Its been a while...and its been one of those times. I've worked really hard over the last two months and its all feeling like a big stinky waste of time. My grades are good but I was working for great, i got a promotion at work but its temporary and I may have to quit eventually anyway. I'm losing friends faster than I'm making them and ...its all like...s**t. I'm a little crushed by all this. But I guess it could be worse...

Its been a fun academic year of maddness and doing things that I would never do in other contexts but I think its time to go back to basics. Life was so much simpler and more fun when I was the eccentric. At least then I knew what I wanted and what I stood for. You have to look at things and realise when its going awry...I've tried to mainstream myself but its not working. I'm just not mainstream and I've tasted it and I don't like it. I'm going back to me as in for real.

But as I said, life is not awful. Its just not fantastic.

While writing an essay on rational choice theory in English, I was listening to Radio France international in French. My mother called me and we had a 20 minute conversation in Kiswahili and Luhya.

Oh what a multilingual world in which we live!

Enough.

Its time to move on with the rest of my life. I've had a hard time reconciling myself to this fact but I realise that not everyone sees things the way I do. Not everyone spends have of their time
soulsearching - maybe a big fat waste of time? Not everyone spends their life teetering on the brink of insanity because they see things in glorious technicolour. My overemotionalisation of life has placed a huge load on my shoulders. Passion is wonderful until it starts to drive you crazy because you see tiny shadows as mighty big shadows and they frighted you more than they should.

I have given into the fear of my intense emotion and at the same time fought to suppress the instinct. And the result is that I am unhappy on a couple of levels.

But enough.

I am not cold. I need people around me. I need friends and family to talk to me and yes, I'm not ashamed to say it, to love me. Does that make me selfish or immature? Is a need to feel loved and an overwhelming desire to guard my heart a completely irreconcilable absurdity? Am I crazy to keep trying? I want them to like me - I so want to be one of "them" but I am not. I can't help who I am and I don't want to. And that makes my life extremely complicated.

No,no. Enough.

I'm tired of swimming in so much intensity all my life.

I just wish I knew how to change.

I've been unbelievably materialistic and spent a great deal of money on myself today. I don't feel guilty though. For one thing, I worked really hard for that money. Secondly, i had a lousy birthday so I've earned the right to shop it off. I wasn't sure it would work, but it did. I felt better about myself afterwards and the whole 22 thing doesn't seem to bother me anymore.

Oh, I prayed for a little insight and I think I know why I'm so rocked by this whole thing. I guess a part of me always held out hope that by the time I turned 22 all of me would have fallen into place. I've always been an ugly duckling, and I always thought that by 22 I'd have turned into a swan. But nothing doing. I'm still the same awkward teenager with even fewer friends and an irrational fear of growing older.

But no more, you know? If I'm going to turn twenty two I'm very well going to look good doing it. Hence the retail therapy. Don't worry, I didn;t flip out completely, I still have enough left over for the rest of the month and I managed to put some away for rainy days. But man, I've never shopped like that in a long time, or rather ever. I just stopped short of n=byuing £50 addidas trainers. But then I thought I really don't need them, do I?

So for my twenty second birthday I had a wild and radical party with lots of booze and wild and drunken people...

Ha!

I spent the entire day cooped up in my room. I am a little bummed at turning...I can't even bring myself to say it. I just feel so...old. Like I'm over the hill before I actually got to savour being at the bottom. I can't hide behind my youth anymore, people actually expect me to be out there DOING stuff. And I worry because I still genuinely have no idea what God wants me to do! I think of all the things that potentially freak me out about being...y'know...that would be it.

I fear that I have missed the boat somehow. That at some point I should have gone left where I went right. I dunno. I mean, I took chances. I gambled big. So why does it feel this way? A little bit empty and a little bit sad? Am I a loser?

Well, I know I'm a loser because I spent my twenty second birthday cooped up in my room, READING!

I have no friends in England. And that's just sad. I think I need to make a few changes in my life and start living a little. The way I see it, life is just too short not to. I'm not taking away from any of the blessings You've poured into my life but damn!

I should have been doing something, you know? What do I have to show for these one and a half years I've been here/ Okay I managed to preserve my sanity in a sandstorm of what could have been a disaster. And that's great. But will it mean anything if I end up savouring it alone? Will it still matter when I'm surrounded by my cats on a rocking chair on the porch?

I'm rambling, I know but I just feel...ah.

Happy Birthday to me. And then its gone.