do i walk or do i wait?

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Some are blaringly obvious, like that kid in grade school who was incredible at math but couldn't speak to a girl to save his life. There are others that aren't as obvious, like the girl who gets along with everyone but can never actually get close to a single person.

Deary me...however, as much as I would like to bitch and moan, I really have no reason to. Today has pointed that out to me more than ever.

This whole day has been extremely odd and disjointed. From my mother calling me first thing this morning with an impending sense of doom, to running into a friend in the middle of a crosswalk and not being able to have an actual conversation.

Let's lighten things first with this incident:

Of all the awkward places to run into someone, the most awkward has to be the crosswalk. You can't just stop and talk in the middle of it, and you're both heading in the opposite direction, so you'd obviously be going out of your way if you turned around to chat. That, and you'd have to wait for the next cycle of traffic to come through before you can cross again. You know you want to talk to said individual, but everything is against you. The timing of it is off, the short and strained wave and terse words make you turn your head when you've finally made it to the other side, and you wonder, "Should I have waited?" There was the possiblity for a compelling afternoon chat, and you might have ruined it.

We'll have to start running into each other in places besides the middle of a busy street.

On the other spectrum of my day...my mother called this morning, panicked and worried. I didn't really listen to her, seeing as how it was 7:30 a.m.. little did I know that it was only moments after the first shooting at Virginia Tech University.

32 are reported dead, including the gunman. Many are wounded, and life on that campus probably won't return back to normal for a very long time. And will things ever be normal for anyone after this tragedy? The most fatal shooting in American history occurred today in a place where students woke up, grabbed their cereal, and headed out the door for what they believed to be another monotonous day of classes. To wake up in the morning, never to return? It's crazy. And it's almost not even tangible, how one person can cause so much pain in the span of a few hours.

Trying to bring it home at UK felt selfish. Attempting to make pictures of students suffering felt wrong. This isn't our tragedy, this isn't ours to make news of. A massacre on a school campus isn't ours to make a story out of. It didn't feel right.

I hope all is well with everyone who is at Virgina Tech. I was relieved to hear that my close friend is safe and sound, and I can't even begin to grasp what the students at VT are going through.

It's been a crazy day.