I know no one reads my LJ anymore (a pretty direct consequence of not writing anymore), but if anyone does see this: does anyone out there know someone who met his/her S.O. through online gaming? Or anyone who has a strong opinion on the subject? I'm writing an article and need to interview as many people as I can find, so any suggestions will be met with thanks and adoration.

I don't care that he looks like an old man. I don't care that until I just Wikipedia'd him to check, I thought he was an old man (though I do feel better now.) There's something painfully sexy about the way Sam Beam sings "We were born to fuck each other one way or another" in the live version of "Evening on the Ground (Lilith's Song)". That is all.

I went on a bike ride today for half an hour and saw a firefly and it made me feel good. I ate a bunch of Chinese food for dinner and it made me feel less good.

I'm not really missing Steve. It's only been a few days, but that's usually all it takes. I'm kind of just doing okay. He called today and I was so surprised, having completely not realized that we hadn't spoken yet. That might be the first time that ever happened. But I don't feel sad about this or worry about this - it actually just feels great to love him and look forward to seeing him and to be totally okay.

My commute to my interview tomorrow will take about an hour and a half, most likely. Part of that makes me go "Ahh, so long!" because it's all the way on Wall Street (almost) and if I get this job, I'll be spending at least 9-10 hours a week just commuting, probably. But I'm also really excited because it's summer (!) and I should be reading and that would guarantee that I do. I picked out Rant by Chuck Palahniuk as my next book, randomly, but it's about time I read something by him so I don't mind.

I was freaking out about my outfit for tomorrow so tried everything on just to realize that my blouse is dirty and wrinkled. Glad I checked tonight.

I don't really want this internship, in the sense that I'm not sure how much I'll enjoy doing the actual work. And I don't much like jobs in the first place. But I so desperately want this internship because I really, really need something productive to do. Next summer, study abroad, damn it!

I'm determined to take so much advantage of the city this summer. I will go to Shakespeare in the Park (and it's Twelfth Night! I must!). I will see Waiting for Godot and whatever art exhibits are in town and whatever concerts are going on and museum hop with Sam and relive that wonderful summer after senior year when I just saw so many people and had so many adventures and everything was great.

Something feels off. Maybe it's just the mood I'm in, or maybe it's everything but I keep busy enough not to notice. All I know is that, right now, I am weighed down by the belief that there's something I'm supposed to be doing, or could be doing, and I'm not. I try to figure out whether or not I'm happy, but I'm also beginning to believe that happiness is the sort of thing you can't begin to judge until it's passed you by, one of those things you look back on and assume you had. Or maybe that's what you think when you're not happy.

Not that I'm unhappy. Not that happiness is all that matters. But I guess I just don't feel like I'm really being fulfilled anymore (when did I feel that way? Hmm...), and that worries me, as it's always worried me. It could be an end of the year thing, a "sophomore slump" thing, a "time is passing too quickly and I'm scared to death" thing. I've always been terrified of change, of what lies beyond, and the older I get the faster I move away from everything, the more I speed toward an uncertain future. I know enough now to know I'll be okay. There will be rough patches (this summer's potential isolation and fruitlessness, no longer living in a dorm come fall, JR in the winter) that stress me out, that leave me distressed and dismayed, and they too will crawl by. There will be pure, wonderful days that pass too quickly, as they always have.

I guess it boils down to dreams and expectations, loneliness and the fear of loss. What else is new?

But I should probably start writing again. At least trying to make some sense and order of my head. Let's start with a list:

1. I miss New York. Despite my incurable fear of loneliness, I can walk around it alone and feel like I'm in the right place at the right time in a way I can't explain. I still feel out of place, but in a belonging way. And I'm glad I'll be home for the summer, despite all my knowledge that I'll be miserable and I'll fight with mom and Jeff will disappoint and I'll have nothing to do all day and I'll go nuts and I'll miss Steve too much and I'll wonder what happened to all the friends I used to spend my summers with. In other words, I'm a fool.

2. As usual, I don't know what to do about NBN. I pride myself on not having burnt out yet, and I know I'll get a break during the summer and JR, and that I'll hate being uninvolved. But especially after Tom leaves, and with all the frustration I've had with the site, I'm just not sure how much longer I want to last, or what I want to do next.

3. I'm a little nervous about how little my career aspirations and the realities of the profession have in common. I have this sinking feeling that I won't really turn out to be a journalist after all, and I'm not sure I can contemplate the possibility of having no idea what to do with the rest of my life.

4. I'm running out of people I really value having in my life. And the ones that I have valued have left or are leaving.

5. Am I really supposed to be with Steve? And what am I actually asking myself when I repeat that question?

6. I hate time alone. It will probably do me some good.

7. I would really, really love to spend a good deal of time with old friends. Meeting up with high school friends is always this odd experience of recognizing how much time has passed, how many things have changed, and reconciling whatever new person I've become with the one they used to know. And there's always this little shuffling act, trying to remember how I acted with them and deciding which role to play now, and whether or not it's really a role. It's uncomfortable. But it brings me back to a sense of self that's been missing for years, reminds me of a me who embarasses me a little but who, in general, feels a lot more natural than I could ever have suspected.

8. I think one of the reasons I love Tom so much is that I feel timeless around him. As I just wrote to him in an e-mail: "The person I am around you is sort of the person I was in high school, sort of the person I am right now, sort of the person I'll be in ten years. You bring out the "me" in me, whatever it is, in a way that's purer and truer than when I am with almost anyone else. You make me feel like you've always known me, and not the uglier, real version I used to be, but the me that exists when I blur away the realities and focus on the version I always wished would be true. It's why, barring all sorts of psychotraumas, I can actually see us being friends for an uncomfortably long time. Because whoever I'm going to be, it's like she already exists around you."

9. It's sort of the way I used to feel around Lucy, which is a shame, because in retrospect my entire relationship with her feels extremely dated, the product of who we were in a specific time and place, not timeless at all. Which leaves me in the odd position of missing our friendship, resenting her, and recognizing that there's nothing to feel strongly about one way or another.

10. I'm probably going to end up a teacher, aren't I?

Andrea, I blame you.

I started writing a response to your post about not feeling attached to Lawrenceville anymore, but it set off my own run of thoughts, so here goes:

I got into a conversation with an old friend recently about Lawrenceville, and what it was like when we were there. And I couldn't help but be surprised by how fiercely attached she still felt to the memory of it. It's been a while since I've really sat down and thought about it. Oh, it comes into my thoughts fairly often, and I always love telling stories about my time there, but so often it's more analytical than guttural. I think, "Well, here's how my years there affected me," and less, "Hey, what were those years, anyway?"

In a way, though, we both agreed that we'd never been happier than we were when we were there. I feel foolish using the word "happy" at all, since I'm not sure what I mean by it. Because I can certainly be honest about my memories, to some extent, and remember how miserable I was so often at Lawrenceville. I always felt inadequate, unprepared, unintelligent, untalented. I looked around at almost every single one of my classmates and imagined for them brighter futures than I did for myself, greater successes and more meaningful experiences. I was rejected from the things I pursued more often than I was accepted, failed more than succeeded, went to bed at night frustrated more often than content.

And yet. Though there were the Saturday nights when nothing happened, that left me angry and frustrated and terribly lonely, there were far more days of hilarious escapades in large groups of friends, one-on-one conversations until 4 in the morning where I felt a mysterious, overwhelming connection to the people who are now mostly strangers. Some of my Lawrenceville friends will likely be friends for life, though the times apart will grow longer and longer, and the things we share will quickly diminish. Still, we'll always have the connection of our pasts, however much or little value we place on it in various parts of our lives. We will share not just the memories, but the lingering affects, the untraceable but poignant lasting effects of having known such people in such a place at such a time.

I entered Northwestern aware that it would never be my home. Everyone said, "give it time," but frankly, it had nothing to do with that. Home is the place you grow up, and I'd already done that some place else. Northwestern is too big, too ever-changing, too full of people and programs and places I'll never really know. I might not have been on the Science Olympiad at Lawrenceville, but I knew everyone on it, I'd studied in the classrooms where they met, and I was friendly with the man who ran it. The only time I've been in the engineering building, here, I was trying to find a friend who worked there.

Northwestern is wonderful, and I like it very much, but it'll never be mine the way Lawrenceville was. And when I visit now I feel too old and out of place, but in the same way I do when I go back to my actual "home" - it's my home, but the people have changed and the old storefronts are gone and it's not quite the place it was when I was there. But I can walk down the old paths and streets, enter the stores where I've bought things for years, and feel like I belong. Maybe not within the present of the place - I am neither New Milford resident nor Lawrenceville student - but as a part of its history, as someone who knew the place once upon a time, when it was something so different and yet so very much the same at its core.

Do you ever feel like the life you're living isn't your own?

Sometimes I feel like life is just a series of moments in which you step back and go, "Huh... so this is where all that time went." I felt that way a lot last year - suddenly in England, suddenly not. Putting cans on a shelf and ringing up customers, spending weekdays in the middle of April not in school. But that whole time, there was this constant haze of cognitive dissonance, like I could only live my life if I didn't give it too much thought, because dissecting it would make the whole illusion crumble.

I don't feel that way anymore. I don't feel that violent kind of detachment from my life, an all-encompassing sense of wonder over what the heck I'm doing in such an unfamiliar position. Instead, I have a subtle, funny little feeling of disbelief, akin to a tingling sensation in the back of my mind that I just can't shake. I'm 20 years old, a college student, and I'm currently living in neither dorm nor home, a summer vacation and I chose not to be in NJ. I have a summer job - though admittedly it's very, very part time. But part of why it's easy to accept is that hey, I'm technically living in a house, if not my house, and I'm doing the same sorts of things I'd be doing at home - watching too much TV and playing video games and reading and spending too much time alone. Instead of NYC, I occasionally hop into Chicago - but less often, to be sure. And I miss my dog an awful lot - but even that's a feeling I've gotten used to.

And I'm actually dating someone, which is strange, too, so I try not to give myself too much time to think about it because when I do, I feel like I'm rehearsing as an understudy for a show that'll never go up.

I guess I've been giving a lot of thought, lately, to the fact that I'm not really that connected to myself anymore. I feel just a little bit... empty. But not in a bad way, at least, not in a way that I feel I can actively rebel against. I think I just got a little sick of being self-reflective, but in that gradual disenchantment, I've lost some of that sense of self that I spent so many years building up. But maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Still - I kind of miss being who I was. For better or worse, she was a girl I spent a lot of time getting to know.

I don't write anymore because I'm happy. Just thought I should say that.

By the end of this week, I will (probably) have met with a (soon to be former) writer at the Chicago Sun-Times and perhaps his Chicago Onion editor son. And I might spend tomorrow hanging out with a homeless person, or at least shadowing a barista. And I'm definitely spending part of tomorrow visiting a ton of bathrooms on south campus.

I don't know about you, but I think my life is pretty cool.

On a potentially-related note, I don't sleep anymore. But I'm not getting that tired, either. What's up with that?

So, just like everyone else, I can't hit the end of a year without feeling an overwhelming need to sum up what I've gone through and speculate on what's to come. Here we go, then.

2007:

Fuck you, 2007. Last night at dinner, my mother began the night by asking what we all thought was the best thing about 2007. Before I could stop myself, I replied, "It's over." The rest of the table agreed a little too enthusiastically. I'm not sure what it was about this year that makes me hate it so, because when I think of exactly what I did, only a few things were really all that bad. But overall, it was a year of incredible dissatisfaction. What did I do with it?

You know, I actually just spent about 15 minutes going through my LJ and my written journal and my calendar, trying to sum up what happened, but by the time I got to March I was so bored with myself that I've deleted it all. Suffice it to say, when I go back and read about my life, I'm shocked by how little has changed. I hopped around from country to country in a desperate flee from stability, spent months working at a job I pretty much hated, came to a school where I spent the first month in personal crisis-mode, and basically spent the entire year hating myself, my life, and many of the people around me. But even now, I'm tempted to look back on it and feel like it wasn't all that bad. I don't mean to forget, but remembering is painful and much too aggravating. There's nothing quite like looking back on 12 months of your life and feeling like you got nothing out of them.

Which isn't true in my case, not at all. I think it's safe to say that I learned a lot about myself this year, and was admittedly disappointed by much of it. But that's the thing that's really eating at me, I think. I can't really think of many positive things from this year. Oh, I certainly met some interesting people and made new friends, but frankly, that happens every year. 2007 was a year completely out of the ordinary for me, and I hated nearly every minute of it.

So I guess that's why I'm really, genuinely excited for 2008. I turn 20 this year. I get to vote for the first time this year! Who knows what other "firsts" and "news" I'll encounter? I'm fully ready to be an optimist this once. I think it'll be a good year. And, at the very least, I'll do whatever I can to make it so.

Speaking of which - New Year's resolutions. I have them, but for once I'm keeping them to myself. I'm going to change how I act about certain things, and in theory at least, it'll be for the better.

2008 - bring it on, baby.

I'm finally starting to realize that the reason I don't write as much anymore isn't because I have less to say, but that I can't say it anymore. Which, I suppose, amounts to more or less the same thing in the long run.

The big difference between "then" and "now" is that I'm a bit more grown up now. I don't really get angry anymore in the way I used to - or at least, despite getting angry, I no longer feel the need to bitch about it in a public forum. I'm more aware now than before that whatever strong emotion I'm feeling will pass. Instead, duller feelings last for longer periods of time, until they're such a deep-set part of my daily life that I don't pay them any more mind than I do the color of my eyes or the birthmarks on my earlobes. They're just there, and I'm always vaguely aware of them, but I don't usually point them out unless, for just a moment here or there, something small manages to overwhelm me and I finally take notice of what's been brewing beneath.

And I have secrets now, unlike ever before. Despite being a private person, I've always been willing to bare my soul to whomever will listen. It's not quite like that anymore. There are things I won't talk about, emotions I won't acknowledge aloud and dreams I won't describe. A year ago, maybe just a few months ago, someone could read through this and know most of the major things there were to know about me. I don't think that's so true anymore.

I guess I'm becoming someone new, and I'm noticing it more than ever before. All I hope is that the "updated" me is an improvement.

My sadness is not a sadness of fact, but a sadness of possibility. It is not really circumstance that weighs on my soul, but instead the heavy burden of limited possibility. I am plagued, constantly, by this overwhelming sense that the world is my oyster, and a strangling fear that I am throwing it all, all away.

But I'm tired of building my own borders, forcing myself into a self-made prison of previous expectations. I'm tired of defining myself. I'm trapped by my own sense of upright morality and a need for consistency and control, but when has any of that really been what I want? I'm not saying that what I want is to sink into a meaningless cycle of empty rebellion, but... well, I'm not sure what I want. I just know I'm tired of what I have, what I do to myself.

Can that be my New Year's resolution? To take things as they come, go with the flow, and all those other clichés? Or do I really want to doom myself to another resolution that I can't ever keep?

I fear I am a victim of human nature's saddest follies. Everything that I don't have is always better than that which I do; the past was always a little bit sweeter than the present; nothing ever really hurt as much as it hurts now; those things I know are doomed to fail could work out, maybe, right? I always, always imagine that in a different place, at a slightly later time, I could really be happy. And I always reach that time and place and find myself feeling identically crestfallen - more so, maybe, because I had actually almost fooled myself into believing things would be better.

Right now, I really miss Northwestern. And I'll get back there the night of January 6th and feel so miserable, so lonely, because instead of feeling alone in my room in an empty house, I'll feel alone amidst a sea of people and that will sting all the more. I'll wonder why, why, I have selfish wishes that would harm the people I love but make me feel better for just a moment, and I'll wonder why it doesn't bother me more that I have them. I'll imagine that the future could be better, but know that it won't because the winter will be upon me and I'm always more depressed in the winter, and everything will feel cold and barren and it'll reinforce in me all the petty, hateful feelings I've been trying to escape from as long as I can remember.

So right now, I resent where I am and dread where I'm going. And the future seems exceptionally bleak because even the things I look forward to are fleeting and unsatisfactory. I look forward to a beautiful spring where I can meander outdoors and enjoy the fine weather, but always, always in the back of the mind I'm thinking: with whom? With whom will I have all these typically pleasant moments?

And the spring will end and the summer will come - at last! Freedom from responsibility and stress and worries! But already I'm freaking out about it because I have no plans for the upcoming summer, and the idea of ending up at home, again, working at Trader Joe's or something like that fills me with such suffocating fear that I don't know what to do with myself. But what do I do with myself? I'm not really qualified for any internships, but I don't particularly want to spend my summer taking occasional week-long trips here and there almost entirely alone. I don't want to feel totally unproductive, but nor do I want the stress and responsibility of a job. In short, I have absolutely no idea what I want, and there isn't a single thing I can really think of that would make me say, "Ah ha, there, now I'm happy." None of it seems like enough. None of it ever will.

And I'm so tired of feeling this way, feeling like I'm on a path God-knows-where, doing who-knows-what, but just waiting for the day when things are a little bit better. And I'm tired of knowing, always knowing, that they won't be, because there's nothing wrong with what I have now. The problem, as always, is just me. And what do I do about that?

Once again, I have nothing to really say. But I'm still alive and kicking, still trying, and that's enough for now.