I’ll (Hopefully) Be Home For Christmas

I say “hopefully” because, from where I sit at my desk looking out my dorm room window, chances don’t look too fantastic.

This week was supposed to be finals week at my university. I planned on being home in Pittsburgh by Thursday afternoon, but now that is certainly not happening. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be home on December 22, but even that plan seems a little bit misguided at this point.

It started snowing here on December 1. Which was kind of awesome, I have to admit. How often does it happen that winter begins right on the first of the month? (I count the beginning of winter as the first snowfall that sticks; sorry, Winter Solstice) Unfortunately, since the first of the month, it has hardly stopped snowing and now we have two feet or so and campus is closed indefinitely, along with the surrounding roads into and out of our little piece of Ohio.

Can I just say that this is one of the many reasons why I hate snow? First, it’s cold and wet. Tell me how that combination can warm anyone’s heart. Second, it’s easy to ruin. That first snowfall looks heavenly until it has been stomped under an acne of footprints, turned gray and sludgy by passing cars, peppered blue by salt machines, and turned yellow by … you know. Then I realize just how gross it is for everything under the troposphere to be suppressed beneath a never-ending slush field. Not cool. (except very cool; bitingly, frigidly, “what is happening to my life?” cold)

The weather should be bad enough on its own, but then you get all the infrastructural effects of the weather which cause the really big problems. Like the one I have now where my final exams have been pushed back a week so that the students living off campus don’t have to drive here in the snow, leaving me stranded in my dorm with nothing to do but wait it out (and study, too, if I were so inclined, but having never studied for anything in my educational career other than physics and trig/pre-calc my junior year of high school, and never seeing any adverse affects to my grades as a result, I usually don’t bother).

I’m really not concerned that I won’t be home for Christmas. Luckily, this year Christmas is on a Saturday and I don’t have any Saturday exams. But if exams are cancelled the rest of the week (God, I hope not), then I won’t be coming home until the Thursday before Christmas, which rather stinks.

The bright side to all of this, if you haven’t seen it yet, is that I now have an unspecified amount of free time to do things like read, check Facebook, catch up on my favorite shows on Hulu, and hang out with friends in my building. (another downside is that none of the dining areas on campus are open, so if I hadn’t gone grocery shopping on Sunday in preparation for the Snowmageddon the weather men were calling for, I would have been close to starving to death right now.) Also positive: I get to update this blog, which has sat neglected for the past month and a half.

I do feel badly about this. I began this blog with the impossible goal of updating at least once a week. I knew at the time that it wouldn’t happen, but I figured I should set that number anyhow to give myself some motivation, or at least to ensure that I would feel guilty and deceptive when I went a month or two without posting anything. I swear though that I have been coming up with ideas as to what I want to write about over my now drastically shortened winter break, and I intend to follow through with at least one or two of those ideas.

Before I get to the fun stuff, however, I feel like I should reflect for a moment on my first (almost) completed semester as a college freshman.

The important thing is that I made it through alive and with straight A’s (and B’s) in all of my classes. I would have made it the entire semester without missing any classes if it wasn’t for the fact that I had a fever two weekends ago that forced me to miss my politics class and that music class I despise. Worse than that, I was even too sick to go see the university screening of Inception on the big screen in the ballroom. That was truly a terrible blow. Like the rest of the planet’s movie-going population, I was absolutely blown away by the film the first time I saw it, and had been looking forward to seeing it again all semester.

On a more personal and impressive line of conversation, I made the next big step toward taking over journalism. After having fifteen feature articles published in the campus newspaper, I was offered the chance to apply for a paid position on staff this spring semester. Of course I took it, and am now one of two paid feature writers for the publication. Watch out, world. Baby steps.

It’s exciting to have come his far in three short months. From high school graduate living at home, to full-time college student, on my own, landing my “dream job" on campus. It’s been a far more gratifying journey than I would have imagined.

Pleasant, Dreary Sunday

So it’s been over a week since my last post, which means that I’ve already broken my promise to myself to update at least once a week in order to keep my readers happy. I suppose though that this is just fine, seeing as, like I imagined would be the case, I have no readers. Life has been busy as always, but today is one of those glorious days where one can just sit back, relax and feel totally content with life.

If you were sitting where I am right now, “glorious” would not be the best way to describe the weather today. In fact, you would probably look at me with concern for my mental well-being and quickly but quietly walk away. I live in Ohio and the weather today is typical: no sun, a solid sheet of clouds outside. Everything is cast in the most gloomy gray imaginable and it looks like perfect hoodie weather.

I say “looks like” because I haven’t been outside yet. I slept until eleven today, checked Facebook and was about to catch up on the latest episode of “Glee”, when my lovely friend Kaite from down the hall knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to watch “Alice in Wonderland” (the “new” Johnny Depp one) with her and some of our friends. I did, so I donned slippers, clicked out of Hulu, and now, five hours later, here I am still sprawled on one of the lounge couches, writing this post as four of my friends work on homework/creep on Facebook.

If you ask me, this is the most perfect day of my semester so far. I am entirely content, and my mind is in perfect rhythm for writing.

I love the people in this lounge with me right now. That’s saying a lot considering I’ve only known them about a month, but they are wonderful, beautiful people. I spent the weekend with three of them on a church retreat the past two days, which is why we are all so lethargic today.

If you’ve never been camping with a hundred or so teenagers, it is a good time. At least in my opinion.

Coming from a Christian background and actively participating in a church with an exceptionally large teen population, I can say without any exaggeration (okay, maybe a tiny bit), that I have been on close to a hundred weekends like this one in my lifetime. They’re always about the same: Too many people crammed into mini-vans getting lost on forsaken back-country roads, driving past corn fields and cow pastures, blaring an alternate of nuevo Christian music (that’s not a technical term, it just sounded good right there) and Top 40, and talking endlessly to distract a befuddled driver, finally arriving late at night in the cold and standing around shivering outside of cabins, clutching sleeping bags, while someone goes to check in. Then there is the chaos of unloading the vans and claiming bunks in rooms that sleep twenty or so by dumping bags, Bibles, hair straighteners, extra tennis shoes, and pillows/stuffed animals (even though we’re all “adults” here) onto your chosen bed.

This last bit is always a rush, because while you’re doing this, the band is setting up for worship. You know exactly when worship is beginning by the sudden, unrehearsed opening crash of the drums and assorted guitars. Then it’s the standard Hillsong United, Chris Tomlin, David Crowder covers; the guest speaker in jeans, polo shirt and sandals; and more music. Campfire, up all night and junk food until morning.

For the rest of the trip, between the pranks, hikes, ridiculous competitions, and tons of food, you get the greatest bonding experience of your life, and go home riding the Jesus High. It’s a feeling like none other and you hate more than anything to have to go back to the real world where people don’t understand what you’ve accomplished personally this weekend and how right everything suddenly is because of it. You want to grab everyone you meet and hug them and love on them to make them understand that you are 100% changed as a person thanks to the last 48 hours or so.

I have always struggled with this part of the experience. To go from being so high on life to dropping right back down in to the shallows of everyday existence is rough. It leaves you stunned. The weather in your soul kind of feels like the weather outside today. It is blank, but buzzing with an undercurrent of what could be.

The clouds could part and the sun could come out in full force, taking the day on a complete 180. Our they could thicken and heavy, and it could storm the rest of the day. There is so much potential. It could even stay the same until tomorrow when it makes up it’s mind one way or the other and becomes a distinctive weather day. Days like this don’t last. They’re purely transitional as far as weather goes, signaling the start of autumn.

This is the perfect weather for a day like today. This weekend I was the sun, burning bright and pouring out pure energy. Today, the fact that I’m back in the real world makes me a little cloudy and blue. Tomorrow I will have to choose a side. I can let what I learned and felt this weekend blow past me into the usual drear and storms of life, or I can keep burning and let the Son shine.

Hopefully, I will make the right decision, and with my new friends here, this week certainly has the potential to be clear and cloudless.

Allow me to reintroduce myself.

First, let me apologize for my post yesterday. I realize it was a meandering start to something which, I admit, is still not fully formed. It probably didn't provide you with much direction on where this blog is headed - it certainly didn't for me.

But now, please allow me to backtrack a bit and explain some of the reasoning behind why I even decided to begin this blog.

It began two weeks ago as an assignment for my Honors English Colloquium, and after my first attempt to post to my professor’s blog failed and several classmates complained about technical difficulties, my professor abandoned the project altogether. Now I’m stuck with an empty blog and nothing to do with it but what blogs were originally intended: candid writing.

I’m a magazine journalism major. I love writing. It’s the one passion that has been with me my entire life. From the first bedtime story my dad read to me (one of the Bernstein Bear books), I’ve always wanted to be a writer. The way my mom tells it, as soon as I was old enough to understand what stories were, I wanted to write my own. Even before I could write myself, I would dictate little stories to my mom, illustrate them myself, and take them to preschool for my teachers to read (whether they did or not, I can’t really say). That love of words has stuck with me and will hopefully lead me to a life-long career if I work hard enough.

Journalism is what I want to do. Of course, I’d love to be a novelist, but I’m not that creative. So instead I follow my brother’s advice to me: “God gives you the story. You just need to tell it.”

And that’s what I’m going to try to do, in my reporting and in this blog. Hopefully this blog, however, will be a little more free and creative than my news stories.

It’s actually a very good thing that my professor’s project didn’t pan out. I’ve wanted to start a blog for years, but I never had the time or the motivation to figure it out for myself. Mainly though, I never knew where to begin.

Now I have a starting point, and that’s good enough for today, I suppose. I need to run and grab dinner before a meeting with my editor. I have no idea how frequently I will post, or what this blog will become. I have a sickening feeling this blog won't see more than a handful of posts each year, so forgive me.

I don't have a true mission, other than to make this a snapshot of my life in some way; just me and this life as I view it.

So good evening, friends. And welcome to this piece of my world.

A Hurried Beginning

Today when I logged into my e-mail, the first message on the list — followed by deadline reminders from my editor, reports on my transcripts finally arriving at my university, and coupons from the frequented locales of my past life — was from the Dean of my university. This e-mail was sent to all freshmen (but it was personally addressed to me by some computer, no doubt) in congratulations on making it to the official one-month mark since the beginning of classes.

Following this pat on the back, was a list of all the ways to get involved on campus if you haven’t done so already.

After reading (or throwing a quick glance at) these friendly notices, I sat back for a moment and wondered where the past month has gone.

I love college. And why not? I live by my own rules, for the most part. I made friends much faster than I had anticipated, and I’m always busy with interesting tasks. (Except for my music appreciation lecture, which I’m sitting in right now pretending to take notes.) It has been one month of freedom from my parents’ rule, of living on my own and managing not to inadvertently die in the process.

I did my own laundry last week and cried as I watched an incredible sum of money swallowed by a machine which merely provides water to swirl my clothes in and nothing else. I still have to provide my own detergent and fabric softener. After recovering from the initial heart attack I suffered upon seeing just how much it costs to wash a load (the term “load” also seemed to encompass a far greater amount of dirty clothes when I lived at home), I did what any mature college student would do in this situation: I called my mom. I called to ask just how certain my mother was that I could not, under ANY circumstances, wash all of my laundry at once without separating by color. She told me not to be so stupid. I then asked whether it would be feasible to wash my laundry in the sink in my dorm or better yet, to jump in the shower fully clothed at the end of each day in order to ensure that my clothes will always be clean. My mom — loving, blunt woman of zero patience that she is — told me to suck it up.

"Welcome to the real world," she added.

Sometime later when my laundry was finished and I brought it to my room still warm, I texted my mom to let her know that this important task had been successfully completed, and that I basically expected some kind of praise.

"Good girl," my mother replied via text.

That was all. Clearly, she didn't find the occasion nearly as momentous as I did, although I honestly cannot see why not.