Things are settling better into a new routine. My adviser wants me to defend my thesis by mid-November. That will be great because it means I will done by the end of this year, for sure. Then, something else. It doesn't matter what I do, as long as I am in a good place with friends, with a good feel. A little more exciting than here, hopefully.

I'm going to a statewide organic conference this weekend. It's exciting because the other conference I presented at in Cambridge (beginning of this month) was very stuffy and regressive, in my opinion. At this conference, there will be lot of local farmers, forward thinkers, down-to-earth people instead of just academics. I feel much more comfortable being at this sort of event. There are always commonalities with everyone (we're all just human), but I honestly am not mature enough to have a good time rubbing shoulders with agribusiness-loving executives. The best thing for me, where I'm currently at, is to leave them be.

It'll be my last semester of classes as well, which is great! More time for reading whatever I want to, afterwards. Realistically, I will be burnt out on learning and probably won't study much for a long time. But it's nice to be moving in that direction. Hearing my adviser say I should defend in Nov made me feel like things are moving along nicely.
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I had an interesting dream the other night. I got very angry, much more so than usually I do in real life. I beat someone up very badly. I actually had to pause and rewind the dream a couple times, because I nearly beat the fictional person to death, and I didn't want to do that. I had the thought, "With that much beating, she'll die, this isn't realistic, if I don't want to kill this person," and went back a bit and beat a bit more and shoved her away to suffer and recover. I had to stop the dream and force myself to wake up because the whole thing was disturbing. And then, awake, I felt peaceful and relieved.

I hate violent movies, I don't understand deep aggression, but what this dream made me realize is that I have those things in me, just hidden. It's one thing to think you are capable of all emotions, and another to feel you are capable of all. It was interesting. It wasn't quite lucid dreaming, but I had a level of control--I didn't want to kill the person and actually had to redo a scene in the dream a few times.

For some reason, it didn't feel bad. I marveled in the feeling of having let out so much aggression. It's good to know that part is there so I can keep an eye on it.