Today I took a health day off from school. I'm not sure if I should call it a sick day or an emotional health day or something less legitimate sounding. By any name, though, I did not go to classes this morning, and I spent the day being mostly inactive in the southeast corner of Beijing. I visited two Starbucks today. I have a very real cold/sinus thing going on, and it started flaring up Sunday. Now it's just that nasty drippy nose, constant throat clearing stuff. I find the drugs make me less lucid by the minute, and on Sunday I took a three hour nap, courtesy of Benadryl.

Anyway, over the past day or two I've been in a sort of unusual mindset, the depths of which I will not explore on a very public blog. Suffice it to say that I've been rethinking my view of the world. That's not meant to scare anyone or panic people across the globe. I'm just realizing that the vacuous places in my mind and heart are due to incongruities in the way I see the world. Am I supposed to approach the world with an American, post-modern worldview? Am I supposed to be approaching it from a vantage point much more ancient? Do the two meet? Should they? What I've noticed is that I've been approaching the world from a point-of-view that is a weird amalgamation of the two. They are incongruous, and therefore my mind has been at odds with itself. This sounds like blather to me, and you can sense that, but what I'm getting at is this: I need to change the way I approach the world, myself, the people around me, and the One who made it all. It's all been sliding by on a basis that accepted "good enough" and approved of "making it work" instead of probing the gaps with questions and a legitimate search for solid answers.

I know that my naivete is probably showing through like (make up your own clever simile here, I tried), but I wonder if supplementing foundational work isn't a good way to start.

I understand that this is sort of a weird post, and the nature of it is such that I can't afford to really be specific. But I am in an interesting place now, and I hope things progress from here.

In other news, my reading and writing professor has volunteered to help me out by tutoring me on points I don't understand. At least, I think that's what he has volunteered to do. I could be confused. Anyway, he seems really nice, and I hope we can get to actually know each other outside just a teacher-student thing. Perhaps colleagues or even (gasp) friendly-ish people. We will see.

Did anyone look at my pictures? There are only a few hundred online...

T