Everyone I know is like freaking out right now. I thought freshman year was supposed to be the life-altering one. What is going on?

I don't really know who I am in this place. I think that is kind of frightening but also kind of awesome.

the strand on a thursday

Sometimes you might sit in a cafe trying really hard to read Milton for an hour or two and start to get sad because the people you are staring at outside the window are not staring back at you. You might abandon the reading attempt and write anxiously in your notebook while tapping your foot. Outside it could very well be cloudy and you'll zip up your jacket and try to look like you're in a hurry, judging your self worth by whether or not you can keep up with the late-twenties businessman on the sidewalk next to you. You might think about all of these things and about what it means that you are thinking them and wonder if a metalife is real life, and wonder what everyone else occupies their mind with while they are eating lunch alone on a cloudy day. Milton, maybe.

But soon enough you'll probably see someone you know at a crosswalk and stop to talk about weekend plans, and the sun will come out for a few minutes and you'll have to squint to see westminster while the wind blows your hair all in your face. You will put some radiohead on your iPod, pretending that it just makes so much morse sense in england, and realize that it may be just a baby life, but you do actually have a life here, and think to yourself that maybe that could possibly be OK.

I am healthy and I am whole
but I have poor impulse control
and I wanna go home
but I am home

Homesick doesn't make any sense. I can't really figure out why a person shouldn't be just as happy in one place as another, especially if they are able to keep in close contact with their friends and family. But there's just something about that physical distance that bothers you, and I guess there's no convincing yourself it doesn't exist. It's not that you miss the place that is home, or even the people. You do miss the people, but that's not homesickness. Homesickness is something else that is simultaneously completely illogical and completely real.

I am so predictable. I know that if I spend the evening alone I will become lonely and sad, so I'm not surprised by it. But understanding your emotions doesn't really do anything to change the emotions themselves. If anything, it just adds this whole meta level to life which is really annoying, like a song stuck in your head.

Tomorrow I will start my classes and while I know that it will be really refreshing to have something to occupy my mind all the time, I am not feeling very self-confident about my intelligence and I am afriad that I will crash and burn this semester. So far I have not felt locked in to anything here. I have been putting off doing anything that feels permanent, such as buying pots and pans, opening a bank account, or doing my laundry. I don't know how to make myself commit to this experience. I have just been floating along in a haze and living in the moment. It's been a nice change from my usual self but it worries me, and I am afraid I will just keep on acting irresponsible and flighty and never really settle down. I need to CTFO really badly right now, but the idea of doing it makes me feel anything but chill.

I'm always in love.

News

hey guys, I decided to have a seperate blog for traveling, so that I can tell more people about it and you know, keep it more impersonal. And about traveling. Anyway, the url is: http://pseudointellectualtravels.blogspot.com/

how funny am I? I also started a videoblog, the quality of which sucks at the moment, but will improve, and you can see it on the travel blog or on youtube, and my username on youtube is ohmandyyyy if you wanna be friends/stalk me.

over and out,
Mandy

I know there must be a whole bunch of other stuff to do, but I can't think of anything! Help me! Sarah and Charlene, this means you. Please tell me what I am forgetting.

Yesterday was a very dark, hot, day. Days that are both hot and dark are very rare, and thank goodness, because they really take it out of you. Every activity is torture. Your seatbelt burns you, your jeans stick to your legs, stores' air conditioners can't keep up with the constant flow of open doors and hot bodies, eating even the smallest meal makes you feel sick and bloated. The clouds and the possibility of rain make you want to curl up in bed with a book, but it's much too hot for covers and much to hot for concentration on anything. You are left alone with your hot, dark thoughts. You find out about a form you haven't filled out and your whole world comes crashing down around you. nothing can be done about this form. You will never find the stength inside you to fill it out. You will not make it past this day. You wallow in self pity, fear, and heartburn (I forgot to mention you visited a Mexican restaraunt earlier in the day). At least I did.

I have good days and bad days, when it comes to this whole moving thing. Yesterday, not so good. Today, better. Maybe it was the fact that the temperature dropped 10 degrees, the humidity seemed back to normal, at least relative to the last week, and the clouds were gone. It also could have been the trip to H&M, or the Peppers. I tried huevos rancheros for the first time because I realized I had never tried it. They serve it all day! It was great. Also, my new camera came in the mail! It's beautiful. I have yet to give it a real trial run, but the pictures I took in my dark room look pretty good. I think I am going to try and make a video blog about the next few days, so keep an eye out for that. I am still trying to figure out iMovie though, so it might not happen.

I have to keep telling myself that this is what I want to do. In times like these I find that it's better to ignore your emotions and follow your head. Hopefully this approach will not end in failure.

soooo

woops.





p.s.- why does mine look so scrunchy?

dear everyone,

You know how you can have multiple contributers to blogs on this thing? I think it would be really fun if we could all have this joint blog, where anyone could write in it who feels like it, or upload photos and videos and art, and anyone could change the layout or add to the links or change the title or whatever whenever they want. It would be like an exclusive wiki, I guess. Wouldn't that be cool? Does anyone else think that would be cool?

I am starting to feel kinda sick to my stomach.

Today was an incredibly unproductive day, as usual, but I did learn that what you do is way less important then who you do it with. I am perfectly content with sitting outside a closed starbucks with Josh and Santee for long periods of time without getting bored, because we never run out of things to talk about. With other people, we could go to five different places and be bored out of our minds at each of them. I don't really understand why conversation comes so easily between some people and not between others. It seems to me that certain combinations just click for some reason. Weird.

The other day my friend Thomas asked me if I had been writing much lately, and I realized that I hadn't at all. He, of course, had, so I felt pretty uncool about it, and since then I have been thinking about why I am so apathetic and unproductive in the summer months. I have come to the conclusion that I need school to kind of turn my brain on. When I am in school I am constantly thinking over new ideas and taking in new information, and I guess the more that goes in, the more comes out. When I have free time my mind just kind of sits there, and it's really hard to get it moving by pure force. I could write, but nothing interesting would come out. I don't know how I feel about this. What will become of me once I graduate? Yikes.