college lyfe

I guess a post about college is probably overdue by now, considering I've been here for over three weeks -- nearly a month. To be honest, I still feel kind of weird about writing here because I know there are things I can't say because of people I know who will read this. I want to be as open and as candid as I can be, but I still have to show discretion. Which is annoying, but that's what journals are for, I guess.

xx

I've noticed I tend to appreciate life most when it matches some idea I've acquired in my mind of how it should be; that is, when the scene in front of me looks like a picture I've seen before, or when the action or feeling of a moment reminds me something I've read in a story. I'm hopelessly idealistic in that way, my brain swamped with visions of how life could be. That's not to say I'm disappointed when life does not meet these vaguely defined expectations, for it rarely does and there is something to be said for the gritty, 'realer' experiences, but it does mean that when life happens to resemble a dream in some way or another, I am perhaps disproportionally excited and, in many ways, at peace.

In life, it is the picturesque moments that stand out and the uglier ones that I sweep under the table. By picturesque I mean beautiful -- not necessarily happy, but poetic. Something you can write about without it sounding like a grocery list. A contrast to the prosaic mundanity of the every day. This is how I live: by collecting these moments of beauty and holding fast to them, for better or worse.

This has been my experience at college as well. The moments I have enjoyed most are the ones I imagine as being lines in a poem, or scenes in a photo, or a part of a movie. I love working in the library, reading about mythology or writing a paper analyzing Sappho, because to me, that's, like, what college is supposed to be. I love lying down in the grass on a sunny afternoon, reading. I love hanging out in people's dorm rooms, watching a steady flow of people in and out, catching snippets of their stories. I love the grad school campus because it has a place in the shrubs called Narnia, but the outside looks like the Secret Garden, with a swing hanging from an apple tree. I love lying out on a hill in the dark with a bunch of people, waiting for the Northern Lights to come but knowing they probably won't (they didn't). I love that someone can text me, "hey, wanna come study?" at 8 o'clock at night and I can just walk five minutes and see them. I even love the feeling of having done my laundry, or of having taken care of some errand, not because it's pretty, but because I feel responsible and independent, and like an adult.

It's not all fun and games and picturesque moments. It's getting easier, but the first week was pretty hard. I miss my friends more than I thought possible, and I miss Sundays at home, reading the Sunday Times leisurely while Dad makes pasta and homemade bread for dinner, and I miss things like being able to walk over to my bookshelf and flip through any book at any time. Sometimes, I'll randomly wish I could be somewhere like, oh, Central Market, or wish I could eat tacos (real tacos), or pet my cats, and I....can't. But those are small things. And if I think about it, I probably have enough memories stored in my brain that I could live forever.

Sometimes it feels claustrophobic, being surrounded by people all the time, and sometimes the temptation to just stay in bed and not go to classes is Very Real, but most mornings, I wake up and I'm glad to be here.

Hope you're all doing well, wherever you are.

another dying august

It's been a weird summer.

I was supposed to get a job, and finally get my license, and have one last fun carefree wild summer before college, but I kind of messed all that up. So it goes. I regret a lot of things, but not everything. I read a lot of good books this summer. I went camping and biking in Idaho and saw the most breathtaking places and met the most interesting people. I canoed and went stand up paddleboarding around a lake and saw two bald eagles. I went to the beach with my friends at the beginning of the summer and I still have tan lines from it. I played Paint Twister with my friends and walked around the neighborhood in the middle of the night, paint all over my clothes, paint all over my skin. I babysat for a family that just moved from Florida, played more hide and seek than I'd like. I swam in a river while it rained and swam in a different river under the light of the stars. I went running with my old teammates and jumped in Barton Springs afterwards. I learned how to do CPR, and parallel park, and bake a pie. I got my ears pierced again. I went to a One Direction concert and had the time of my life. I said a lot of goodbyes. I still have to say a few more.

I'm leaving for Oregon on Tuesday. Everything's kind of crazy right now, suitcases and duffel bags sprawled out on my floor, stacks of clothes and blankets and uncompleted to do lists. I'm leaving the house I've lived in for 18 years, in the only city I've ever called home, and for the most part, I'm done being sad about it. I'm still a little scared, but I know it'll be okay. When most of the people you love have already left, it makes it easier for you to leave, too.

I think I'll do my best to keep blogging in college. I didn't really want to leave this place. I just needed time to recalibrate. I think now's a good time to start over.

See you on the other side.

Okay, so...here's the thing: I honestly don't really know what to do with this blog anymore. I never thought I'd stop writing here, always imagined I'd continue for a long time and that this site would follow my life for years and years until at least I was an adult, whatever the hell that means. But now, increasingly, I just don't really know what to do.

It feels like most people have abandoned blogspot by now. So many of the blogs I used to read, so much of the community where I made friends years ago, seem to have been left, or transferred to some other site. I appear to be a part of this mass abandonment; whether because other people left first or for my own reasons, I do not know. Likely it is some combination. This is what happens when you grow up, after all.

This is a strange in-between summer, after graduation but before moving, true, but it's been weird for the past year or so. I haven't blogged nearly as much lately as I did when I was fifteen.

Now I'm eighteen, and a part of me feels like I should just leave this here as a monument to my adolescence -- some untouched, left behind relic of the past. Maybe I should move on -- but to what, I don't know.

There are so many things I can't explain. So many things I don't feel I have to explain.

I want to continue writing, but in what capacity? I'm on my tenth journal in the past three years which is good -- it is more than good, it is necessary -- but sometimes I still want to share my thoughts with other people. Maybe this is just a human compulsion. Maybe I've just been convinced that the only way something is valid is if other people validate it for me, which seems a bit of an arrogant, annoying way of thinking.

Well, I've come to no conclusion, but I still thought I should say something.

This is not a goodbye.