Stiff

No, this is not about the book Stiff, although I am enjoying it quite a bit.  This is about my back.  Chronic back problems run in my family and I just had my first lasting run in with our health issues.  While lifting and moving a box at work, I pinched a nerve in my lower back.  It was agonizing and I could barely sit up in my car to drive home.  Yesterday was filled with ice packs, Tiger Balm (no, not the energy drink...its like Icy Hot), and laying down with my feet in the air.  After an extremely painful night of trying to find a comfortable way to sleep, I am feeling much better and can lay in most positions comfortably.  I guess sleep fixes anything, even if it's extremely fitful sleep. 


There were some good things about yesterday though.  I went to Oakes College Senate and they awarded Film Production Coalition 100 dollars for our ongoing project Paranormals.  It was not an easy meeting to sit through, but it was well worth the discomfort to know that we will be able to host our film premiere at the media theater on May 28th.

The other good thing about yesterday was helping Anthony with his film assignment.  In film directing, they were asked to film someone for 3 minutes without the camera moving and without the actor talking.  After the senate meeting this was easy for me.  I was in a semi-raw emotional state because of my back pain and I was also feeling reflective after the senate meeting because everyone there seemed really nice and there are times when I'm mad that I felt so alienated from my college freshman year.  My teacher for the required Oakes intro writing course continuously made a point to focus on the only two "white" students in the class and try to highlight the ways in which our life growing up was different from other students in the class.  I found this hurtful and inappropriate, especially considering he was making many assumptions about every student, purely based on the way they looked, about the way they grew up.  I felt very withdrawn and embarrassed to be picked on in this way.  He continuously insinuated that I was "part of the problem" and never listened when I tried to tell him about how and where I grew up.  This drove me away from involvement with my college, even though I picked Oakes because of its diversity and focus on equality and human rights. 

So when Anthony turned the camera on, I just cried.  There was too much going on for me to contemplate inside my head everything that I was thinking.  Questions about every step ring in my head and usually I just ignore them because I am really happy with my life, but yesterday was just not a good day overall and I was extremely frustrated with my inability to move. I think the shot actually came out really nice because just when I start to really cry, my dog came to my rescue and licked my face.  Its an up and down static shot and I wonder what people will see in me when they see it. 

I often find myself asking if I made the right choices, picked the right path; even though I love everything I am doing right now, I always see a million different directions I could have gone in.  I guess that's the consequence of taking, "you can do anything you want to" to heart.  Never wanting to limit myself has time and again led to me spreading my time thin, but I always come through things thankful that I did more than I thought I could.  What it all comes down to though is being proud of the path you did choose instead of dwelling on the ones you could have taken.  Who knows maybe some of those paths will swing back around again.  At least that's how I see it.  How do you tackle college and career choices, and please, if you have any tips for my nerve problem, message me!