break, but I still managed to get most of my week planned already. Expect to hear a recount of my midnight bowling adventure on Thursday! My neck hurts and I need to type. A good friend of mine has a dad who's a massage therapist, and today he gave me this really intense shoulder massage and now it feels like my arms aren't attached to the rest of me, which doesn't sound like a good feeling but it is. I'm not going to explain that picture. Sorry?
Today, a kid in my English class announced he was writing a novel. Mine will sell more copies.
I love you,
-Loch.

p.s. in exactly three months, I'm legally an adult.