Placeholder
I have a whole bunch of topics I want to write about.
For one thing, I want to do another "Stories I haven't told." Those are hard, though, because they're so personal and intense and they force me to relive moments to a greater level of detail than I normally do. Kind of exhausting. So I have to save those for a time when I'm feeling energetic and inspired and willing to shine the flashlight into some of those dusty internal corners, inspect the cobwebs, inhale the dust. It's not really the night for that.
I want to write a little bit about what school has been like in general, aside from the craziness of these past few days. I've been so lax about keeping up with the journal, I'd like to take a moment and look back over what it's been like to be a student again. But I think I need to get a little distance from the semester first, so it's not really the night for that.
More generally, I want to look back over the year as a whole, which has witnessed
some of the biggest changes I've ever been through in my life. Mostly good
changes, although lord knows very few of them have been easy. I am at a point
where the future is completely uncertain, but in the sense of being full of
a million possibilities. A couple of years ago it felt exactly the opposite,
the future felt uncertain in the sense of having nowhere to go. This is definitely
an improvement.
But year-in-review entries should be closer to the very end of the year, I
think, and they also tend to be long, so I need to be awake and alert. It's
not the night for that.
I want to start musing about my upcoming trip. I've confused some people by saying I'm going home for Christmas, when I also feel as though I'm making a home for myself here. I guess I don't think you are necessarily limited to a single home, you know? There are people and a cat waiting to see me (well, the cat probably not so much, and she'll almost certainly punish me for a few days until she realizes that it's to her advantage, petting-wise, to make nice), there is a bunch of my stuff, there are places and food and habits and a language that are in my blood after so many years. So of course that's home. And I have a lot of feelings and thoughts about this trip, before I make it, but that's the kind of subject that needs an entry of its own. So not really the night for that, either.
I want to write about Philadelphia, about some of the funny things that have happened to me, about how it feels to be a sort-of-but-not-quite foreigner who is often confused about weird American ways. I want to write about my neighborhood, the kind of people I see on the streets and in the shops and on the front stoops and in the parks and squares, they way they act and walk and talk and eat. But that's another entry (or more than one, even) in its own right, so it's not the night for that.
Today was freezing cold (-12°C when I left the house this morning) but brilliantly sunny, my favorite kind of weather. I met my advisor for coffee and we ended up talking for nearly three hours; I came away excited and inspired and motivated and just plain happy. I ran a few errands on my way home, then when I got here I realized I was utterly and completely exhausted. The accumulated stress that had been clenching my muscles and keeping me wired had finally drained away, and I wanted nothing more than to nap, order in Thai food, and watch Buffy DVDs.
It was that kind of night. The other stuff will just have to wait.