on the road again

my last entry from jersey for a bit... it's 12:30... i've barely packed for the next 3 weeks and i head off tomorrow morning, not to be back here until mid-january -- joy!

besides church today, i managed to do a lot of cleaning, went and saw a local performance of the nutcracker w/ colleen, erin (her sister), eric, and scott... fun times indeed... now i won't see any of my math people until i get back here next month, or en route on my return trip... dude...

i'm tired... for several reasons.
(1) had a minor cold/virus all weekend, energy sapped
(2) end of semester = all the craziness i've put myself through for the past 4 months is finally having time to catch up with me
... and probably the most significant...
(3) time to change places again...

(3) deserves the most explanation... like dude, i've been way excited about going back down south/back home for a bit now, so really yay... but i'll miss my NJ folks too... and that's the thing... as i'd guess is true for most people, whenever i move someplace and start over somewhere new, it's a chance to regroup and re-project myself... i've gotten a lot louder/more outgoing since grade school, but around certain people who have known me that long, i revert to being pretty quiet/passive/whatever, just because that's what i've always done around them... but even amongst groups of people that know me as louder, i'm a different lara in each one... memphis lara is a version of me i haven't had to be in several months, and these several months have changed me a lot i think, by the stressload of school and of all the crazy things in my personal life lately... it's kinda like i was excited to be back at valpo last spring, but it was hard because i changed so much during my time in hungary... in the same way, i feel like i'm a very different lara than i was in august in some ways, and it'll be a little rough figuring out how i fit with my memphis people again after everything that's gone on.

beyond that, just switching gears between who i expect myself to be with different groups of people takes a lot of energy... go figure... ok, mental note, i'm coming back to this paragraph in a minute (*)

this is also going to be a draining break just as much as it will be energizing, just in totally different respects. so much has gone on this semester that i've recognized but not really made myself emotionally deal with and think through or really process. i always say driving's how i deal with stress, so i'm finally going to have time to sit still and think through a lot of this stuff in the next few days/weeks, and i don't know how i feel about that, although coming to terms with what all's gone on lately is a necessary thing.

but back to (*)... interesting my word choice of "who i expect myself to be" in different groups of people. you'd think with how many times i write on here, or how many snail mail letters i write, or the vastness of my mass email audience, i'd consider myself to have lots of friends, and i do. however, it's almost all what i consider to be "spazz lara"... there's this small core inside of me that i consider me, and then this huge cloud of crazy energy around it that "spazzes out" and that's what people get of me usually i think. it's not that the "spazz" is not really me, because it's a very true part of me, but it's not my core.... but like out of all my tons of friends, who could name the one thing i want more than anything? the one thing i'm most scared of? the one thing i own that i value most? i think a rare few could figure them out, but for the most part these are things that only my "core" knows that i don't really share.... is this normal? or am i hiding from something? if so, what and why? dude... too philosophical for one night.

later.