Back at it

Happy Monday

It's the wee hours of the morning on Monday, but I just haven't been able to sleep. I have been thinking a lot about this blog and what I should do with it, as I've been so absent. Well, I've decided to actually devoting some time to writing here, since I'm officially done with grad school! Graduation this past Friday was wonderful! Especially with my family and Sean there to witness it. 

So now that I'm free, I've been thinking about what the next step looks like. I won't be heading back to Boston for at least a year, and my 101 list is winding down, the final day is July 4th this year. So how will I wrap it up and continue on? That is the question. 

My goal, currently, is to start really focus on my personal growth, emotionally, physically, financially, and career-wise. In order to do that, I've decided to find some words that I want to feel I embody and can use as inspiration for this growth. Courage, strength, authenticity, love, happiness, relaxed, jovial, encouraging, determined, open, flexible, and receptive. Those are the traits I'd like to emulate and I will.

So here's to an exciting new step, that I'm hoping to reveal right here. 

<3 E

Home again

I know that it's been a while since I've been here but I finally finished graduate school and I couldn't be happier!!! I'm finally back in Massachusetts, having come home for Christmas. This is where I have been dying to be for so long now and as I sit in the Social Security office parking lot waiting for my boyfriend to finish paperwork and dealing with the atrocious line inside, I just realize how much I love it here and I am so meant to be here. I'm currently reading Lena Dunham's book and she has this one section about the 10 reasons why she loves New York and as I sit there reading it I just realize that that's how I felt about being in Boston the other day. Even though all of my belongings are in Virginia and it's the only apartment I've ever had as an adult, home is still in the Bay State. 

Now that school is over and I'm finally feeling like a normal human being again, or at least a human with a manageable stress level, I and looking north. I'm so ready to be back among the familiar, among the places and people that I love. Even from a really young age I knew that I would leave Boston/Massachusetts, but I also knew that I couldn't imagine living anywhere else. Home is where the heart is and I wouldn't want my heart anywhere but here.

~E

Christmas in November...?

I talked about this the other day on my Facebook, but I wanted to really talk about this Christmas explosion here too. First and foremost, I grew up in Plymouth County Massachusetts, home of Plymouth, ya know, where the very first Thanksgiving happened! And Thanksgiving is HANDS DOWN my favorite holiday. My parents host my Dad's side of the family and it's pretty low-key, no kids running around, just some of my dad's siblings and a cousin or two. So every year I feel so ripped off when the day after Halloween Christmas rears it's ugly head.

But, for the first time ever, for whatever reason this year, I have been so comforted by the Christmas stuff in the stores. I'm praying it's not me being beaten down by the capitalist machine, but there are quite a few reasons why I think I'm ready to Deck the Halls.

First, this Thanksgiving is going to be my very first celebrating somewhere else. Because I made Sean come to Stack Thanksgiving last year, I have to go to his family this year. And trust me, I love his family, so I'm not bitter about that at all. I know I'm going to have a great time, but it is definitely going to be different.

Part of feeling bummed about missing my family's celebration, and the reason that I made Sean come to my house last year, is because of my aunt Diane's passing. Diane is my dad's sister, so to have one person missing in such a small party is a big loss, in so many ways. She's been gone for over a year now, but there is not a single day that I don't think about her and miss her. And these past few months, the more stressed out I feel about finishing school and all of the next big moves, I can't help but miss her and the wonderful advice that she always had for me. I always set next to her whenever we had family dinners, (and she was always my roommate when we traveled) so there has been so many changes and opportunities for growth this past year+ and I am just having such a hard time moving forward without her. I'm hoping when school is over and I figure out my next job that I will be able to really mourn and accept all of the feels I have rolling around over here. Now, enough of this crappy stuff, on to something way more exciting!

Then, Black Friday, while others are doing crazy things like shopping in the wee hours of the morning, I will be getting ready to take a train from Boston to Philly so I can be at my friend's wedding shower and bachelorette party that Saturday. This Thanksgiving I will literally, (like the actually meaning of literally, not the figurative meaning) be taking planes, trains, and automobiles to get from DC, to Boston, to Philly, to DC... I'm actually exhausted just thinking about that. It's not going to be a restful holiday.

Once I've returned from all of the traveling, I will be in my final week of graduate school. That is so exciting and so daunting at the same time. And once my 2 final papers are done I'll be ready to take a break! December is going to include about a week of relaxation before Sean and I head back to Boston for a nice week-long visit with friends and family. Which will include Coughlan Christmas (my mom's family) with Sean. Then, we are headed to Austin for my friend's New Year's Eve wedding (the same friend from the Thanksgiving trip). So my plan is to just enjoy that quick 3 day trip in a brand-new-to-me-and-Sean city and to party-hardy. Then, head back to DC for a relaxing weekend before we have to face the real-world in 2015.

So all in all I think I'm just really excited for the relaxation that the Christmas break is going to give me, plus all of the celebrating at my friend's wedding. I'm going to be D-O-N-E done with my Master's, and I'll be able to just figure out the next steps.

So that's where I am, enjoying the Christmas decorations in stores (even though Sean and I won't be putting up our tree considering the 2 weeks round Christmas we won't be home). And trying my hardest to push through the end of this program! Here's to a successful 2014 Holiday Season :)

Cheers!
Elizabeth

Fear and Loathing in VA

I feel as though I've back tracked since I got to graduate school. I feel as though I know myself less now than I did before I left. I'm having a really hard time with that. I'm about 2 months away from wrapping up my Master's degree, and I'm not sure what my next big step is, which is terrifying. I really want the next move to be back to Boston, I'm ready to go home. But I don't want to go home for all of the wrong reasons, I want to go home because it is the right thing for Sean and I. I'm miserable being here without my family and I know that's been hard to handle for both of us. I feel as though this past year and a half I've lost the sparkle in my life. I feel as though I'm missing the carefree nature that I had begun to adopt. I'm constantly worried and constantly running around a million miles an hour, all hither, thither, and yon.

I've shied away from writing here because I don't know what to say. I don't know what I want to talk about. I've begun putting so much pressure on completing and achieving that I'm afraid to just let the words flow. I've officially become the things that I have been vigilantly trying to avoid. I'm constantly worried, and uptight. I think these things tend to go hand-in-hand, but I don't see the cycle being magically broken until I'm done with this final semester.

And that is killing me, knowing what the problem is but being so utterly powerless to fix it. I'm just so exhausted trying to be someone who I'm not, but that's not what I want for my life. I don't want to be burnt out from being and doing things that are not who I am. So here I am, trying to fight the fear of rejection and taking up my own quest for freedom by hitting publish on this post. Grammar and spelling be damned.

I don't know that I've ever said this before, but thank you for stopping by, whoever you may be. Whoever may have stumbled across this page (probably by complete accident haha), I appreciate you taking the time to read about me. Hopefully next time I'll have something a little more exciting to say about what's actually going on in my life aside from burn out.

Until next time,
~E

Welcome to the Minutia

I've been thinking about this place a lot, this little patch of the internet that I like to write in. Even though I haven't been around much, it's never left my mind for long. I do a lot of blog reading, and by a lot I mean I read about 6 or 7 blogs consistently, I check them almost everyday and get excited about reading what their lives are like. Between babies and engagements and life in general, these women that I read about are really busy and not writing constantly. This has lead me to wonder what makes me keep going back? It's my fascination with their lives. I love the minutia of it all. I have come to realize that what I love most about reading in general is learning about the little stuff, I love the lives of the people or the characters that I'm reading about. It's not about the person, it's not about the plot, it's about the magic that resides in-between character and plot.

I've also done a lot of thinking about my own writing, and how I'm afraid of a lot of things, one of which is having my writing read. It's not that I don't want to live out loud, it's that I'm afraid to do so. Or, have been afraid to do so. So I don't want to be afraid, I want to write about the silly stuff in my day and stop worrying about how people feel about it. If you don't like it, don't read it. (But seriously, I hope you like it and stick around!)

So that's why I'm back, to write about the things that I've been thinking and experiencing, because I have just as much right to this little space as anyone else. Be prepared to be underwhelmed with the day to day stuff that rattles around the ol' noggin.

Part of my fear about this whole opening up thing is because I don't have a niche. I'm not a mommy, or even a wife yet, so that knocks me out of a huge category of bloggers (...nor am I a daddy blogger). And as much fun as I have running, and I do, dear god have I missed running something fierce, I am not a weight-loss blogger by a long shot. I am in desperate need of working on my physical form, but my efforts are currently being focused on finishing my Master's Degree in December (a whole semester early!!) and working full time. I'm pooped just thinking about working out after a day at work and class.

Around these parts I've just been doing a whole ton of reading for school. I'm loving my classes this semester, I'm taking  Literature and Medicine, it's focusing mostly on mental illness in Lit. I just read Maus I, which was sad but a tremendous read. For those who have never read it, it's about the author's father's experience as a Jewish man in Poland during WWII. But it's a graphic novel (like Persepholis, which I read in college and LOVED) where the Jewish characters are mice and the Nazis are cats. I'm also taking two 20th Century Lit courses, one is British and the other is American. The British one is focused solely on Virginia Woolf, while my American Lit course is focused on post-soul, or post-civil rights Black American writing. So far for those courses I've read Mrs. Dalloway, Jacob's Room, and Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (by ZZ Packer).

I really enjoyed the Packer, as it was a collection of short stories that would be so engaging and then just when the story is climaxing, the tale would end. It was like falling and love and being heart broken over and over again. But I kept going back for more!

Tomorrow I'm off to finish my reading for the week and to celebrate my friend's birthday out in DC. I'm hoping to get some pictures to share. Have a great weekend! And please share some of what you're reading, I need more titles to finish for my 101 list! It's taken me about 2 years, but I'm at 51 titles now, hopefully I'll be able to read my brain out over the next 10 months to finish the list! <3 E

Just A Simple Kind of Life

As  my first full year in Virginia comes to a close, I've begun to do a lot of thinking about how I've been living my life, and what I've learned about myself. Each day I'm learning more and more about me, even when I don't really want to face it. But today was an interesting day of learning. I realized that I love a lot of things in my life, because they are just mine. When I started reading blogs and writing over here, I thought it was because I just needed to live my life out loud. And as you may have noticed from what changes around here, I enjoy playing with how my site looks but I very seldom write here.

It's like reading, I love reading, I love my library, but I don't want to write books, nor do I want to make teaching English my profession. These things I love are just mine. And by keeping my reading in the realm of enjoyment, I am able to light myself up and face other parts of life. I love being on Blogger because I have been keeping track of my book list here for the better part of the past 2 years. I want to continue that, and who knows, maybe I'll be back here writing about the books I love. But for now, I'm not going to promise anything. With looming writing deadlines for school and my general belief that I shouldn't have to stare at a screen at night after staring at one all day, if I don't want to, I just don't think that this place will be getting much traffic from myself.

If you've been here and enjoyed, well then I'm glad. I just don't want to continue another day being someone I'm not, and letting the whole internet into my most internal thoughts seems to be pretty counterintuitive to that ideal.

With much Love,

Elizabeth

Sleepless in Virginia

Happy July 4th!!

I'm sitting in bed, rocking the glasses so my eyes don't hurt, while Sean and snoring semi-lightly next to me. I cannot believe that it's already July, this year is just flying by. Being in the DC area for the 4th should be this huge occasion, but it is so hot, I'm tempted to hole myself in my air conditioned bubble (aka my apartment) and just watch movies and read all day. That may happen as well... We'll see.

This week was a whirlwind after going home and seeing the Boston gang. Having a couple of my friends from home down the weekend before last, then getting to go home last weekend, I've realized how much I miss home. I feel so unsettled, mostly because this just doesn't seem like "Base Camp". Base Camp is what I've been labeling the place that we are ultimately going to end up, right now we're just kinda hiking around, but I'd really like to get to the general region I'd like to live in and really make a concerted effort to make some solid career choices there. My personal goal is to make it back to New England, so we'll see how persuasive I am ;)

In other news, I'm just plugging along at work, and I had my final in-class session for my summer course, so now it's up to me to write my paper... My goal is to not being a HUGE procrastinator, so we shall see. I'm really excited about going on vacation to Maine in just under a month :) Last year with Sean and his family at their house near Bar Harbor was unbelievable. I can't wait to kayak, drink a lot of adult drinks, and just relax in the quiet and child-less atmosphere that it provides. I think going on a vacation that didn't include children of any kind (other than myself) was probably one of my favorite parts. Apparently all of those family vacations have jaded me.

I've been debating about what to do with my 101 list. I haven't been writing much and I certainly haven't been doing much for it (other than keeping track of all of my books in the page above). I'm wondering if I should try more, just let the time run out on its own, or what. I have a year from today. Wow... I can't believe it's already been 1.75 years since I made the list. Crazy! Well I'll keep you posted.

Have a tremendous and safe July 4th! What are you up to this long weekend?

~Elizabeth