The Social Introvert

I missed people over winter break.

I mean, yes, while I was home I had my parents and my sister and my cat and the two high school friends who still talk to me and they're all lovely and nice and I like them a lot and stuff. It's always nice being home and getting to see them, and also getting a chance to have a room to myself sometimes and not have to bother anyone else when I fall asleep listening to music or Vlogbrothers videos.

But at the same time, I get really lonely for PEOPLE when I'm at home. There's almost always at least one other person in my apartment at any given time at school, and we will often do our homework quietly together in the living room, where the internet works best. There's something comforting about that feeling of never being alone - it's sort of warm and safe, and I like it more than I thought I would.

And while I'm not in any way trying to disparage my friends at home, and I do genuinely enjoy catching up and hanging out and watching movies with my friends and family over breaks, there is a zany quality to gatherings that happen in my apartment that I don't quite get anywhere else. We had five people over the other night playing the Post-It game (for those who are not familiar - a person's name gets written on a Post-It and stuck to a player's forehead, and that player has to guess who they are using yes or no questions) and Bananagrams for HOURS and there were lots of laughs and ridiculousness had by all.

I missed that so much. Which is weird, considering that I am kind of insanely shy. I didn't used to like large, loud gatherings of any sort, and now, even though I'm certainly not the most talkative one in the room, I love them. They're fun and silly and my friends are really nice people and it's great. It's nice to force myself out of my shell a bit too, and force myself to relax, which is not something that I am good at. I'm so glad that my school friends are so supportive and wonderful and that they KNOW me, weirdnesses and all, and they still think I'm pretty cool and like hanging out with me. I know that I CAN relax around them, which is a really great feeling.

I have decided that my priorities this semester (you know, other than not starving and getting good grades) are Do An Awesome Job on Senior Project and Hang Out With All the People Because Graduation. Friends, writing, and good grades.

Also not freezing, because Ithaca is in fact the frozen north (I had forgotten the extent of this and now I am huddling under all the blankets).

See you next Tuesday, blogosphere! :)

Ithaca Again

Hello, dear blog readers. I hope you are well on this fine Tuesday evening. I am currently ensconced in my wonderful new apartment with two of my three lovely flatmates, listening to someone else's music and the sound of my keyboard and the wind, and more than a little miffed that the very strong smell of pot coming through the window from somewhere is putting a damper on my sense of calmness.

The rather omnipresent smell of pot is one thing I did not miss about Ithaca, but there are many things I have missed. Mostly those things are people - I missed sitting around at two in the morning with roommates, hanging out and laughing and talking about important things or the meaning of life or nothing in particular really. I missed my friends that I have not seen since December, before I left for London. It's been great to see things click back into place, to pick up conversations as though I've never even left, to hug people I've only known in text or in pixelated videos for months. It's been great to be surrounded by friends again, in my apartment, in the dining hall, sitting at a table in "the pub," having person after person wave and say hello and ask how my summer was. Classes start tomorrow, and I'm excited to be reading new things, learning new things, attempting new things in my writing. It'll be hard, but it'll be fun.

Of course there are things I did not miss. I did not miss the utterly vile smell of marijuana, I did not miss the worry of piling-up homework, I did not miss the cold (although it is not, of course, cold here yet. It certainly will be, though).

It feels a bit surreal to be here again. I was walking through campus to pick up my textbooks in the mail center, looking around at all the familiar buildings, and for a moment I felt a little bit like I was in one of those dreams where you know you are in a specific place even though your surroundings are not that place at all. I couldn't quite grasp what being back meant. How could I be here again after everything that had happened? How could I be in Ithaca, after being blown off a mountain in Edinburgh, after getting hopelessly lost and then found again in Venice, after walking three hours in snow-clogged London? How can I be back in the same place, to do the same thing, when I am not the same?

I do think this semester will be pretty exciting though. I'm looking forward to my classes; I'm looking forward to directing Broadway Revue and joining the Quidditch team. I'm excited to cook delicious things for my roommates and other assorted friends; I'm excited about the shiny new internship I snagged myself (talk about the benefits of Twitter!!); I'm excited for lots of adventures around this neat little town I live in.

I think one of my favorite things to do is just sit and talk with a small group of close friends until all hours of the morning. We talk about serious things - relationships and breakups and friendships and careers and hopes and dreams and fears, all sorts of things. We talk about other things too, like books and tv and movies. We tell jokes, talk about stupid stuff that doesn't matter, as well as the stuff that does. It feels comforting to be surrounded by people you trust, when you know they trust you too. I'm glad to be back in that environment. I'm looking forward to a lot of late nights and tired mornings, smiles and secrets and so many laughs my jaw aches with it.

And hopefully all this will happen without too many unpleasant smells filtering in from outside. 

The Year Turns Round Again

Yes, that is a War Horse reference. No, I am not completely obsessed. Well... yeah, okay, maybe I am.

Anyway. It's that time of year again - time to pack up all of the things, put them into my dad's car, and drive back up to the frozen north. Which is not, of course, all that frozen at this time of year, but will hopefully not be blisteringly hot, at any rate.

I'm both really excited and a little reluctant to head back to school, as usual. I'm excited for my flat and my flatmates (well, technically apartment, since I am once again in America, but WHATEVER), and I'm excited to see friends I haven't seen since December. I'm excited for my classes (although not so much for the homework). I'm excited for my theatre group and all sorts of things. It'll be great.

But I'm also, as usual, sad to leave my house and my bed and my cat and my sister and my parents. They're lovely. I'm very lucky to get along with my family as well as I do, so as excited as I am to go see my friends and hang out and be all Independent!Semi-Grown-Up-Person, it's always a bit sad leaving home again.

I'm also a bit worried that I'll get the whole "reverse culture shock" thing all over again. After spending five months in London and all summer working in NYC, going back to Ithaca is going to be a bit... strange. I'll be in an apartment again, cooking my own meals, but there will be no local Sainsbury's around the corner to pop into if I had run out of an ingredient or wanted some dessert. There will be no corner pizza place only open in the middle of the night (which, by London standards, is about 11pm) to run to when I don't feel like cooking or it's late and I'm starving after coming home from seeing a play for class or hanging about in a pub with friends. There will be no pubs, and no pub food. (Gosh I miss pub food.) Halfway through October, it will start getting colder than it ever gets in London, even in January.

And I've changed. I'm a little bolder than I used to be. I'm a little more sure of myself. I hope that I can fit who I am now into the space I left for myself in Ithaca.

I am looking forward to going back, though, even if it means my Italian class might kill me.

I'm going to do my best to keep up the Tuesday-Thursday blog schedule, since those are the days when I have only one class. Dear readers, tell me what you would like me to blog about! More query tips from my internship? Writing things I learn in my classes? Reminiscences of my adventures in Europe? Snippets of my current wip (there will soon be two, one regular one and one for my short novel class)? Let me know!

Are you going back to school soon? Excited about it? Let me know! :D

Back to School Things!

Hello guys! I'm back at Ithaca! Woots!



I didn't so much miss my lovely concrete block walls, but my Doctor Who poster is another matter... ;)

In spite of the fact that it means I won't get any sleep from now until Thanksgiving break, and already have homework (which I should really start doing), I'm excited to be back. I'm really looking forward to taking some upper-level writing classes, especially my Historical Fiction and Editing & Publishing classes. I feel like this semester, what I want to write and what I have to write will be more aligned than they usually are, and I think it's going to be awesome.

I'm going to keep up my Tuesday/Thursday blogging schedule as best I can, although my 18 credits may or may not require a few gif spam posts or funny YouTube videos now and again. Teaser Tuesdays will return, although probably not every week - I'm enjoying keeping my current project a secret, as I'd like to use it to experiment with a few things and am just writing it for myself right now. (Although I'm sure I could be persuaded to share a few pieces of it later.)

If you are going back to school soon or have already gone back, best of luck for a good semester! Hopefully we can all keep our heads above the tidal waves of homework.