changes

Life is funny. I don't know if it was ever understandable or chartable the way one can diagram a sentence. I do know that it certainly isn't that way now. I have been keeping a journal in some form or another for a long time. They haven't been consistant by any means. I remember one that I named Simba in honor of The Lion King and another one that I kept on my first computer when I was somewhere around ten. When I was a senior in high school, I started using xanga. Since then I have had a continuous journal. Five years of journals is nothing to scoff at, and I used to shun those who continuously switched from xanga to bloger to myspace to facebook. I kept up my xanga--mostly for nostalgic reasons. For me xanga was a form of solidarity in my life, coming around just after my mother died, when I learned the hard way the real meaning of loss and pain and emotional torment. For five years I have kept a semi-continuous record of my life on xanga, keeping every entry public for one reason or another. I decided today that it was time for a change.

It isn't that I no longer like xanga. I do, but I find it depressing that I am one of the final few holding on to a tool that few use. Anyway, in a few days I will be moving into a new apartment. In a little more than a month I will be heading into my senior year of college. For the past few weeks I have been researching graduate schools, scanning faculty lists, ordering books, and generally planning where I will be headed in a year. It is a time of change, and I am ready for it.

In the words of David Levithan, masterful author of Boy Meets Boy, "I find my greatest strength in wanting to be strong. I find my greatest bravery in deciding to be brave...If there's no feeling of fear, then there's no need for courage." I read that book a couple of years ago and have tried to keep that quote in my mind ever since.

Here's to jumping off the proverbial cliff without a parachute.