the guilt of the well-meaning but uncommitted...

People. It's hilarious that the one direction of my life from which flows some of my greatest joys is also the source of my greatest trials...

So last Thursday one of my classmates realized that since our poetry class got canceled, I was going to have to sit in the hall for over an hour to wait for my night class. So this friend decided to stay and keep me company. For an HOUR. It was possibly one of the sweetest things anyone has done for me. The completely awesome thing: he writes movie reviews for our school paper, so he and I literally spent the entire time talking about movies, our favorite actors and Hollywood's strange, rigid idea of beauty...and also how Alan Rickman is one of the great underrated actors of his time. It was simply a blast.

Yesterday, however, I was the recipient of a bunch of snide comments in my Avant-Garde literature class from a group of "bohemian" self-love type people who've decided the class belongs to them.

My conclusion: people are great, but sometimes they also suck. I guess that makes sense, since that is also a good description of myself...when I am able to think about myself objectively, anyway... ;)

Headed home this weekend, to celebrate Lucy's birthday, as well as simply my family in general. I tried to explain to Kody yesterday about how I feel about my family, and he finally made this really hilarious comment: "You know Linz, you tell me you've never been in love before...but do you realize that's what it sounds like when you talk about them?" It's so funny, because it's so true in a way...I love my mom, my sisters and my bro's family with so much of me. I really can't imagine feeling the same amount for anyone else...even if he was the most perfect guy out there. (Which, let's face it, the perfect guy would annoy the crap out of me anyway...)

Along that vein...I was considering yesterday as I was reading the strange combination of Austen's Northanger Abbey and Flaubert's Madame Bovary that as a young 20's woman, I'm something of a quandary. Everything about my life: my childhood, the example(s) I had growing up, the training I've received from my sisters and my mother - everything has prepared me for the eventuality of marriage and children. Yet every time I consider that life, I am filled with a strange dissatisfaction. I realized yesterday as I was picturing that life - my life like that - it's just not what I want, at least right now. I realize that may change, but the idea of being at home, running a home and raising my children alone while my husband works eight, nine hour days, five or six days a week is simply not how I want to spend the majority of my life. I feel like I have been made for something different. Not something better, or worse, just something different. Sometimes I think that is why God created me so autonomous; why I hardly ever feel lonely, even when it's just Him and I. I am contented alone, in a way that I think most people aren't. But as people keep telling me, this may change, and soon I will probably be filled with the same urge to find someone to share my life - and children - with that everyone else in their twenties seems to feel. Then again...maybe not.

the state of being bummed and psyched at the same time....

Christmas break was...well, practically perfect in every way. :D

I got to:

-Ice-skate
-go hiking in a foot of snow
-sledding!!
-shop numerous times w/ many different peeps
-eat tons and tons of amazingly awesome food prepared by Mom and my sisters
-go on a mini road trip
and best of all:
-spend Christmas and New Years with those I love more than anything else in the whole world.

It was difficult at times to realize in those occasional moments of startling perception that I was experiencing the holidays in the house of my growing up years for the last time. Out of all my family, I love change the most, and even I felt a sort of grief at the idea of losing such an important piece of my life. But we spent as much time as we could filling it with as many positive memories as we could cram into three weeks.

Sometimes I feel so unbelievably blessed, I am filled with a sort of fear that God is preparing me for unbelievable hardship. But in the moments that I am surrounded by the ones I love so much, and realize how much I am loved, I believe that as long as I can hold onto that, I can make it through anything.

And now, to escape the growing maudlin... ;)

Despite how hard it was to leave home today, I am filled with a growing excitement about this semester. It is shaping up to be completely crazy, but at this moment, I am filled with illogical optimism.

I'm okay with that.

:)