02.26.2002 - 6:18 p.m.

It wants to storm, I think. I�m in the mood for a good hard storm, with thunder and lightening and high winds to stir up the water. Today has been another one of those non-days where you remember eight, nine, and ten, but you�re not quite sure what happened between eleven and four. I think I was writing blurbs for the new website, but that couldn�t possibly have taken up that whole time�

It bugs me to lose chunks of my life like that. I should get more sleep so that happens less often, but then I�d lose the chunks later at night. I like nights. There was a huge halo around the moon last night; after I left my friends� house, I spent a good five minutes just standing next to my car and staring at the sky. I even thought about dragging one or two of them out, just to see it, but I just looked for a while, then drove home. I guess I�m fairly selfish about things I find beautiful.

Actually no, I�m not. It just never occurs to me that anyone would feel the same about the same things I do, would want to be interrupted from getting ready for bed just to see a stupid ring around the moon. Or whatever. I don�t have a real reason for thinking that; personally, I enjoy learning about other peoples� hobbies, especially if a person is really transparent about their passions. I love watching J bounce in his chair as he tells me (or anyone else in the room) about some site he found on the internet; I love giving the roommate, lately a bio major, a chance to talk about fish and the ecology of the Chesapeake Bay. I will watch badly dubbed, plotless martial arts movies for the look on M�s face, and I got up to yellow belt in Tae Kwon Do because it was something D loved to do. I spent a year watching soccer games because it was my college roommate�s obsession. I keep this diary because F has one.

Other people have hobbies of their own; my hobby seems to be hobby-surfing.

I don�t do it just so I can leech from their enjoyment. I�m generally truly interested in whatever it is; their involvement just gives me an occasion to tap into some neglected interest of my own, or at the very least to develop a new one. I am a woman of many interests; I am so disgustingly well-rounded that I will probably be forty or more before I decide what I really want to do with my life. I like sports and arts and crafts and crowds and being alone and being outside and the internet and science and high and low literature. I just never get deep enough into anything to be really passionate about it. So I wonder why anyone would want to try my hobbies, because half of the fun comes from the vicarious enjoyment. And because after playing the chameleon for so long, I can no longer tell the difference between what I like because I like it, and what I like because someone else does. I wouldn�t know what to show someone who wanted to know what I liked. I can feel myself shift whenever I meet someone new and interesting, especially someone new and interesting and male. Something goes through my self and reorganizes: these thoughts and interests to the surface, these to the bottom. Tag these middle categories for later relocation, as soon as he shows his preferences�

And in some ways it�s completely legitimate, because I truly am everything I show. I just never show anything near all of it.

-stonebridge

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