All right, here: I wasn’t so ‘invincible’.

It’s been a year.

Okay.  Almost.

It’s nearly been a year since I really picked this blog up and decided to let it be more than the single posts about Christmas from 2007 (yes, for all of you who did not know, this blog has been alive for quite a few years).  I don’t really know what to say to my blog.  Happy Birthday?  No.  Not really.

A year ago, I was sitting outside in the Quad, dreading the winter that was to come, watching the people around me, feeling so philosophical.  I guess not much has changed.  I still chill in the Quad all of the time (just maybe in different places), still watch people to figure out more about what they may be like, et cetera.  Maybe I wear more scarves now and my hair is longer and I have more music in my iTunes library.  That’s about it from the physical perspective.  But, you may wonder what has changed in this past year:

Well, I’m more outgoing; that’s for sure.  I’ve opened up more than I could have imagined by talking to strangers and being genial.  Unfortunately, this also means that I’ve been more open with how I feel about things, which causes drama and anger.  People have thought that I’ve grown meaner.  I think I just grew more honest and maybe a bit more secure.  Sometimes, that backfires.  I question whether I want everyone around me to know that I’m excited or happy or stressed.  Sometimes, I turn back into the girl I always was in middle school and just hide everything.  As unhealthy as it is, I still find it comforting to hide behind my mask at some times when I’m not completely sure of my surroundings or if I just want to know I still have the strength to play this charade.  It’s an INTJ trait, I’m afraid.  We are a manipulative bunch, after all.

I’ve made new friends, too, and I guess you can say that I’ve lost some others.  I didn’t know a year ago just how amazing my dorm house was, but now I see all of these people I love every day, and it feels like the best family one could ever have.  We spend our time together, working, playing, relaxing, cooking, stressing, and everything else that a family shares.  It’s blissful, and I’ll be sad to leave when, in another year, I find myself no longer in the dorms.

I’ve also learned a lot.  That should be a given since I’ve been at uni for a full year, but I never would have imagined from last year just how much I would learn.  So much of my classes has been applied to everyday life or general conversations, and it leads me to wonder just how I got through in the past without the knowledge that I now have.  It’s also been exciting to apply what I learn in one class to other subjects.  Something about intuitively combining information in order to allow it presence in another department of life is terribly exciting.  It’s the proof that I’ve learned instead of just absorbed information for it to be squeezed out of me come exam time.

Also, I’ve multiplied my music and film collections.  Here are just a few for you:

Music:

• Fiona Apple’s “Extraordinary Machine”
• Loreena McKennitt’s “The Visit”, “The Book of Secrets”
• Yael Naïm’s “Yael Naïm and David Donatien”
• Kate Havnevik’s “Melankton”
• Florence + the Machine’s “Lungs”
• Imogen Heap’s “Ellipse”
• Nickel Creek’s “Why Should the Fire Die?”
• Patrick O’Hearn’s “Glaciation”
• Kingdom of Heaven Soundtrack
• Emiliana Torrini’s “Love in the Time of Science”, “Fisherman’s Wife”
• Joanna Newsom’s “Have One on Me”
• Beirut’s “Gulag Orkester”

Films:

• Kingdom of Heaven Director’s Cut
• Sleepy Hollow
• Marie Antoinette
• Pleasantville
• Mean Girls

Books:

• Great Expectations (Dickens)
• Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë) (even though I hated every single character)
• Sense and Sensibility (Austen)
• Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury)
• All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque)
• Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)

You can have at it on the media that has been with me during the past year.  Meanwhile, I’ve learned how to make three new types of hats, bake bread, make vegetarian entrées, pay bills, and work at a summer job basically teaching Missouri state history.  So, it’s been educational and new.

But I still want to assure you that, if the ground was not so wet, I would be outside right now, watching everyone around me, listening to some good music, and thinking about everything that happened to occur to get me in that spot and everything that was to occur.  I may not be listening to Muse, and I may not be commenting on my personal philosophies, but I would still be there.

I might as well be right now.

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Consistency

Note: This is a long one and more of a look inward than that of a page ripped from a diary.  No need to read unless you want a lot of background on me and some philosophy.

Lately, I’ve wondered about how much consistency there is in my life.  I’m naturally a creature of habit, stuck in her old ways: I sit in the same seat each day for my classes even though I’m allowed to sit where ever I wish (and I always sit in the middle front for each class, too), I awake the same way each morning, listen to the same music repeatedly, and I refuse to change around the furniture in my room (I’ve had the same set up in my  bedroom since I was six).  Yet, I’m also changing quite a bit and in ways that I didn’t recently realise.

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