Everyone’s been reflecting on 2006, and I guess I should do the same thing but I don’t really have much to say. Plenty of stuff happened; I guess I just don’t want to recap all of it. Here’s an easy way out of it:
A year in review...
Find the first entry for each month of 2006, and post the first sentence of it in your journal.
January: [I did this survey]
February: Dissatisfied with so many things right now [this was a “let go and let God” entry]
March: The love of my freaking life....[picture of DC in Chicago]… I miss it =/. I need a new love affaire.
April: Housing makes me stressed out. And grumpy. Je le deteste.
May: OMG WTF I THINK I HAVE PINK-EYE
June: I'm in Shanghai now and basically on my own here in the city. It's nice having this independence...wandering around by myself during the day and eating and partying with my friends at night.
July: How do I love DC+2? Oh let me count the ways...[picture post from when we watched Superman at the drive-in theatre]
August: My mom's not the most encouraging or uplifting person in the world. Every day at almost every chance she gets, she reminds me of how fat I've gotten.
September: Ok, I officially suck at doing surveys. [wtf this entry was so pointless]
October: I'm starting research for my 20 pg. paper.
November: I miss these kids...[picture post of last year’s seniors]
December: I just pulled an all-nighter. And now I'm gonna go into Philly to catch a bus for D.C.
I was eating lunch with HOC kids after church on Sunday when Daniel randomly mentioned that our entire home group was present at the table. And he said that summer seemed so long ago. And that made me think how six months ago I was in such a different place than I’m in now. At the start of home group, I had just joined the HOC college group and I didn’t know anyone. Fast forward six months later, and I’ve become friends with all of them and just feel really comfortable and integrated into their little group. I realize that I haven’t known them that long…only since this summer, but it feels like so much longer. So while summer wasn’t actually very long ago, compared to where I was before the summer and where I am now, it feels like ages should’ve passed. Dang, home group was forever ago. Meeting these kids tops my list of great things that happened this past year.
Time passes by so quickly…what a cliché statement but how true it is. I hung out with Egg nog before she left for school; it was the first time I saw her since graduation but I swear it was like we hadn’t seen each other for only a month. I went to visit WHS with Sarmad yesterday. We dropped in on Mr.Ho’s class, and he introduced us as his students from five years ago. Immediately, Sarmad and I started protesting, saying we weren’t that old. But then we realized that he was right. We had Mr.Ho when we were sophomores in high school. Dang. Five years.
I hate talking about how time passes by quickly. It’s what old people do. All the freaking time. And talking/thinking about it only reminds me of the fact that I’m getting older. Oh gosh, someone shoot me; I sound like I’m eighty.
So moving on. I’ve gained quite a few friends this year, but I’ve also lost some friends. Well lost has a negative connotation to it. More like lost touch with. I guess that stuff is inevitable though. It happens. I never really had a constant group of friends throughout high school. I just floated around from group to group. And now in college I do the same thing. I admit I kinda hoped that in college I’d have a group of friends that I did everything with. Yeah I would hang out with other people, but there would always be that constant group to go out with, go to school functions, celebrate birthdays, blah blah blah. But I don’t have a group and I don’t think I ever will either. And like high school sometimes I wish I did. I feel left out sometimes because I just jump from group to group and my good friends are kinda scattered. But also like high school I’m starting to be okay with it. Maybe I’m not meant to be tied down. I talk about losing touch with high school friends, but for some odd reason I feel closer than ever to my friends. And this might be harsh, but maybe it’s just that I grew closer to the friends that matter.
2006 was a good year. Nothing terrible happened to me; I have much to be thankful for. A really good thing I had going ended, and that was tough for awhile but everything happens for a reason. I dealt with it, refocused, reprioritized, and came out better for it. My faith grew by leaps and bounds, but I still have more leaps and bounds to make. One thing that’s bugging me now is that I seem to be very “on-task” with my faith when I’m at school but when I came home for winter break I “lost it.” Interestingly enough, this summer really helped me refocus and that energy kept me going for the entire semester. But now it’s just died…? It looks like I’m going to need to challenge myself in new ways this coming year. Or rather, let myself be open to God’s challenges for me.
I struggled a lot with something second semester of freshman year, and it’s under control now but it definitely had the potential to get really out of control. At the stage it was at it was already having bad effects, but thankfully it never got extreme. Sometimes I wish it did, and even now I often find myself wishing for it and I come close to putting myself in that situation again. Sorry for the ambiguity, but I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it yet. I guess I’m not completely over it, and I don’t think I ever will be. I think it’s something that’ll stick with me forever. I guess if you don’t know what I’m talking about “forever” sounds a bit dramatic. But I know that it’s something that will always be on my mind. And what partly makes me think that it’ll never leave is that I kind of don’t want it to. As bad as it was, I try to reason out that it was good for me. My logical brain tells me that it obviously was not a good thing, but everything I want to believe suggests that maybe it wasn’t so bad. Which is why I don’t really want to fix it. Even now when I’m not in that situation anymore I keep thinking about going back to it. So it’s something that I’ll always carry with me, but it shouldn’t be a problem as long as I keep it in check. But I guess the problem is that I don’t know if I want to keep it in check or not. And I know that I don’t go through anything alone. God is always there and I’m being retarded if I think that my problems are too small for him, but I don’t know if I want God’s help on this…? Yeah that’s a pretty immature, stubborn statement. But like I said before, I don’t know if I want this fixed. I kinda just want to bear it.
School treated me pretty well. Not a lot of people know this, but I was thinking of transferring out of Haverford to UCLA during my second semester. Obviously I didn’t do it, but I was seriously considering it. Not because I wasn’t enjoying myself but because I didn’t think that the amount of debt I accruing was worth it. I’m paying for my tuition on all my own, and even though I have a grant from Haverford, I’m still taking out a hell of a lot of loans and the way I figured it, UCLA is a great school, and it won’t plunge me into so much debt. Basically, bang for my buck. But my experience this summer changed my mind. My trip to China reminded me of why I chose a small, private liberal arts college. And talking to my peers and my old teachers about my college experience reminded me that so much of my unique experience comes from not being at a California public school. It comes from being on the East Coast, at this tiny college no one here has heard of. And I like it that way.
My freshman year I heard a lot of talk about sophomore slump. I’m quite happy to say I don’t feel slumpy at all. I’m much more tied up in my school work, and living in the 800 apartments is tough sometimes, but I’m just going with the flow and things are working out well. I miss the seniors a lot; a lot of times I wish I could go into their lime green apartment and plop myself on their futon. I was reading an entry I wrote last year, and in it I worried that hanging out with the seniors was a tradeoff for hanging out with my friends my year and I could only wait until next year to see if I made the right choice. Well, it’s next year, and I can safely say I have no regrets. I seriously had an awesome freshman year, a very unique experience compared to a lot of friends my year, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I did give up a few things; like I said earlier I don’t really have a tight-knit group of friends. I have scattered good friends and I don’t really belong in a group. So I feel left out sometimes, but I’m dealing…just like I did in high school. And it’s not so bad.
In September 2003 I made 41 posts. I’m reading over my posts right now. They make me cringe. Someone should’ve told me to shut up and get a life. It makes me sad to think I used to blog like that. Man, I sounded like a ditz. I’m sure I still do sometimes but reading those entries is seriously really painful.
I’m bored with this entry now. Ha, so much for doing the survey as an easy way out. I guess I just can’t resist talking about myself. I’m surprised I made this post in the middle of the afternoon. I usually only get thoughtful around 2am.
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