procrastination

true story: i always update when i have the most homework to get done.

thanks to anzac day i've had a FIVE day weekend... and yet here i am, late tuesday afternoon, already planning on waking up at 4:30 am to finish my essays. typical.

life has been so unexciting in recent weeks that it's nearly painful. in the span of a couple days, my living plans for next semester fell through (meaning i will be spending my EIGHTH semester in a dorm-style residence. just kill me.) and i found out that studying abroad is a no-go. needless to say, i have been in an absolutely horrific mood the past bit.

i think i mentioned in my last post that i joined choralfest. it's sort of a joke, but i've met some cool people. i also made the decision to start a 2-week game of mafia at college. i invited about 30 friends on facebook... and a couple hours later, over 50 people had rsvped "yes." i ended up having to cap the game at 100 people in an effort to avoid a complete organizational nightmare. i've actually met SO many people through it and people are getting really excited for it. i think the boys are going to get pretty into it :) some of the assassination assignments couldn't be any funnier... so i can't wait to witness them. "you must kill ________ with a handful of glitter in the toilet." somehow a game revolving around fake killing has at least partially pulled me out of my funk. haha don't know what that says about me...

it's hard to be stuck in college when i feel like i could be spending my time on far more important, fun and exciting things. life made me so happy last year--i was ecstatic to wake up in the mornings. i'm learning that elation like that is hard to recreate when my life has fallen into a monotonous cycle of worksheets and gossiping. i keep telling myself that i only have two years left, but at the moment that feels a bit similar to "forever." it's been over 2 months since i've been on an airplane... which i think, actually, is longer than i've gone in the past year. my brain has been set on the "next destination" mode for so long that it's going crazy trying to segue into the "right now" mode. it's like life claustrophobia. i think maybe i'll go to melbourne for a long weekend, if for no other reason than to change things up a bit. i'm also going to see if i can get a position volunteering a couple hours a week with an organization called "radio lollipop." depends mainly on how far away the hospital is by public transport and if i can get a blue card. hopefully it'll all fall into place!

i know this post makes me sound ungrateful, but i definitely am not: i have an incredible life. it's just hard to compare it to those glimpses of pure bliss last year where all the things that were supposed to matter did and all the things that weren't didn't even cross my mind. it's unfortunate that you have to be a college grad to join the peace corps.

HA!! someone's take on australia.

blah

so the other week i realized that the freshers here were still in middle school when i first started at CC.

that should pretty much sum up how i feel about life at the moment.

birthday came and went. we pretended it was my 21st, got dressed up and headed to a beautiful bar on the river. got lots of free drinks, which is always good.

spent a few days at stradbroke island over easter. went on the worst dive of my life (lost contacts, not enough weight, then too much weight, lost buddy, gagging into my reg, skipping the second dive due to insane sea sickness), but enjoyed some amazing star gazing and beaches. also randomly had my tarot cards read at a hilarious little market, where i was told that i would live happily ever after and have eternal sunshine. those were a lot better than aaron's; she was told that her mom would die, she'd break both her legs and lose her job. hahaha.

classes are busy and pretty pointless. they're really easy, but it's hard to stay interested in topics that have absolutely no relevance to the real world and/or are covering topics i learned in fourth grade. "what is a noun" was honestly one of the lectures in my class. college life is wearing me down--lots of stupid drama and teenage angst.

i suppose i should've known that there would be no way to top the past year. i mean tanzania, fiji, director of edina's tennis program, spending some amazing time with a beautiful boy, being with incredible friends 24/7, working at an aquarium, germany, holland... yeah, definitely impossible to beat a year like that. just makes it that much harder to come crashing back to reality: dumb classes, obnoxious, immature, self-centered people, and trying not to get peer pressured into destroying my liver every weekend. i honestly do not believe the people who thought college was the best years of their life.

my flawless plan of studying abroad for a year won't be happening anymore, so now i'm just busy trying to find a nice apartment and get the heck out of college/university as fast as i can, all while filling out worksheets about commas and semicolons and reading about sociological theories from decades ago. i'm also trying to wrap my head around the fact that i'll be in the same city for an entire 3 years in a row. it just seems so... boring. confined. uninspired. take your pick.

i would happily give up drinking champagne at fancy bars and meal plans for going back to our electricity-free huts in fiji or the massive bug infested guest houses at peace house. it's unfortunate that volunteer programs in cool places are so ridiculously expensive. if i won the lottery, i think i'd just head back to africa or someplace else and volunteer forever. if the whole lottery thing doesn't work out, maybe i'll just pull an "into the wild" and head into the middle of nowhere... minus the deathly shrooms/dying in an abandoned school bus part, of course.

and oh yeah: i signed up for college choir and attended a hillsong church service, which was a bit ridiculous. we skyped with an entire congregation and people read the bible off their iphones. and there was a worshipping mosh pit on stage. over 43000 people attended a hillsong easter service, just to give you a sense of how big it is.

just remember: not all who wander are lost.

splashing through the sand bar, talking by the campfire, it's the simple things in life like when and where. we didn't have no internet... sippin' whiskey out the bottle, not thinking about tomorrow, singing sweet home alabama... catchin' walleye from the dock, watchin' the waves roll off the rocks, [he]'ll forever hold a spot inside my soul. we'd blister in the sun, we couldn't wait for night to come to hit that sand and play some rock 'n' roll. --kid rock

if you hold on to the handle, she said, it's easier to maintain the illusion of control. but it's more fun if you just let the wind carry you. --storypeople