clarity

it's funny how smoking clears my mind. slows things down. makes everything seem more real, the little details more significant.

i felt the cold, saw my breath (from the cold not from the smoke). i heard music in the distance -- maybe bells ringing? water was dripping. i thought, "why go on?" why not just lie down in the cold, wet snow, and stop. the courtyard was quiet, empty. and then i saw peggy. (peggy! what the fuck?!)

you ever have one of those moments when, you're about to do something, or something's about to happen, and then at the very last split second you think, "what if [blank] happens instead?" like something totally unexpected, the exact opposite, which would somehow cause the universe to stop behaving rationally, logically, and you enter the twilight zone? i just had one. i was coming back inside, from my smoke, and just as i was about to open the big outer doors to bass, i thought, "what if they're locked?" and i could nearly feel the door resisting my pull, making that dull 'clunk' sound when it's locked and doesn't open. but that's a ridiculous thought, since it was 2:30 in the afternoon on a tuesday -- there's no reason it shouldn't open. i think i thought that because it just would have been so perfect, so fitting, to get locked outside in the cold after having a smoke, to calm my nerves before i had my little meeting with andrew, in which i am going to tell him that i want to leave his lab and join another.

why am i building this up to be so big, so important? why am i so afraid of how andrew will react? why do i feel this meeting, this moment, is the significant one? wasn't making the decision the hard part, the crux, the turning point?

hopefully i am getting all worked up about what will be a very easy and mutally comfortable discussion. but i still feel like i want to puke.