I had a cup of green tea this morning with a spoon of honey in it. I don't know why it doesn't taste like the green tea my mom makes. Hers tastes good. Mine...well, it's not quite the same.

I had a hot cocoa at lunch. Melissa got me one even though I should have just eaten my lunch and not opted for hot sweetness. Good for the throat, she said. Very true. Good for the throat, good for the soul. I love the feel of hot cocoa pushing its way through layers of whipped cream, like breaking through a dam.

That and string cheese - all I've eaten today. It's five o'clock and I know I should get up and have an early dinner due to my lack of lunch, but I'd much rather sit here and write. I'm not hungry anyway. I always lose my appetite when I'm sick, or when I'm feeling melancholic. I can't help but feel both right now. I have bronchitis, or did have it - I think I'm getting a little better though still coughing insanely. I'm also plagued by melancholia today. I don't know why it chooses to follow me around. I don't know how it manages to reach me so easily. In my mind I'm paralleling it to physical sickness - to bacteria or to a virus. It seems as though we have both a physical and emotional immune system, both of which are extremely sensitive to the world - or, at least mine are. I get sick easily; I am moved easily. I like that the smallest things can make me happy, but I hate that the smallest things can bring me to tears.

It's an odd feeling to be simultaneously disappointed and pleased. I know I can count on so many fingers all the disappointments I've had, most which are with myself. I'm disappointed with myself when I don't perform as well as I had hoped, academically. I blame myself and torment myself for not working harder, for not being smarter. I tell myself all of that whenever I make a mistake. I have a feeling I might be telling myself this tomorrow because I chose to blog instead of work on a research proposal I have due tomorrow. "A few pages and a bibliography, nothing I can't whip up in an hour or so" I tell myself. It sounded reckless as I wrote it. I'll probably wrap this up soon so I can get writing.

Occasionally I find myself disappointed with others. I think it's because I have expectations that aren't met, and it's odd because I was talking to a mentor-ish person, and I told him I try not to have expectations because I don't want to be disappointed. (at which point he grinned, took out a note card and wrote "Whatever happens I don't mind" on it and gave it to me.) I'm trying to understand the discrepancy between what I said and what I feel. Perhaps they're unconscious expectations, ones that everyone has of others just because we're social beings and that's what we do. No idea.

But I sometimes want people to act a certain way because I think to myself, "that's how I would/should act, because that's the right/nice thing to do." I hold people to the same standards I hold myself (in some things, not all) and I get upset when they don't treat me as I would like to be treated. They're breaking the Golden Rule, and as I am one who lives by rules, I of course find myself a little incensed.

But then there are the happy little surprises that come at me randomly. Unexpected kindness from unexpected sources. I wish I could elaborate on that, but really that's all there is. Unexpected acts of kindness - of love - make me forget about disappointments...at least for the moment. They soften up my heart. I do wish I could experience it more often - life has hardened my heart in recent years and I don't like myself that way.

It does, however, make me productive, which I need to be if I'm going to write this proposal thing.