the age of discovery
february 23rd, 2000

no, devon did not disappear, change her name, move elsewhere, or otherwise 
become devoured by strange monstrosities surrounding loch ness (or dr. 
lao). on the contrary, the past few days have been a period of much 
discovery, significant healing, and lockpicking, if you will. i'd start in 
order, but i'm afraid i'll just become totally lost, so however the events 
are filed in my mind will be how they fall upon the canvas.

firstly, my web discoveries. another wonderland is back in working order, 
though i fear not netscape-friendly. (i plan to make an introductory page 
where you can "choose your weapon" in a sense, so users with netscape can 
enjoy my page in a different flavor more suitable to their browsers.) 
netscape and me just don't seem to get along very well. but that's all 
well, i guess. speaking of my problems with netscape, i *believe* i have 
pinpointed the trouble in my diary...when you "add an entry," every time 
you press enter, the browser interprets that as a "paragraph" tag. in 
netscape, this causes my text to start all the way over to the left side 
of the screen. so i'm going to try to enter this entry without pressing 
enter at all, and see if perhaps netscape will be more friendly to my 
page.

in addition to my relentless thirst for web design (no sleep for devon 
this past weekend), Meghan made a terrible mistake and introduced me to 
something called vzones, in a world called "dreamscape," which is absolute 
addiction. it is a little virtual reality realm, where you can choose 
exactly what you look like, decorate apartments, buy things (even heads, 
believe it or not), talk to people...it's amazing. i spent hours on it 
last night, waiting for the little one to get to sleep, and simply wanting 
to play on it forever. wanting to decorate my apartment, make some new 
heads for special occasions...it was very, very cool. i have no idea how 
popular this entity is, though i can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to 
get involved in it (unless, of course, like me, they fear absolute 
abandonment of the real world in favor of a more pixelated one), but my 
name is "nuala," and you are more than welcome to say hi to me, should you 
see me.

on deeper, more personal levels, i've been working with my mom through a 
whole lot of stuff. i'm learning that a lot of the reason why i 
deliberately put myself into extremely unhealthy, symbiotic relationships 
is because i have not totally separated from my mother, yet. in fact, the 
boundaries between us are not defined at all. i've always been very close 
to my mother, and in many, many ways it was the most wonderful thing to 
happen to me. but i've been perpetually stuck in a very child-like 
relationship with my mother because of it. i hang upon her every word as 
if it were the word of god. her opinion can sway me in extreme ways. a lot 
of the conflict between us these past few months really stems from this - 
that now, i am beginning to discover myself and define myself, and our 
mother-daughter relationship is trying to adapt. and it will, i have no 
doubt of that, or that we will still be extremely close. but i will 
finally, truly understand that sometimes, my mother is wrong. (she was 
wrong about me cutting my hair, after all.) and not only that, but i would 
rather take my own person wrong advice as opposed to her right ones, 
simply because it is what i want to do. and whenever i develop past this, 
and start making my own definitions and boundaries, i will no longer look 
to a relationship to do this for me, and that will at least solve many of 
the problems i have in relationships.

so, yeah. self-discovery is a pretty friggin amazing thing.

my second batch of classes started monday, which is another reason why 
i've been slow to write. i'm taking world lit II and spanish I, and i'm 
not getting any sleep at all, because the only time the little one will 
sleep at any length at all is during the hours of six (when i wake up to 
get ready for school) and 12 (when i come home from school). granted, she 
usually sleeps a couple of hours later, and i get a few hours in, but it 
really isn't enough. this morning, i had a cup of coffee, two cherry 
cokes, and three shots of espresso, and i was still falling asleep in 
class. on top of that, i just ended up feeling very queasy and the walls 
began to crawl with little designs. oops.

i've also relented and given this journal to people i actually know in 
real-life (i'm horrible about keeping anything to myself) and i have no 
idea if that's going to affect the effectiveness of this journal for me or 
not. so far, it seems to be fine. i still feel as if i am writing more for 
myself than for an audience. but if it ever gets the point where i don't 
feel as if i can express myself freely, i'll simply start another hidden 
one. ;)