Chapter Five Hundred Eighty-Two: Californian Phoenix

2-10-2005 - rebirth

Wow, it feels like ages since I've written in this thing. It sort of has been, which is probably why. (duh!) I don't konw why I'm drawn to blogging -- [Amelia] was talking about this the other day and wondering how much of ourselves bloggers put online, and why that's important. This started as a way to tell everyone what I was thinking and feeling and doing during college, and sort of collapsed in on itself until it was just me and a very few others. But that was still important, so I still did it. Then I became way the hell too busy, what with senior year dumping not only the hardest schoolwork I'd ever done, but the job search, my senior recital, and management of half a dozen other things all on me at once. It was a great year, but one that was hard to deal with and still have blogging time. Which is sort of a shame, because writing in this blog helped me sort out my own feelings about things, and while I started self-censoring every once in a while, the whole thing was pretty honest overall.

So why did I come back? Well, there are 580+ entries here, detailing my life between November 2000 and December 2003, and that's a part of my past I didn't really want to lose. I didn't don't want to remain firmly in the past, fixated on Swat and its current students, and trying to insert myself into their lives. But there's no changing the fact that Swat and my friends there (a large group of whom have since moved on to other things) shaped lots of who I am. So even if writing this becomes purely for my benefit, I won't be losing my past. Also, I feel like a big part of why I stopped had to do with leavings. I was drawing into that part of senior year when you being the series of "last"s -- my last semester, my last chorus concert, the last time I sang with MoCo, etc. and while I'm quite fond of writing soppy goodbye notes to groups I like, there were too many emotions involved at the time. I really don't know that even in July, a full month after graduation, and at least a month and a half since I'd sung with MoCo, I was really ready to deal with the fact that MoCo as I knew it was over for me. I had graduated, and joined the ranks of hundreds of other Swarthmore Alumni, but in my mind I was still a student, and being a student meant that I was still psychologically a member of my groups. Leaving is hard, and so I made the choice to leave this first, meaning I didn't subject the rest of the world to my leaving complexes.

What happened since I stopped writing in December 2003? Wow, it's hard to fit it all. I graduated with honors, which is the big thing. I sang my last concerts with the chorus, chamber choir, opera group, and MoCo. I gave a senior recital. I got a job and moved to California. I met half a dozen nerds and we get along fabulously. I met and briefly lived with Michael P's family, who are amazing and hilarious and I adore them. Mini-Em and I live together, which is great, and I get a paycheck from work, which is also great, and, incidentally, more than I was expecting to make right out of college. I joined a chorus, but not the one I really wanted to join, because their auditions are in the spring. I'm not singing as much as I'd like to be singing, but I'm hoping to fix that v.v. soon. I guess I'll write more specifics later, about each of the above -- leaving different things, where I've moved, what I do, and then get back to my daily basics and occasional thoughtful entries. I do really miss this thing sometimes :)

-H.B.

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