Graduated

I graduated. Magna Cum Laude. December 2014. Nathan, too.

Life after graduation is different than I imagined. I imagined employment or scholarships offering us opportunities in someplace else, someplace new and probably exciting. Nothing terribly exotic, but something different, a visual and physical break with my undergraduate experience.

But I find myself in the same place, same apartment, wearing the same things, eating the same things, living with the same hand-me-down furniture as my undergraduate years. In two years, I'll probably find myself in the same place; if not the same apartment then the same quiet college town.

I can't help but feel that life has a way of being anticlimactic. Something "big" happens, the hulabaloo dies down in a matter of minutes, hours, or maybe even days, and then it continues. Life picks back up, and on you go.

Who knows what I'm looking for when these big life events happen? I think I'm searching for a pause button. Wait, wait, just a minute. Let's savor this moment, celebrate with people we love, and just take a small break to say yes! We did it! But life, especially my life, happens quietly. It really makes me reevaluate history, this awareness of just how quiet yet significant peoples' lives can be.

Rainy Day and Stuck Thoughts

It's a rainy day.

Not just any rainy day, though. The kind of rainy day where it's rained all day, and it's supposed to rain on into tomorrow. The kind of rainy day where the rain is persistent, and the monotonous sound begins to imprint itself in your mind, and your thoughts get stuck in a pattern like the rain drops.

Here are some of my thoughts that are kind of stuck right now:
--Being unemployed is boring and kind of scary.
--The worst part of unemployment is waiting for the process to unravel.
--Do I want to go to grad school in art history because it's comfortable, familiar, and I'm good at it, or do I want to push myself outside my comfort zone and try something new, take my life in a different direction?
--That GRE...
--Law school?
--Leah. Cutest missionary ever, and she's so happy. I'm happy for her.
--I just want to be warm in my apartment, is that too much to ask?
--Money. Ugh.
--Do I miss school or am I enjoying the break from it?

Welcome, 2015.

"We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered."

--Tom Stoppard, Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead

Eighteen Months

I have an oral presentation to prepare for my 8 o'clock class tomorrow. I have a comprehensive German grammar and strong verbs exam tomorrow.

But I'm having trouble focusing.

I'm going to miss this blonde-haired girl for the next 18 months.

She is awkward and unabashedly herself. She is funny as all get out, and we survived a summer of camp together. When I told her I was engaged, her first response was "I'm not surprised, I saw it coming." Typical Leah.
Sometimes I think about the times when I wasn't patient with her, and I'm regretful.
But there's always tomorrow and the next week, month, year. Ample time to make things better and strengthen relationships. The most important thing, though, is that I focus on that today.

Ciao, Leah. Gott sei bei dir, bis wir uns wiedersehen.

Yes, yes, and yes

"A world which is a better place not just for some women, but for all women" has yet to be realized. "In what I still call a socialist feminist vision, that would be a far better world for boys and men, as well."

--Lynne Segal

You don't have to know what you want to do for the rest of your life, you just have to know what you want to do next.

Put Your Hand Up

Put your hand up if you're tired of those surface relationships. *raises hand*

You know, those relationships where you know each other for months or years and you never seem to get passed "How are you? How's school? Oh good, glad to hear it" followed promptly by silence and thoughts of departure. The ones where you don't delve beneath the surface, where you dig to find some other mundane detail of life to devour in conversation simply to avoid awkward silence. The relationships in which the other person could tell you what classes you're taking, what grades you make, maybe what you like to eat or how your parents are doing, but they know little of your heart. They know little of your passions or pursuits, your hopes or dreams, or what occupies your thoughts for hours on end.

And you know what? I'm over it. I'm over these surface level relationships. They frustrate me, they make me nervous in the face of social situations. I'm tired of trying to invest in a relationship that's not going anywhere. I fret over these instances and constantly think of how it could be, but it does no good. I could probably be more proactive about pursuing and creating these deeper level relationships, but it has to be a mutual effort, and oftentimes it's not.

In the words of the oh-so-philosophical Nacho Libre, I want to get down to the nitty gritty. I want to know who people are, because I want to have deeply fascinating conversations about life. So I'm going to start making an effort towards this.