Lately

Funny how as soon as I'm back into blogging again, I take a two week break. Oops. But really, not much has happened. It's currently finals week (still one more tomorrow, unfortunately) and although I haven't been too stressed or busy, it's still been occupying much of my time.

Today, everything happening in Egypt has been really getting to me. Obviously I pay a lot of attention to it all the time and I desperately want the situation to turn out positively, but I can usually look at pictures with enough of a difference that it doesn't affect my emotions too much. Of course many of the images are hard to look at, but I can handle it because it's important to me to be able to look at them. But today I've been really emotionally affected by what's happening. It's possible that the reason is because it's been more violent today, but I'm not sure that's the whole reason. I also think that with the semester winding down and me having more free time, I have more room of my mind to dedicate to thinking about Egypt and the Middle East.

Also just in general things have been affecting me more than usual lately. Yesterday for my journalism final, we had to write short articles based off information given to us and one of them was about old people being abandoned about hospitals. After my final, I couldn't shake it and I kept thinking about how many old people are probably really lonely when their partner dies. Especially if your children live far away, it must be really sad when you lose your husband/wife (of course it is regardless of age). I mean, for the most part these people don't have jobs (especially the older they get) and many of them probably aren't involved in any clubs or groups. It must be really, really lonely to sit in your house all day and just be alone, especially around the holidays.

Obviously I can't exactly empathize with either of these situations because I've never been there, but lately I've been really feeling the emotions these people feel in a different way and also wanting desperately to understand what they go through. In general I just feel things more strongly than most people, I think, and because of that emotions are a big motivating factor for me. What I mean is that I see something and I can't just look at it and move on the way most people can. I want to do something about it. That's so much of the reason I want to go into journalism. I have this crazy idea that maybe, just maybe, I can bring awareness in a way that helps someone, somehow.