Gardening with Voltaire

Last week we went to Le Panthéon. The crypt holds many a famous deceased, including Victor Hugo, Louis Braille, Marie Curie, and my personal favorite, Voltaire. In Voltaire's Candide he reminds us that "We must cultivate gardens." And it's just the reminder I need right now.

For the first time in a long time, school is not the center of my life. I only have class two days a week, homework is minimal and unlike summer-time, I can't get a job here. So I am faced with the daunting task of filling up five days of my week with personal projects, ambitions, and regiments. It seems like both the best thing and the worst thing. I can do exactly what I want, exactly what I think will help me grow, exactly what I need, exactly what I think I should do, for me and for no one else.

But its the " for no one else" clause I keep coming back to . Being entirely self-motivated scares the bee-jeezus out of me. The thought of getting yelled at by someone is a big motivation for me. I really hate getting reprimanded. When I was little, my mom only had to raise her eyebrows to adjust my behavior. But I have no one to yell at me! It seems silly that this should be a problem, but yelling at myself just isn't as effective...

One of my biggest fears is that if I am an artist I will never do anything. I'll just flander my time away and turn into a big rotten blob of blown sockets and dirty socks.

So this is the ultimate experiement. I got over my fear of being locked in bathrooms when I inadvertedly got locked in our bathroom in St. Louis in the middle of the night last semester. I got myself out using tried and true techniques developed during freshman year when I would be locked out of my dorm. So here I am, locked in the perverbial giant bathroom that is France. (On a side note, select subway stations really do smell like a gaint bathroom.)

Now I have to get out of the bathroom, start composting, and make this garden happen.