New Thing: I'll Write Diary Entries to Celebrities Sometimes Now For No Reason

Dear David Bowie,

I’m sure you’re at least a little bit used to people you don’t know writing to you on the internet, and because the limits of human weirdness and desperation are boundless, I’m also 99% sure that someone, somewhere has written a diary entry to you before. However, for those of you reading this who aren’t, in fact, David Bowie (approximately 100% of you, man am I ever hitting the percentages hard today), I will just clear some stuff up for you.

I am writing to David Bowie because I feel scared and desperate and alone. I’ve just pulled an all-nighter, and my eyes and face are red, not only from being tired, but also from embarrassment and fatigue (the source of which I’ll get to later). So still, you might ask, why am I writing to David in particular? Well, the theme of feeling like a particularly flashy and well-dressed alien resonates with me. Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I am probably not human. Also, David Bowie is an astoundingly good listener, you guys; go watch any of his interviews from just pretty much whenever, and he’s actually very good at talking to people. I like that. I really like the idea of someone weird and also empathetic being on the other end of this, and I think a lot of other people do, too, and that’s why I’m quite sure I’m not the only one.

So what the fuck happened to me? Why, at 5:41 in the morning, am I attempting to talk to a pop star nearly as old as my grandmother over the internet? (No offense, David. You’ve aged very well.)

Well, David Bowie, I’m a college freshman. And I’ve joined a very difficult academic program in this college. I’m attempting to become fluent in Chinese in a maximum of five years (it would be easier if I picked up and went to live in China, but that sort of thing is expensive and potentially fatal.) (also, I think you would probably tell me to just take the risk, because you exude an adventurous persona, but this is my life, David Bowie, so sit down and listen.) It’s a hard program, not because of Chinese, which I promise is a surprisingly simple language. It’s hard because there’s no leeway. Below a B grade, they’ll kick me out of this program, one I’ve been dreaming of taking for four years. And it’s not going to be my grasp of the homework that gets me; it’s going to be my 7:00 A.M. class, and the "no late homework” policy, and the “no making up tests” policy, and the “you had better just pray that you don’t fall ill on the wrong day” attitude. I really hope you’re following this tortured grammar; just remember it’s 5:49 right now. I’m not at my best.

I, by no means, want to drop out. I want to keep going. But I feel as if the administration is actively trying to make that nigh on impossible for its students, what with the early class, and the complete lack of sympathy for human nature. Because the crux of the issue is not that I’m bad at language; I’m very good at it because I enjoy it, and enjoyment seems to be the key to my getting good at something. What’s going to kill me is that I’m not a hoop-jumper. I’m the kind of person that everyone gets mad at, because I should be making straight A’s with a 4.0, but instead I write eleven-page papers in less than forty-eight hours, and through sheer carelessness forget to do homework, or get up in the morning. I’m just the worst kind of wasted potential, and I tried to reform, but I’ve slipped back into myself, and now on a night with nothing but normal, non-stressing homework, I’ve managed to stay up for a solid eight hours, and I’m tired. And I don’t have a room mate.

I’m sure that last bit was a little “wha..?” So let me explain: we’ve got these little key-card thingies that I assume magically open our room doors, because the irony of technology is that the smarter we become, the more advanced the stuff we build, and the less able we become to understand the technology around us. Whatever, I don’t know what I’m doing talking about the technological folly of man.

Back to my main point: I took a shower this morning and then realized that, for the second time this week, I’d left my room key in my room. And this is where a room mate could have saved me, because I could have banged desperately at my door, woken her up, and been let inside. But without anyone to live with, I must go down to the front desk dripping wet and cold in a towel, fill out a form, and pay ten dollars to get let back into my living space. That's the aforementioned source of my embarrassment.

So I’m burning money right and left just to have access to all the shit I own. It’s beautiful, how society finds ways to fleece its literal poorest demographic.

Also I want to ride the bus home this weekend, but the bus times are not doable for me. So I may have to just stay here, alone, again.

I don’t know. What can you even do, David Bowie? Were you actually reading all this monstrous gibberish, I think I would have lost you long ago. But there are times when one’s mother and friends are asleep and one is trapped alone. The sole owner of consciousness in an entire seven story building is a hard title to bear. And you, wherever the Hell you live, cannot angrily text me that IT’S FUCKING 5 AM WHAT THE FUCK IM ASLEEP. So thanks, for simultaneously existing and not existing, like all of my favorite celebrities do. I hope you’re dreaming good dreams.