And now for the main distraction

In attempt to distract myself from my distress over, well, what I last posted, I was reading a Spiegel interview with a sci-fi author Daniel Saurez. His depiction in the thriller Daemon of a very near future in which a murderous "bot" network controls humanity, is (so the article said) one eerily close to home, given the massive amounts of data voluntarily shared by millions every day via social networks Twitter and Facebook, data which is already being scanned and researched by "bots" in order to more effectively sell us things, and/or otherwise manipulate our soft little brainies.

At the mention of Facebook, I had to take a quick FB break. Great news awaited me! I had been tagged in quite a nice photo. Which had already been commented on once. Mmm, warm, narcissistic fuzzy. Could such a fuzzy ever really cause harm?? It just doesn't seem right...like a radioactive teddy bear.

Could it's soft edge cut you, as Rilo Kiley once warned  in the song "A man/me/then Jim?" (Of course, Jenny Lewis was singing about what she called the "slow fade of love" in that song, but the lyric does have more than one, for lack of  a better word, application.)

Anyway, it's kind of gross, but I feel like I have to admit that

1. I have come to regard people who don't use Facebook as sort of saintly figures I respect but couldn't hope to emulate.
2. I have twice dreamt about getting new FB notifications, or, as German Facebook calls them, neue Facebook-Benachrichtigungen.

I also realized it's a little bit disgusting that I had been reading to distract myself, then got distracted away from my main distraction. So I went back to my article, in which Suarez signed off with the words,

"A very small group of powerful people is deciding what's going to happen with your data, and they're using bots to help implement what they want to do. That has nothing to do with democracy. It's all about efficiency. And that's the really scary thing about it. I'd prefer we don't take that trip. Otherwise, this could really end up being a hellish world."

Subhuman again

Current thoughts:

• Completely miserable sitting indoors, butt conforming to chair, feeling inhuman, hating life (not really, nobody freak out), and so forth.
• I don't think Microsoft Word and newsletter layouts are the best of friends.
• Never want to be an intern again. Have decided 'intern' is a ridiculous concept akin to slave and excuse to pay poorly or not at all.

Would want to go home right now if it weren't for the fact that  everything else is wonderful, making for a really confusing daily medley of joy (sunshine, music, books, friends, being loved) and despair (no writing work, making zero career progress, making zero college progress, bursting into tears at inconvenient times/places, working alone for free, or at least trying to and then giving up, small-town claustrophobic insanity, uselessness, regret).

Is there anything about the situation I can change? Anything?

Not here, not now

The lethargy and sense of despairing pointlessness I have recently been experiencing came to a head today. In my internship I am neither earning money, nor am I receiving a grade, nor am I improving my German by writing all day in English. The work I do goes in the same category as the work I don't do: unnoticed.

With this view, it has been difficult to get myself to do any work at all. I do the work of course, but my heart is not in it. At the end of the day I am so introverted and full of English, I can hardly get myself to get out and socialize in German at all. I no longer feel like doing the things I used to do. When I do pry myself out of my dark cave, I am like a mole blinking in the sunlight, unable to navigate, blundering around blindly. Social situations have become comically, predictably awkward. When I engage in conversation, something seems to be terribly off, as if I am an actor reading from the wrong script. What can I say? Working alone in silence every day turns me weird.

I heave a great emotional sigh whenever someone asks where I'm from. I don't want to talk about it anymore. And if one more person tells me how amazing my German is, I am going to personally tear my own head off and eat it. Sometimes people tell me how good it is without me even having to mention that I am not from Germany! Something about that doesn't add up.

I don't really know what I'm doing in Erfurt anymore. I want a real job so bad it hurts, but I can't make that a reality here. I want more than anything to work for a magazine. (I am hilariously bad at most things, but writing is not one of them.) But when and where do I get to use my talent? Not now, not here.

Austauschpartymaschine

This is me at parties nowadays.
 

Hallo.

AnnaWeltner

dreiundzwanzigdu?

seit-August/bis-Juli

InternationalStudiesdu?
NEINnichtErasmusStudentin

JADeutschvorhergehabt//:eineinhalbJahre

SpiritofFootballe.V.SportVereinÖffentlichkeitsarbeit
AusKalifornienkleineStadt/du-kennst-sie-bestimmt-nicht-ha-ha.

ZwischenLosAngeles+SanFrancisco//:ungefähr20Minuten
vomStrandentfernt.Aberhieristauchschön!!!!!ha-ha.

JAhiergefälltmirsehrwirklich

NajaokayMansiehtsich.

Tschüß.

blip.bloop.bleep.nullnullnullnullnullnulleins

0000001.

-0-
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Reasons to be grumpy

1. Working alone, turning into subhuman
2. Rear end same shape as chair
3. Sneezed on self
4. Micha not going to Fränze's WG-party
5. Turning into subhuman
6. Roommate keeps talking to me in English in weird sort of power trip. 
7. Getting made fun of all the time re: the letter r. 

Rejection, pointlessness, discouragement.

On the other hand....

...it's not the end of the world.

Don't know why I have been so down today. I just spent a great weekend with Erich (sunshine, dancing, ice cream). I must have used up all of my serotonin. But working again is suddenly pure pain! I want to be with a human.