If I were a car, I'd be one stuck on overdrive.

During sixth grade, I prepared all year for an exam that would allow me to transfer from one school to a better one. After ten months of obscene hours of studying, private lessons, and a ruined summer, three days before the exam I found out that the school would only accept one person.

Almost a hundred of us taking the test and they would let in only one person.

I had no chance in hell.

But I'd come this far and I was going to take the damn test regardless. On the morning of the exam, I woke up with a fever of 38.5, which is 101.3 for the Celsius challenged. It seemed like all signs pointed to this school not being in my future.

I went to the test nonetheless. And because I was so sick, I read each question several times, ensuring myself I knew exactly what they were asking. I took my sweet ass time and I didn't worry, mostly cause I couldn't; it was already too much effort to keep my eyelids from closing.

And, of course, I got in. (Otherwise my telling this story would be pointless, right?)

I know that the only reason I scored so high on that test was cause I was too tired to rush through it. I didn't make the usual mistakes that come from hurriedly misreading the question.

I've always done a million things at once. The TV would blast while I did homework. I did my undergraduate degree and graduate degree simultaneously. During the same four years, I held five different jobs on campus, dated two different men (not simultaneously of course!) so it wasn't like I was closed up in my room studying all the time. Even when I walk down the street I walk rapidly, more concerned with my destination than my route. Always rushing. If I'm not doing a million things, I'm often doing nothing. It's like a car that can do 0 or 100 but nothing in between.

I know that I have my mom to thank for these specific genes. She suffers from the same speed problem and often complains at the end of each day about how she has a million things to do and how she feels overwhelmingly worn out.

On Saturday, I lifted one of my nephews in an effort to stop him from jumping into the not-so-clean waters of the Bosphorus. Within twenty seconds, my back reminded me what a completely moronic decision that was. Pains started shooting up and down my left leg.

So my back is broke. Again.

Now I'm walking, more like limping I guess, around New York City, slowly.

Slowly.

I am taking my time. I have no choice. But I'm realizing that while fast accomplishes many things, slow is crucial. It makes you pay attention. It makes you see details. It makes you think.

It makes you enjoy.

I'm sad it took my body's incapacity to get me here, but I'm trying to make the most of it. I'm learning that sometimes you want to cruise at 40 and appreciate the landscape.

Previously? Hatred.

Previously? Regret.

Previously? OCD.

Previously? Amerika.

Previously? Tick Tick Tick.

Previously? Wasted Emotions.

Previously? Home.

Previously? RIP DNA.

Previously? Out There.

Previously? Airplanes and Strangers.

Previously? Crappy Men.

The above sonnet is Sonnet 43 by Gaspara Stampa. She was influenced by the well known poet Petrarch.

Reading this poem reminded me of a pattern I frequently observed in my female friends since high school. For some reason most of my female friends were attracted to typical "bad boys" and quickly got bored with the nice, caring men who liked them. I never fully understood the fascination of the 'bad' but I noticed it with enough consistency that I can be sure Gaspara wasn't the only one who suffered from this phenomenon.

It seems the nice men have a low dangerousness quotient and are therefore less interesting to be around. They often make great friends but are rarely ever picked as a potential boyfriend. Of course, choosing the guy who makes your life more challenging becomes a major hazard in the long term. Invariably the guy cheats on you, abuses you verbally or, worse, physically or just ups and leaves. If he didn't do any of the above, he wouldn't qualify as the dangerous and exciting partner to have.

Almost all of my friends were acutely aware of the stupidity of their decisions, but yet they kept making the same choice over and over again, falling to pieces at the end of each one.

I remember a friend who kept turning down really wonderful guys who were interested in her. Guys who cared about who she was and what her thoughts and feelings might be. Instead she'd go for the good-looking guy who chose her for her looks and never really cared about her words. For some inexplicable reason being with this guy would make her feel good about herself. Even if the guy drank too much and trashed her place, she was dating the cool guy and that's all that mattered.

I've made a few misjudgments of character in my life, held on to people for a little too long but I can easily say I never went for the type who was obviously going to break my heart. I guess the biggest reason must be cause I was never really good looking enough to be chosen by such men and also cause I'm not really any fun: I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke and I rarely dance. I'd much rather spend the night reading a book. So I guess in this case, it all worked out to my advantage as I ended up with the nice men and in durable relationships.

But I still don't understand why a person would knowingly go for someone who is obviously going to be disappointing. Isn't that sabotaging a relationship before it even begins?

Previously? Behind.

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden painted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime." from Fahrenheit 451

When I read passages like the above, I try to look at my life and figure out what I plan to leave behind. Having children is an obvious answer. Assuming everything turns out okay biologically, I plan to have children and, hopefully, I plan to have them outlive me. So even if I accomplish nothing else, I can have that as a backup.

The fact is, I want more than that. I want to change the world. I want to touch people's lives, I want to save the planet, I want to create things, I want to make a difference. I think that's one of the main reasons I am displeased with my job. While it makes my financial life smooth sailing, programming applications for an investment bank isn't what I'd call 'saving the world.'

Don't get me wrong, I don't think I need to start a movement to save the world. On the contrary, I believe a tiny thing is all it takes. If everyone did a tiny bit, we'd all be so much better off. I've talked about this before and I still believe in what I said. But I also have this urge to do something great. Something bigger than I am. Something that isn't selfish and all about making my own life better. Something that will make me and my family proud of who I am. Something that will show the world that if I can, so can everyone else.

The question is what? Of course, I have no clue, cause if I did I'd be out there doing it instead of here, writing about it. But I promise you here and now that I shall leave something behind.

What will you leave behind?

Previously? I Am.

One of the main reasons I tend to not like personality tests is that they seem to mostly test who you think you are as opposed to who you really are. After all, you're the one sitting there answering all the questions. If the question says, "When at a party, are you more likely to mingle or sit at a corner and avoid getting noticed?" you can say "I'm the life of any party" and no one would know whether you actually told the truth or not.

Not you're thinking, "Why would I lie?" right?

I'm not trying to imply that you'd purposefully try to affect the results of the test, but I think that many of us have an incorrect notion of who we really are. I can think of several reasons for this imbalance. One can be because we tend to pay more attention to our personality when we're young and being judged by others and then as time goes on and other people voice their opinions less, we tend to not notice changes in ourselves. Or maybe we concentrate so much on whom we want to be that we don't notice who we actually are. Or maybe we don't like who we are so we don't even want to admit to ourselves the sad truth. And possibly a million other reasons.

There have been times in my life when I'd call up a close friend and ask him what he thought of me in reference to a specific scenario. I'd wonder whether I'm sociable or if I'm caring and compassionate. Obviously since he was my friend his answers were biased but hopefully a little less then my own were. I wonder how widely our answers would differ if I took a standard personality test and asked a few close friends to take it for me. Do I come across the way I think I do? Am I really the person I think I am?

There are psychologists who believe you are only who others think you are. To me, that's a really sad thought and I can't yet fully articulate why.

I know that, like many people, I act differently around varying groups of friends. A girl I've known since birth will differ in her ideas of my personality from the guy I met in college or my classmates in my sign language class. I also know that who I am is more complicated than a test category. We all are. But I still wonder whether who I am is who I think I am. In the end, what makes me who I am, my thoughts or other people's assessments of me?

Add to that mix the incessant conversations that occupy our lives about who we should be. Parents, teachers, managers, siblings, friends and many other people that have been in our lives pass judgment on some of our actions. They influence our thoughts, our behavior patterns and even our actions. Think of all the things you do to please your family and loved ones. How much of that defines who we are?

I'm afraid I don't have a point or conclusion today, just many questions. However, I'd be delighted to know your thoughts.

Previously? Facing my Face.

I was always the ugliest child among my friends.

The girls in my group were nothing short of drop dead gorgeous and they'd make sure to remind me of the difference in the quality of our looks. Ever since the time I heard a guy mention how I was the only ugly person they hung out with, I couldn't look myself in the mirror without the word 'ugly' sprinting to my mind.

About two years ago, I cut my hair. I'd been growing it since the fifth grade and it was weak and difficult to manage. Since then, I cut my hair maybe twenty times. I dyed it to dark brown, auburn, orangish red, dirty blonde, deep red and now I'm once again trying to become blonde. And I've decided to start a peace process between my face and me.

Now I stare at the mirror for a while and try to see what my face tells me. My eyes remind me of my dad. They are a light brown with darker tones on the edges, a sign of my middle eastern heritage. The little lines on the corner of my eyes are getting deeper: a sign of my increasing happiness. I see lines across my forehead, a sign of my continuous worrying. When I smile, thick lines form around my nose and a tiny dimple appears on the left side of my face.

I have nice teeth. I never had to wear braces and they've always been straight. My face has somewhat grown into my large ears and my haircut mostly hides how much they stick out. Even my nose says something important. It's a symbol of more of my roots, Jewish ones. The purple marks under my eyes insist that I don't get any sleep no matter how many hours I may lay in bed. When I'm sad, my eyebrows curl up in the weirdest of arches. My hair reminds me that I'm learning to let go.

I'm learning to look at myself and see something besides 'ugly'. I see my family, my background, signs of my happiness and characteristics. And I smile.

I think I'll keep this face, even if it is 'ugly'. It's mine.

What does your face tell you about yourself?

Previously? Audience.

I started writing diaries at the age of eleven.

I still recall the very first day I scribbled my first words. I struggled to distort my handwriting to appear somewhat decent. I remember looking at the colored pages with small "Hello Kitty" images all over and awkwardly trying to find the pithy words the pretty pages deserved.

I kept a diary for every single day of my adolescent life. Every single day from eleven years old to eighteen. Any friend from back then could easily tell the stories of how I would never go anywhere without my overflowing diary and a can of Diet Coke. If that's not enough, my eighteen diaries are the proof of my obsession.

By the fourth one, I'd developed a pattern for ending a diary and starting a new one. One of the private ceremonies I held at the start of a diary was naming.

If you were to open any of the pages of my diaries, you wouldn't see any real names. Every single person in my life had a nickname that would only be used in my diaries. Most of the names were quite stupid and generally referred to a characteristic of the person. So at the beginning of each diary, I would pick the person that symbolized my mood best and name my diary after him or her.

For the rest of the diary, I would start each entry with "Dear Such-and-Such" and actually write in a tone as if I were speaking to the actual person. The things I wrote, the feelings I conveyed were possibly more honest or deep than I'd necessarily tell to the person's face, but the attitude was right on. With each new entry, the person's face would flash before my eyes and make me smile. She or he was my audience for the duration of that diary.

Earlier this week I started thinking about my audience for this site. Who would I have used for its nickname if it had one? Whose image flashes before my eyes as I type these entries?

I'm not sure of the answers. Certain entries definitely feel like I'm talking to a specific someone and others are mostly talking to myself.

What about you?

Previously? Beauty.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

As always, I'm sure they're right. Thankfully, we all have our own ideas of beauty so that the wide varieties of humans who occupy the earth are each considered beautiful by one person or another.

I spoke to my mom yesterday and she told me about an event she had attended the previous evening. The event was organized by a distant family member I dislike. My mom said that the woman's daughter looked absolutely gorgeous and I replied, "She's such a terrible person that it's impossible for me to see her beauty."

After we hung up, I thought about my words and realized they were a perfect example of my true sentiments. When I see a stranger on the street, I might think she or he is beautiful but as soon as I get to know a person, my feelings about that person fully affect how good looking I think he or she is.

This is not to say that I don't have a "type". Even though the men I've dated have a wide range of looks, there are commonalities among them and I know that I prefer scrawny to buff. I like blue or green eyes. I tend to go for men who wear glasses. That's about it. So when I met Jake, I was attracted to him. But over the years, as I fell more and more in love, Jake got more and more handsome in my eyes.

The same goes for my close friends and people I admire and it's one of my favorite things about the web. The fact that I don't get influenced by the facial image before I get to know a person makes it such that I think the person is beautiful before I meet him or her and once I have that image it rarely goes away.

It's as if the inner beauty (or lack thereof) reflects on to someone's face and features.

I don't know if this behavior is specific to me, but I enjoy having it. While it makes it less pleasant for me to be around people I don't like, it makes it a total joy to be around my loved ones. I feel like I am often surrounded by beautiful humans.

What could be more wonderful?

Previously? Tearful Meetings.