Have you been living under a rock or something?

No. Under a thesis, for a while. But no rocks.

I officially bade farewell to school yesterday, when the university graciously decided to graduate me. Finishing graduate school was the hardest thing I've done in the last six years, and maybe ever. It wasn't physically hard, like running a marathon or thumb wrestling, but it definitely took its toll on my mind and body. Next challenge: fix my mind and body. Mostly body.

I go to the gym 5 days a week not to get skinny, because that will never happen (and I wouldn't want it to). I push myself to exercise for several big-time reasons:

• If my health continues at this pace, I am scheduled for a mid-life crisis any time now. Some fat people are healthy, I will admit that. But I, clearly, am not.
• I want to turn down invitations to play softball and tennis because I hate being sweaty and outside, not because I'm in bad shape.
• I want to have a baby. Next year, if I can swing it.

On June 13, while sobbing through the Rosie O'Donnell gay family cruise documentary, I decided to have a child via anonymous donor insemination (man, that sounds fancy!). I lost a best friend and a warm, fuzzy drug problem because of this decision, but I gained a future. Never before have I imagined a real future for myself, other than the depressing prediction of things always being the same. I have had many, many grand ideas in my lifetime (become an astronaut! move to New York! be a mobile artist!) but this one (raise a loving, compassionate, feminist child!) has not faltered. I think about it every day. It is safe to say that I want this more than anything I've ever wanted before.

That is a scary thought. It seems like I have spent the last few years distancing myself from the expectation of motherhood. But I'm not doing this because my uterus obliges me to. I'm doing it because I can't imagine a better use of my life than creating and sustaining a human being with a loving, just heart.

So, that's what I've been doing.