Updating

This break has been full of a lot of activity.  Beyond family socializing and such, I have been quite physically active, I am running almost every other day around 5 to 7 miles, and then I have been playing a game called Danny Ball with my brother (it is one on one volley ball played with an 8 pound medicine ball, instead of hitting it, you just throw it, it is to put it stupidly a work out).  Connor and I have also hiked Camelback Mountain a few times, personal best getting to the top in 30 minutes, there have been a few golf games, and only two times to the gym, which I'm okay with.  As Connor put it, we have been working out Au Naturale this break.

The little bro leaves to go back to school early for RA training in the morning, which I am a little bummed about, and then I follow suite on Sunday morning.  I am sad to be leaving, but at the same time I feel ready to be getting back to school.  I have never been the kid who gets bored or tired of his family during vacation time (the exception being summer vacation, but who wouldn't after four months?)  I don't feel like I do nothing, I actually feel like I take this time to focus on me and my family and re connect with mother earth and center myself so that I can throw myself back into the storm of my life without loosing too much footing when the time comes.

I woke up today devistated that Christmas is over.  I always have this weird anxiety over "missing" the Christmas season, like I am too busy and too preoccupied by my own life to enjoy it sometimes, and that by the time Christmas has passed I will have realized I never took the time to do the things that I love to do during the season, or if I did have the time, I didn't enjoy it enough.

I felt that way this year.  It is not great secret that I did not end this last semester on a high note, I have seldom been more high strung in my life.  I was so anxious to just get through my life as mindlessly as possible that I felt I was blindly going through most of the end of the semester.  I actually upon reflecting on the last month of the semester can remember very little of what happened.  I know I was in Little Women, though that is a blur to me, I had finals, some scenes, we did Cabaret performances for our musical theatre final (I did mine drunk) and the whole end seems like a distant memory of some past life to me.  I was out of it.  I was not breathing, I was not thinking clearly, I was not grounded (I may still not be today, but I feel at least a little bit more so).

The music, and the over all spirit of Christmas hold a pull over me I think no one but my mom can truly comprehend.  It represents so many things in my mind and is typically the moment of the year that I am the happiest.  This year, it felt tainted to me, and I wasn't seeing the spirit of the season around me, even though I was by the rockefeller tree, the fifth avenue dressed windows, and home.   It passed in a whirl of noise and color.  And now that it is well passed, I really miss it, and I feel kind of empty searching for that which I didn't appreciate at the time.  Sadness ensues.

Moving beyond that, I have this break rediscovered piano.  I don't play very often when I am at school, I sing plenty in class and lessons and rehearsals that I am not wanting to sing as often as when home.  But there is something about being able to mindlessly go to my piano whenever my ehart desires and play whatever I want without fear of reprimand that is really beautiful, and I am going to miss it.  I am really wanting in the next few months to buy an actual piano.  Not a real string piano, but I think a very nice actual electric piano that I could transport (not a key board, I hate those) because music is really important to me.  I often feel like there is a song stuck in my heart and I have to share it with the world, but I don't know what it is until I have sung it.

Looking back on it, I wish I hadn't been so anxious all of break, and most of my anxiety came from going back to Boston.  After Christmas passed I started freaking out about how soon I would have to leave home again.  It was stupid to worry that early into break, but I was NOT ready to go back at that time.  I still am not completely ready, but at least it isn't plaguing my conscious every day when I wake up.

Now my brother's laughed at this when I mentioned it at dinner tonight, but I am currently at a personal best for personal reading this year.  So far I have completed 5 novels on my own.  In comparison to Julia, this is frankly embarassing, but it is a PERSONAL best.  My brother's laughed, because the novels were the Twilight series (which I LOVED and Eragon, which I LOVED even more).  I'm just not much of a reader, and I'm constantly reading scripts (at least one musical per week, as well as constant Shakespeare, and outside plays in search of material).  I don't think that novels are bad, I just frankly think they all pale in comparison to Harry Potter.

However, I'm really digging that I have started getting back into reading, not just because of how it expands my mind, but because of how it evokes my creativity and also occupies my mind during the day.  TV sucks people.  there's no way around it.  There are about 4 shows worth watching, and even they have major faults, and it is depressing.  Reading just excites my mind in a different way and makes me feel much more like I have lived for the day that I have been awake, and that is why I often prefer reading over sitting mindlessly infront of a TV.  It's strange but I feel lazy when I sit in front of a TV for 3 hours, but when I sit reading for that time, at least I think my mind is getting a work out.

I think that I am going to start writing again a bit more in the future.  Not my journal, just writing creativily, and not for any reason other than to exercise my mind and creativity.  My life is going to have a lot more silence in the future.  When I graduate there are going to be long periods of nothing, I'll always have some close friends, but the noise that is my current life just can't exist in the post graduation phase of my life, nor do I think I would want it to.  My hobbies are what are going to keep me going at that time.  They are of course piano, singing and acting, but also running, photography, and writing.  I do like to write, even if no one ejoys reading it.  And for the record, my blog is not the best example of my writing, this is as it has always been stream of conscious and never onced proof read. I know that must shock all of you.  But it's my journal and I weill do with it what I want.

So here's the thing.

I am a young and ADD reader, I am just about to finish the first Eragon book, and then move onto the next two.  But when I'm done, I really want to keep reading.  I would love some suggestions for books that you all think I would enjoy.  Now I'm going to be self centered on this one...that "I" will enjoy.  Not necessarily the best literature you have been exposed to in recent months, this I would like.  Mr. Harry Twilight Eragon Bel Ragtime Potter.  Okay?

That is all.  I am way behind on my pictures, I just haven't spent any time with my computer in recent weeks so none of the tattoo ones put together...but they will be...eventually.  

Love to all.