Maybe I'll try blogging again.

I'll probably fail again.

Oh well, here's another random post:

My friend is going to the Philippines with the Peace Corps and she dedicated her blog to me! I'm so proud of her and am glowing with happiness after reading her inaugural post. Obviously that's what got me to writing right now.

Life update: Now that I'm six weeks away from getting my degree, I don't think I want to do interior design. At least not yet. I've heard from multiple, varied sources (so I've resigned myself into believing its true) that the only time you can get hired in this field is at the end of the summer because of the "construction break." Basically, the idea of flying home and rushing into a job which may or may not allow me to pay rent and eat in the city I want to live in appeals to me not a lot. Despite my better reasoning I'm now considering moving home for a bit. Supporting reasons follow.

Part of the reason I want to move home is to reconnect with my roots; familial and regional. If I move straight to the city I know I'll end up exploring on weekends/trying to create a social life for myself and visits home would be sporadic. I'd probably feel guilty about their sporadic nature. Also, I really, really want to visit the Phillipines if I can (plus I'll have friends in Hong Kong and Bangalore...), and going broke to make it in San Fran is definitely at odds with going to Asia. I'm confident I could get my old job at the winery back and if I'm living at home I would serve both the desire to save money and catch up with good ol' Cali-forn-i-a.

The more I think about it the more I can think of reasons to hang out in Santa Rosa. If nothing else, I can remind myself that it's a sleepy place and I should live in the city. That is a totally legitimate reason as far as I'm concerned. And even if it comes to that I'm sure I could make myself busy enough to temper my own insanity at least until the holidays are over. As roommates go, my parents are pretty clean, so that shouldn't be a problem...

As for getting a job in January: I'd do anything. I'll cross that golden-gate bridge when I'm actually getting ready to head south on 101 with my stuff in the trunk. If I need to work three jobs, seven days a week, well then, I can say I worked my ass off for a goal. That always feels good at some point. Or at least I can tell my kids about it.

At home I might WOOF (work on organic farms), visit a lot of family, work at the winery, take cooking classes, cook/bake (Thanksgiving/Christmas woot), visit a lot of family, garden, help out with my parents various interior design projects, work on my portfolio, possibly rekindle some friendships, visit a lot of family, drink local beers, get a bike, knit, chill with my dogs... Wait why hasn't this been the plan from the beginning again?

The extended forecast requires updating as well. I mentioned to my sister my foggy notion of going to law school in a decade or so and she had some ideas for me. She's been living in Prague about as long as I've been living in Montreal and she told me that I could study commonwealth law for two years there (or anywhere commonwealth law is taught) and then do a one-year master's program in the states to make me eligible for the bar. I'd save money on tuition (and living expenses probably) and get an awesome international experience in the same amount of time. Best of all, I wouldn't need a university-issued degree to embark on that journey. Woot! Not going to university may work out for me after all.

And now maybe I should do some homework. Funny how "homework" and "housework" are similar words. I often distract myself with the latter when I ought to be doing the former... I should really just get married and be a house-husband.

It's Good To Be A Tourist Where You're From

Something that has occurred to me before but which has become a more concrete thought in the past year is; it is good to be a tourist where you're from.

Like every other boring person who goes away to school, I've gone through the regress-to-the-mental-state-of-a-five-year-old phase when returning home for visits. Some kind of world-crumbling depression hits me and the horror of living with my parents for two whole weeks during Christmas seems positively impossible.

It's okay. I don't sympathize with myself either.

Anyway. Now that I'm pretty much done with school I've pulled out my spyglass and set my sights towards the next landing site, which I think, will be California. San Francisco specifically. And perhaps home until such a time as I am able to accept employment/move to the city.

I am really going to miss Montreal. The fabulousness of the city bowled me over, of course, but I also proactively made myself have a good time here. And sometimes -sometimes- when I'm at home on break, I have been similarly bowled over by things I hadn't properly noticed before. Like Annadel. Russian River Brewing Co. The actual Russian River. Hwy 1. The local/organic/sustainable/slow food movement. Driving to the beach. Driving on the Bohemian Highway. I'm actually from a pretty sweet place.

Point is, once I brush the snow off of me for the last time (sob) in this totally awesome city and I'm a resident of the golden state once again, I have some things I want to do. The list, obviously, may grow, but for starters:

Rock climb

Go to sooo many farmer's markets

Fiddling Festival

Accordion(ing?) festival

Beekeep

Sheep + dairy product-making + sheering/carding/spinning/felting etc. wool

Zip-line through the redwoods

Learn Spanish

Visit Big Sur

Camp

Backpack

Check

It was one of those glorious moments when, after making spaghetti for dinner, I realized I had parmesan in the refrigerator. "Ahh," I think, "I might be growing up after all." Having such a luxury item on hand accidentally should be no surprise for my grown-up self.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Whoooooo.

Some things to remind myself of:

I ate french fries and grapes for breakfast the other day

I shower semi-frequently and I don't floss enough

I listened Rihanna sing S&M on repeat for three hours today

I've seen every posting on awkwardfamilyphotos.com

My facebook habits may resemble those of a CIA agent in terms of information procurement

Also, I'm not sure exactly when I bought that parm...

Devolution

I think I'm regressing; I show signs of being someone younger than me. I stay up way to late on many school nights, I don't like school, I like getting drunk once or twice a fortnight and I'm starting to like music I never did. Like, The Velveteen, a band from my hometown that my cousins always liked. We were friends (my cousins and I) but there were certain things that made a distance between us... like I had never been to concert, mostly because I never liked the kind of alternative, rock-ish music that was accessible to us, and so we didn't share a taste in music, and, I dunno, we didn't share taste in much about popular culture I guess. I'm also enjoying tv shows more that I once would have found offensive, like Friends and How I Met Your Mother.

My favorite things to do are stumbleupon, youtube, facebook, wikipedia, google and watch tv online with my friends. I like going through webpages of recipes and funny videos and absorbing useless factoids. I don't even really pay much attention to the news. I also like board-games and knitting. This is at least partly because I live on a frozen island of darkness-which discourages much activity. But still. I just feel like nothing I do is very valuable.

I would like to say that my school experience is a product of my high school experience; which consisted of cramming daily and not getting much satisfaction or remembering anything very important. Any random European man, woman or child off the street can probably tell you more about American history, plus their country's history, plus the current political situation in half the world's countries than I can. I know, however, that I should just create the school experience I want. At least that's what my mom would say. However, I think it's entirely possible that I just don't really like school. School is stressful. It's full of deadlines, lots of work and endless readings. And it's not like everything you read you can take a passing interest in: you have to really study everything because it's all new information that may seem strange and unintuitive. In short, it's exhausting.

All my life I've always been told that I "don't need to worry about my major too much." My mom is finishing her undergrad now and I get the sense that my dad didn't really take school seriously until he went to law school. It was always understood that I would go to college and that mom and dad would pay for it. But: "don't worry about what you study, you have your whole life to figure out what you're going to do" is the motto that has more-or-less been drilled into me. The truth though, is that, while I enjoy what I study while I'm in class, my enjoyment is a short-lived, jeopardy-trivia kind of interest. I wish I did worry more about what I do. I would like to do something I take pride in, have a routine I like, have friends, have fun, fall in love, travel, be involved in my community... I know that's all for the future, but right now I feel my time would be better spent honing some interesting skill in a trade school, or living in some exotic place helping people or working. But I'm afraid that I'm going to get too old and feel like I need to hurry up and work so I can marry and have kids while I'm young. There is so much I want to do while I'm still free from all that!

But I'm in school. And I know I should be grateful for this incredible, relatively rare privilege.

Maybe my problem is that I'm getting used to having friends. Everyone else I know who has struggled in school has either suffered from a lack of intelligence or discipline- the latter often the result of just hangin' out. I have never really 'just hung out.' I've never really had people, besides my family, really love to hang out with me. And, incredibly, I love to be with these same people. I feel so, so phenomenally lucky.

So... I guess it's best to have friends and be immature right at home. And if you can't do that because you're too mature, go to boarding school to get away from home and hope you'll make friends there. And if you don't make friends there, good luck to adjusting to your life if you ever do make friends. Deep-down I am happy to be here because even though I don't like school, if I weren't here I would never have met my wonderful friends.