A Shambles.

Looking around my apartment, I am disgusted with myself. How did I let it get this bad? I usually see the condition of my living space as a pretty good indication of how my life is going at the moment, and right now it isn't too pretty.

Clothes all over the place, dishes in the sink, overflowing recycling, stale coffee, garbage on the table, unpaid bills scattered everywhere...I'm embarrassed to even be talking about it, but then maybe I'll get the motivation to clean so that no one actually has to see it in this condition.

My life isn't actually going horribly as my apartment would suggest, but I do need to do some straightening up. I feel behind on everything in school already, and I'm pretty sick, and a few other stupid little things here and there are stressing me out, but other than that I guess I can't complain. Everything that I have to complain about right now is a result of my own actions. So yay.

Buuuut Aarushi and I went to see the Shins over the last weekend! In Philly! And it was incredible. Despite our failure to meet James Mercer. But hey, we tried.

I was glad we did that, even though it was expensive. It was worth the adventure. I'll admit, on the way there I was kind of freaking out about what might go wrong and whether or not it would be worth it in the end, but after a while you just have to tell yourself to stop worrying and just enjoy it. It's one of those things that stops being okay to do once you hit like, age 25 or something. Then if you drive 900 miles to go see a concert, people might question your sanity a little more than if you're just 20 years old and an irresponsible college student. I feel like you need to fit in as many of these stupid things in as you can before you get too old to have an excuse. And that's why we did it. Besides the fact that the Shins will always be worth a 900 mile drive to us. :)

So now, one parking ticket, one speeding ticket, and one stolen iPod later, we are at least still alive, and have a lot of great memories.

But I really need to clean my apartment and get my life back on track (and my finances...). I feel like the better energy flow of having a clean place to come home to just makes everything feel so much better, even if it isn't.

And poor Kilgore has a dirty bowl. I've been kind of neglecting his habitat as well. Sorry, buddy :(

You're full of hope as you begin re-arranging

It's officially the last day of summer. Despite the fact that I only have one class tomorrow and then a three day weekend. I doubt it'll start to feel like school's begun for at least another few days for me. Which is good, because I'm in such hard-core denial about it. I've had such a wonderful and eventful summer that I've (somewhat purposefully) refused to acknowledge the coming changes until now. I haven't figured out my schedule yet, I haven't bought my books, I haven't even looked at what buildings I'll need to get to; you name it, I've ignored it up until this point. And now school starts tomorrow and I haven't studied German in months and I can almost feel the shame and embarrassment already that will surely come my way tomorrow when I'll no doubt have to speak in front of people or answer a question and will have no idea what was said.
Oh, well.

Despite all those worries, I suppose it will be sort of refreshing to have a regular routine again. The only thing that's been kind of irritating about this summer is the lack of a consistent schedule. My work schedule being all over the place made it kind of difficult to plan things, but now I'll be able to know weeks ahead of time whether or not I'll be able to do something or not. It'll be nice to have that stability again.

But I'm afraid of change. This year is weird already. A good weird, but weird is always uncomfortable. Not knowing what changes the school year will bring is kind of unnerving. And thinking about the fact that in less than 5 months, I'm planning on being in Africa for a whole semester is super scary. And really intensely exciting at the same time. I guess this year scares me because I know how life-changing it may end up being, and anticipating that change is freaking me out.

But I'm planning on taking everything one day at a time. I mean, that's obviously the only thing you can really do, but when I get stuck thinking so far ahead like this, it gets me in this mindset that tons of things are happening at once and it's just this big giant snowball of events that you can't stop. And that's not even what's really happening. Really, things will probably be pretty uneventful for a while. But in my head I'll still be panicking.  I need to take some time to slow down my thoughts and just relax about everything.
Change is usually a good thing, after all.