no goodbyes, just "see you later"

well, folks, this is the end.
or the beginning, depending on how you look at it.

i started this blog a little over two years ago, when i was younger, less jaded, and much less self-aware. and i look back on what i wrote then, and i cringe.

i want to be able to take myself (somewhat) seriously, so i'm moving to tumblr and starting over. when i think of a name, maybe i'll post the link here if enough of you complain.

maybe.

thoughts on the new year

After a less-than-promising start to 2011, I woke up this morning to see that a cousin had posted this as her facebook status:

"Do not remember the former things, Nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness And rivers in the desert."

~Isaiah 43:18-19

It's never too late for anything; and there is always hope.

it's gonna be good.

it's been weeks since i've had the mental energy to function at 100%. every day had a routine: get up, be bright and sparkling at work, then get home and crash on the couch til somebody tells me to go sleep in my own bed.
but today i made my way out of the fog of lethargy, and decided that i'd break one of my rules as a sort of reward.
months ago, i realized that i was so fixated on the idea of the perfect future that i was ignoring the needs of the moment. so i promised myself that i wouldn't plan more than six months ahead, and told my friends that they were to ignore me if i started talking about abstract plans. and that's the rule i decided to temporarily break, just to give myself the incentive to stay at more than borderline functionality.
i won't talk about my plans yet, because if they don't work out i don't really want to have to explain that in any detail. but when they get off the ground, things will be on their way back from "fine" and maybe even make it to "great."
a life should have secret plans, just to have something to look forward to.

telling the future, with 85% certainty

it would appear that interesting things have been going on within my family while i've been away. in the past five months, two cousins have had babies; and my aunt remarried this morning, which nobody told me about until literally last week. another cousin is getting married in may, and i'm going to be one of her bridesmaids.
so i think i can guess what the dinner conversation is going to be this christmas: babies, weddings, and omg who's next?!
part of me is really hoping that doesn't happen, because relationship discussions with my family tend to get intense and kind of awkward. i'm very much single right now, and even though i'm too young to be thinking about my shelf life i'm still worried that i'll end up alone forever and so i don't like talking about my lack of a meaningful long-term relationship.
on the other hand, i don't intend to have children (my reasoning is a separate post in and of itself). and i do enjoy reasonable debate; so i may just cause trouble over the dinner table instead.

another year, another thanksgiving

and my first one on my own. well, perhaps not completely on my own; just my first one away from the family.
the friends and i had epic plans for this evening, but were stymied by our failure to plan properly; so the cooking has been put off until tomorrow, and instead i treated myself to dinner. a nice, solitary dinner at legal seafoods with a copy of les miserables.
and i thought good and long about where my life has landed me lately, and realized that despite how miserable i can get, i have a lot to be thankful for and very little actually worth complaining about.
i have a full-time job that doesn't suck, and will soon have insurance again through said job.
my family loves me enough to understand that sometimes it's better to stay away from home for a while, and is okay with that.
and there are people who love me enough that i can occasionally light up their lives. they may not be the ones i live with, but they exist.

boston

this year is wearing on me. i'm enjoying not being in school full-time, and i do love my job, but the academic stress has been replaced by personal disasters.
i almost think i should leave the country for a while. after i graduate maybe i'll go to israel for a year; but i want to find a way out of the hole i've dug myself into now.
i left new york for boston so i could start over; leave behind who i'd been in high school. and i managed it for a while until i started burning out. and now that i've made my mistakes in yet another city i feel like there's nowhere else for me to go to try and fix things.
rationally, i know that moving is not the answer, because it involves too many complications. but hell if i want to stay here.

avoidance

i occasionally find it difficult to rationalize my intermittent disappearances. sure, they make sense to me; when the world is not quite the appropriate frame of existence for me, i wander off for a while and come back when things are less not-right.
but it seems as though people think that i'm deliberately avoiding them. and, well, there is a sense of arrogance in feeling that one is being avoided; as though one is at all entitled to the attention of others.
nobody is entitled to an explanation of what is going on in my life and why it makes me avoid interacting with them. i am alive, and life is unpredictable, and that should quite honestly be justification enough. sometimes i am busy, sometimes i would simply rather be doing other things; and that is legitimate, no matter who you are and what you ask of me.