Day 2

So it's after midnight which means I've already sort of failed, but it's still part of "today" for me, so I'm calling this not a total failing of the 30 day challenge.

Today's topic: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Firstly, the shallow but true: oh sweet Jesus I will be 31. THIRTY ONE. Oh god.

I've recovered now.

So the "answer:"

This is even more difficult than a non self-pitying answer to describing my single life. The ambitious answer - and I am ambitious to a fault - is that I will be on Broadway, in some kind of leading role, preferably Tony-nominated if not yet Tony-winning. Oh, and I'll be happily married. With a well-trained dog. And maybe also an adorable small child (very small child, if we're talking ten years from now).

The equally-probable answer is, in one of the following cities acting: Chicago, Boston, Toronto, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Edinburgh, etc. In a sit-down production, or making a movie, or touring, or shooting a pilot, or on a cruise ship, or getting an MFA, or maybe even directing, or who the hell even knows.

The most likely answer is in New York. Doing theatre. Continuing to make this life happen, because, well... what else is there? (Which I mean in a good way.)

Sometimes I wish that I had chosen a normal person's life who could see a reasonable path of career advancement, hitting life's ordinary checkpoints, knowing the perfect home I'll live in with the perfect husband and our 2.5 kids and a dog (no seriously, that much I know - I will never own a cat).

But again. Then I think... what else is there than what I've chosen? There's certainly no turning back now. So ask me in like 5 years and we'll see how far I am to scenario number one. Then we'll chat about 5 more years from that.

Oh and by the way - I intend to be well on my way to scenario number one. Don't even worry about it.

Day 1

So about how I was going to do that 30 day challenge on posting just... well, because I wanted to/because I need a vaguely more intellectual exercise everyday than reading on the train (note to self: Start reading Shakespeare & Chekhov on train).

Lateness notwithstanding, as promised (to, um, myself - I have no delusions of internet stardom), post number one of the 30 day challenge.

Your current relationship status - if single, discuss your single life.

I've been putting this off in part from laziness, but mostly because I've been looking for an adequate way to describe my single life that is in no way bitter, self-pitying, or involves the phrase "it sucks." I am reeeeasonably sure that I can accomplish the first two, but as to the third, my single life, frankly, sucks.

I have been described in the past, rather uncharitably but also not wrongly, as too independent for my own good. I make friends easily, and I trust easily, but always to a point*. I am, I will admit, somewhat reluctant to let people in and the idea of having to fully depend on other people is something I have trouble accepting either practically (because I'm a control freak) or emotionally. This is something my last boyfriend, who for anonymity's sake we will name HSB2, found... annoying, to put it mildly, throughout the course of our 8 month relationship and subsequent period of... involvement ("It's complicated," as Facebook would call it).

*This in no way insinuates that I am a loner with no friends. I have lots of friends, many of whom are close friends whom I trust completely. Besides, if you're reading this the chances are you ARE my friend, so rest assured, you pretty much know my life. Moving on.

So you can imagine then, that I am not the type of girl who easily says the following: I. Want. A. Boyfriend. [Cue Carrie Bradshaw voiceover: "There it was. The phrase single, independent women in their [twenties] were never supposed to think, let alone say out loud."]

HSB2 and I broke up (discounting the aforementioned involvement period) - well, suffice it to say it was a long time ago. So I know from where I speak on singlehood. And there are aspects of being single for which I can vouch entirely: the, ahem, afforded opportunities for fun, never having to feel guilty for not having enough time for your relationship, the ability to know who you are as yourself rather than as part of a couple, spending less money, even.

I don't think, however, I need to list all the benefits to having a boyfriend, and all of those things are sounding really damn good to me right now. It would be nice - really really really nice, in fact - to have someone in my life to fill the boyfriend-shaped hole. Let's not forget, even "ultimate single girl" Carrie Bradshaw ends up living happily ever after with Big.

So I feel like I don't update this enough...

By which I mean that I often have blog ideas, but then I get too lazy to write them up and/or they percolate in my head but don't ever make it to this blog because I realize that what has bubbled around in my brain actually makes veeeeery little sense when I try and articulate it.

But then, on a friend's blog, I found this! Topics! For 30 days!

They're sort of random and esoteric and therefore interesting and yet still not the adult version of reading a survey on Livejournal. Wooo.

So without further ado, the challenge:

1. Your current relationship - if single, discuss how single life is.

2. Where you'd like to be in 10 years.

3. Your views on drugs and alcohol.

4. Your views on religion.

5. A time you thought about ending your own life.

6. Write 30 interesting facts about yourself.

7. Your zodiac sign, and if you think it fits your personality.

8. A moment you felt the most satisfied with your life.

9. How you hope your future will be like.

10. Discuss your first love and first kiss.

11. Put your iPod on shuffle, and write 10 songs that pop up. Without cheating.

12. Bullet-point your whole day.

13. Somewhere you'd like to move or visit.

14. Your earliest memory.

15. Your favorite blogs (I stole this from someone on Tumblr, which admittedly is a little more blog-community-centric, but let's be real, I do a lot of reading inanely on the internet).

16. Your views on mainstream music.

17. Your highs and lows of this past year.

18. Your beliefs.

19. Disrespecting your parents.

20. How important you think education is.

21. One of your favorite TV shows.

22. How have you changed in the past 2 years?

23. Give 5 pictures of guys who are famous and who you find attractive?

24. Your favorite movie and what it's about.

25. Someone who fascinates you and why.

26. What kind of person attracts you.

27. A problem that you have had.

28. Something that you miss.

29. Goals for the next 30 days.

30. Your highs and lows of this month.

READYGO, creative juices/intellectual curiosity/inane blathering about my life (listen it's a blog, these things, they happen.)

Obligatory First Week of School Post

Obviously, you might be wondering how I intend to do this when, for the first time, there's no school actually involved.

This September, there will be no evaluating of my classes, no grudgingly accepting the transition back into papers and homework and waking up at obscene hours for class. For the first fall in my conscious memory I have purchased no notebooks, pencils, or folders; I have not visited a bookstore in these last weeks let alone the NYU Bookstore in pursuit of something I forgot to get for much cheaper on Amazon three weeks ago.

In the middle of August I was having, to put it generously to myself, a wee bit of difficulty accepting that I wouldn't be returning to class. It felt like too much too quickly, too big a change, too overwhelming a concept to accept fully. I found myself, upon hearing my roommates lament "Oh my god I can't believe I have class next week", saying, "I'll trade you," words I was pretty sure I'd never hear myself say circa last April as I was eagerly counting the days to graduation.

I feel the need to clear up a misconception, by the way (hah, she wrote, as though she has so much of an internet following eagerly awaiting her next inane blathering) - I didn't graduate early because I hate NYU, or because I didn't enjoy my experience here. I did it because it made sense and it felt right to me, but it has no reflection on my NYU experience. Sure, I rag on it the way everyone does their school, but it's kind of like making fun of your family - only you can do it, when other people start in on NYU I will fiercely defend my school and the education I got there.

Yet somehow it still feels like fall. Not being a student, at present, feels in many ways like wearing the jeans that lay untouched in my closet for this entire sweltering summer - a little off and maybe not quite right, but somehow much easier than I'd expected. I described to a friend, also a new alumnus, that my sensation walking around campus was not unlike walking around an ex-boyfriend's neighborhood: familiar and easy, but somehow wrong and not a little painful.

There's an - oh my god, I cannot believe I'm saying this, kill me immediately - interesting essay we had to read in fucking Writing the Essay of all things that actually sort of adequately describes my new phenomenon, however. It's called "Shadow Cities" and basically deals with the phenomenon of all humans naturally superimposing the places of their memories on the places of their literal reality. And I think this is more it now. It's not painful to be on campus, but for the first time I'm seeing both "campus" and "Greenwich Village." And it's something I actually kind of love - that my campus, though a campus for sure by my way of thinking, never really was that. I just have to learn how to accept it as part of the city. I have to learn to see literally lower Broadway, not just "around Tisch."

And somehow, beyond thinking it might never again, what with a) there no being school and b) the absolutely BLISTERING summer, it feels like fall. I'm wearing sweaters. I'm drinking hot froufy drinks from Starbucks. And my calendar is filling up, which is always important to combatting a sense of general apathy for me.

Also, for shits and giggles, I counted: in this non-student summer, I read nineteen new books. This is not, in truth, all that much, but a once-avid reader, my school life had considerably slowed my leisure reading life. I realize that a good number of these books may have, ahem, been the novels that inspired True Blood, but in general, it's good to know I apparently still know how to engage my brain, school or not. Ah, growing up. You are a strange, strange phenomenon.