i've resolved that i'm going to spend next semester working. i think my plan is to tell enough people this that one of them will hold me to it. it's the sort of self-sacrificial thing that i don't have the type of friend who does, by design; i'm sure i'll end up resenting whoever.
the problem is that i really do enjoy spending time with people. i think this may be because of my insecurity of being thought uninteresting; when i'm working, i'm not generating things i can tell people about. when i'm talking to people or doing things that are readily accessible they're recountable. they're replenishing the stockpile of my tales that goes into the epithet of professional storyteller. even if most of them are things people wouldn't be interested in, they're at least things i can say. whereas math is pretty opaque, i must admit, even though i'm taking a populist approach to it.
i talked to adrienne today, and she lamented that we don't talk more often nowadays. i was pretty surprised by this; i guess i'd just assumed that she didn't feel that strongly about me anymore. maybe i've just thought about it so much that the actual evidence is no longer taken into account; in the absence of an evidence source, trains of logic crop up. the analogy i want here is the primordial soup; in the absence of a god, the lifeform that crops up is basically dependent on which mutation gets there first. (it's not clear how big the space of available mutations is, but i digress.) it's kind of similar; without any external input my thoughts about adrienne just take off in whatever direction the mutation happens. i suppose this isn't specific to adrienne in any way, but applies equally well to people like chris and lisa and danielle. it's a disturbing thought.
i know why we don't talk more often, though. it's because i don't have much to say. i'm ashamed of this, with respect to everyone but perhaps especially with respect to adrienne because she's had intense exposure to the saturated me. she's known a person with a reservoir of things to say, albeit one who was always worried about running out of them. but it does apply to everyone. it's as i said to kelli; i don't want to do x unless i can do it 100%, and i certainly hope that this isn't 100% with respect to doing things of relatable possibility.
i'm not sure where the writing fits into this. on the one hand, writing is certainly viewed as a sign of culture, as a sign of being interesting; everyone is fascinated by writers. on the other hand, it's not like i'm going to have conversations about the things i write; it wouldn't be even-handed, for one thing, and once i do that i start writing for others and the whole thing goes to pot.