Greetings, bloglings. I come in peace and am, as the (rather ominous) title suggests, feeling strangely happy today - but then I've just got my first big uni test over with, my brother's coming up to see me at the weekend and my oldest friend, the gorgeous Becky, just booked tickets to come and visit in December. So life's good!
...And I shouldn't have started this post that way because now I have no news with which to fill the rest of this update. Oh well, I'm sure I'll manage. If I really get stuck for content, I could just go all pretentious writer on yo' ass and inflict upon you all those up-myself ramblings to do with subjects I really know nothing about.
Alas!
I'm currently listening to Cee Lo Green's Forget You, which I now associate with Becky and Charlotte because of many a Skype or text conversation spent ping-ponging the lyrics back and forth through our respective internet and phone networks. Hearing this song always makes me happy because, though it wasn't a particular 'thing' of ours before we left college, it reminds me of all the other little in-jokes we've shared throughout the last few years, the ones that made the time I spent with them so pleasant; the ones that made me feel like I was part of something. Mornings and lunchtimes laughing in the language corridor; reading the Metro and revising for exams together; sunbathing or Starbucks-ing when we should have been working; complaining our way up to Rotherfield; Picnic Wednesdays and deep conversations; even doing coursework together in the Student Learning Centre.
There was many a time when it felt like our days at college would go on forever, and yet here we are. The exams came and went and the summer did the same, and now I sit here in my room at university wondering where the last three years went. My little brother is in year eleven now, and for me the first few months of year eleven really sucked, and him being the same age is really making me think about just how fast the time has gone. Then, I would have done anything for a completely new start, but college changed that, and somehow I became happy with the life I had before I left for uni. I have spent my whole life wishing I could change things, and to not want things to change was an alien concept for me, but things have to change. I have changed so much from the person I was three years ago and if someone had shown fifteen-year-old me my three-years-hence self, I don't think I would ever have seen this me coming.
But here I am. And I did think about it, a lot; the future, the way I would turn out - which leads me to wonder if that's the reason I found it so hard to settle in to York when I first moved here. Yes, I had over a year of preparation time, but we can never predict the future, can we? No matter how hard we try to foresee what's coming, or how well we think we know what to expect, life still has a way of shoving unexpected situations into your face.
As I write this I'm listening to the instrumental of Wicked's Defying Gravity, which I think is an extremely appropriate song to reinforce this post. Having been severely lacking inspiration for a month, I can now feel my writer's instincts taking over; here I finally find myself again. Because I have been feeling lost. Moving to university is a huge deal and I have been feeling it very deeply, kind of drifting along in my new routine without properly engaging no matter how hard I tried. But I'm finding my way now, and I'm finding new friends, new family to surround myself with, and though those people I left behind will always be the ones with whom I grew up, they have to do the same. That's how life is. And alongside it all my constant companion is linguistics. I was right about it being my future... I suppose, to quote One Tree Hill, it is my first love, and you don't forget your first love.
The thing is, no matter how drastically everything changes, somehow you always manage to get back on your feet. I know a couple of people who have come from overseas to live here in England, and I used to think that leaving home was leaving home no matter how far you go, but now I realize that's not the case; if I get homesick, I can't just pop home for the weekend (mainly because of the price of the trains... blimey, they're expensive) and if it's difficult for me to leave everything familiar five hours South of here, I can't imagine how it must be for my foreign friends to have so far to go back home.
But if all the faces of your life are far away, after a while the new faces become familiar too. You find routes and short cuts across your new city; you find favourite places to be; you learn the balance between work and play and you realize that now it's up to you. Your life. And now our lives really are ours to live as we wish, and hope that one day we really can follow our dreams.
So if you care to find me, look to the North East of England. I've cut and retied my strings - and if I'm flying solo at least I'm flying free. It's time to try defying gravity and one of these days, someday soon, I will find my way, and I will match them in renown. I will be the best I can be.
We don't have to choose anything right now. We're young and we have our whole lives ahead of us, and here we are - unlimited.
Molly x
...And I shouldn't have started this post that way because now I have no news with which to fill the rest of this update. Oh well, I'm sure I'll manage. If I really get stuck for content, I could just go all pretentious writer on yo' ass and inflict upon you all those up-myself ramblings to do with subjects I really know nothing about.
Alas!
I'm currently listening to Cee Lo Green's Forget You, which I now associate with Becky and Charlotte because of many a Skype or text conversation spent ping-ponging the lyrics back and forth through our respective internet and phone networks. Hearing this song always makes me happy because, though it wasn't a particular 'thing' of ours before we left college, it reminds me of all the other little in-jokes we've shared throughout the last few years, the ones that made the time I spent with them so pleasant; the ones that made me feel like I was part of something. Mornings and lunchtimes laughing in the language corridor; reading the Metro and revising for exams together; sunbathing or Starbucks-ing when we should have been working; complaining our way up to Rotherfield; Picnic Wednesdays and deep conversations; even doing coursework together in the Student Learning Centre.
There was many a time when it felt like our days at college would go on forever, and yet here we are. The exams came and went and the summer did the same, and now I sit here in my room at university wondering where the last three years went. My little brother is in year eleven now, and for me the first few months of year eleven really sucked, and him being the same age is really making me think about just how fast the time has gone. Then, I would have done anything for a completely new start, but college changed that, and somehow I became happy with the life I had before I left for uni. I have spent my whole life wishing I could change things, and to not want things to change was an alien concept for me, but things have to change. I have changed so much from the person I was three years ago and if someone had shown fifteen-year-old me my three-years-hence self, I don't think I would ever have seen this me coming.
But here I am. And I did think about it, a lot; the future, the way I would turn out - which leads me to wonder if that's the reason I found it so hard to settle in to York when I first moved here. Yes, I had over a year of preparation time, but we can never predict the future, can we? No matter how hard we try to foresee what's coming, or how well we think we know what to expect, life still has a way of shoving unexpected situations into your face.
As I write this I'm listening to the instrumental of Wicked's Defying Gravity, which I think is an extremely appropriate song to reinforce this post. Having been severely lacking inspiration for a month, I can now feel my writer's instincts taking over; here I finally find myself again. Because I have been feeling lost. Moving to university is a huge deal and I have been feeling it very deeply, kind of drifting along in my new routine without properly engaging no matter how hard I tried. But I'm finding my way now, and I'm finding new friends, new family to surround myself with, and though those people I left behind will always be the ones with whom I grew up, they have to do the same. That's how life is. And alongside it all my constant companion is linguistics. I was right about it being my future... I suppose, to quote One Tree Hill, it is my first love, and you don't forget your first love.
The thing is, no matter how drastically everything changes, somehow you always manage to get back on your feet. I know a couple of people who have come from overseas to live here in England, and I used to think that leaving home was leaving home no matter how far you go, but now I realize that's not the case; if I get homesick, I can't just pop home for the weekend (mainly because of the price of the trains... blimey, they're expensive) and if it's difficult for me to leave everything familiar five hours South of here, I can't imagine how it must be for my foreign friends to have so far to go back home.
But if all the faces of your life are far away, after a while the new faces become familiar too. You find routes and short cuts across your new city; you find favourite places to be; you learn the balance between work and play and you realize that now it's up to you. Your life. And now our lives really are ours to live as we wish, and hope that one day we really can follow our dreams.
So if you care to find me, look to the North East of England. I've cut and retied my strings - and if I'm flying solo at least I'm flying free. It's time to try defying gravity and one of these days, someday soon, I will find my way, and I will match them in renown. I will be the best I can be.
We don't have to choose anything right now. We're young and we have our whole lives ahead of us, and here we are - unlimited.
Molly x
