Thanksgiving - A soup of Joy and Sorrow

Well, I definitely got well-rested. I guess that's a joy.

I'll start off, though, by saying that it did NOT go as planned. I was hoping to spend it with some old friends who I get to see very, very rarely - but that didn't work out. Upset, but not completely discouraged, I accompanied my parents to a family friends' house. There I played wii for the first time - it was quite a unique experience. Of course, nothing which actually produced the desired result of winning on the game system resembled any kind of physical motion I would do in real life. For example, in boxing, all I had to do was beat the air furiously and randomly with my fists to get in some blows at my opponent. When my beating became milder - when I got tired - I was knocked down instead.

The only other intersting thing that happened Thursday night was that my cell phone fell on the ground and broke. Thus, I had to go order a new cell phone. Since it was free, I ordered a Razr with an MP3 player on it. I'm not quite sure why I got that particular cell phone, especially with the MP3 player on it, as two days later I decided to get an IPod Nano with some saved up birthday money (my actual MP3 player had also recently broken). Again, not bad at all.

I'm going to end this post abruptly. Here, right now. I'll suffice it to say: the phone had no MP3 on it. Bah. (yes, I'm writing this several weeks after the rest of the post)

Random Thoughts

Change. It's been occupying my mind for forever. Specifically, people-change. There are so many ways to look at and classify it that it actually hurts to think after a while. I started thinking more intensely about change after I felt that I myself had changed this summer. I think the most drastic transformations I've gone through have happened in high school. I came into high school hopeful and rule-abiding. I despised middle school and could not see any way that another school experience could be worse. My hopes were not disappointed - I started liking high school immediately and I must say that, if anything, my appreciation of Newton South has grown. So - change. My sophomore year I suddenly started seeing things I had hoped I would only see in my worst nightmares. My friends - old, close friends - began doing things I never imagined they would do (in a bad sense). So, I shut myself behind a locked door and didn't budge all year. My excuse for avoiding people - people that I was afraid would disappoint me - was homework. I always had to do homework.

This summer I felt another change come over me. I think my shut-in-edness reached its' peak at Cape Cod - I refused to go anywhere near my friends at night. I stepped away from them and, watching from a distance, dubbed them "stupid teens." Now, before anyone criticizes me for being a hypocrite (because I, obviously, have come nowhere near escaping that heavy title), I never thought for a moment that I was in any way less "stupid." If anything, I felt like I was something worse - I had chosen not to belong and I had effectively created some kind of "unknown" category for myself. I knew that this was also, somehow, incredibly stupid. Whatever, I have no point to make here. I shall move on.

After that, I went camping for a week at Lake Luzerne. Now, even though this was my third year and I shouldn't have been expecting anything different to happen - as always, this didn't stop me from hoping and hoping and looking forward to something new. This year - I got it. I think something in me snapped. I already mentioned my addiction to homework and staying away from people that I felt belonged to the category that many teens are ascribed to. I had done this all of sophomore year and several times more vigorously during my two weeks at the Cape. I guess I just couldn't take it anymore. The first two days camping, I remember some part of my brain struggled viciously to keep order in the surrounding chaos of the wilderness. I had to brush my teeth after almost every meal, I had to take an hour to read, and I had to go to sleep strictly at 12 - regardless of what everyone else in the camp was doing. Like I said, soon something snapped. I don't think there was any one moment when I decided to forget all of my strict rules. I just decided one day that I liked these people, and I liked this place, and that I was only going to be there for another five days. I thought, okay, so I sleep for a total of eight hours over the next several days. So what? I have two weeks before school starts to get into the norm. And other thoughts like that.

Basically, I ended up not sleeping, not reading, not brushing my teeth after every meal, and not doing a lot of other things I had set out to do - and do I regret it? Not at all. But, the funny thing is, if the old me - that is, the me before the summer started - had been watching me at Lake Luzerne, I think she would have regretted it quite a bit. The new me - the me that came out of that experience of letting go - felt quite good about it all.

So, I came to school a much happier (still homework crazy, but more relaxed) person. I think this was the first time I had ever really felt myself to be a different person. Prior to this, every time I was aware of a change in myself, I had come upon the realization that I was different because I remembered how I used to be and I couldn't even begin to associate my current self with that past self. This time was different - I knew when the change had happened, and I could still understand and associate with my former self. I had no idea how long my new self would last - and it turned out not to be as long as I would have liked.

Change is such a strange thing - what makes us change? What moment, what feeling, what person/place/thing? How do we define change - in terms of who we become, in terms of who we used to be, or in some other way? How do we decide whether or not it's good or bad? And isn't that decision in itself subject to change, since our perceptions of the good and bad will probably morph with the change itself?

Just some food for thought. Hope I got someone hungry!