i decided to split my marathon post up into two posts because otherwise nobody, including me, would be willing to commit to reading the entire thing.
YOU'VE BEEN FOOLED!
now that you feel obligated to finish reading by way of my trickery, i'll continue.
it seems weird to let another holiday season pass by with me having a blog and not taking the time to write down tons of completely unfounded blather about american consumerism and act like my opinions about christmas are empirically provable fact and anyone who disagrees will be badly hurt in a physical manner. so here goes.
this christmas season has passed largely similarly to the last few, except for the susan's gig and all the action leading up to it. i've talked about that enough to last a dog's life, so i'll avoiding further digression. i came in from pullman, spent a few days deflating and finishing grading, then came up to kent, engaged in debauchery, went home, more debauchery, got drunk, missed church, woke up late, got lots of presents that i didn't deserve, felt guilty about being too cheap to really get anyone any good gifts, spent a few days scheming a way to get my instruments up to kent from canton, took care of that, watched a lot of TiVo, plotted filling my stomach with a huge Chipotle burrito so that i can drink for 10 straight hours tonight and not die, and everything else will likely play out according to plan and wind up with a few days of me sitting at my parents' house hurriedly finishing my lesson plans for next week and then the final emotional and physical turmoil of flying back to pullman mere instants before i have to start working again.
i'm definitely glad i got to come back here for break again, but it's also always really strange. on one hand, you have my parents/family, who are, in a lot of ways, used to a much different type of lifestyle than i am, and while i'm glad they don't really seem to think i need to be a lot like them to not suck, i still sort of feel like i stick out like a sore thumb. i suppose that's the weird balancing act that comes with having older family members and especially parents: on one hand, you feel like you're not necessarily good enough to live up to their expectations, but on the other hand, you often feel like the things you do actually think you do well sort of fly by because, well, let's face it, in the 10 years since you spent every living moment in your parents' house, you and they have kind of stopped having lots of things in common.
i just realized i nested the "on the one hand" expression inside of another instance of said expression and didn't finish the original instance of that expression. so here goes:
on the other hand, i have the whole scene in kent with my friends from KSU and the surrounding area, who all definitely get what it's like to be in the position that i'm in existentially, financially, etc. i'm also more certain on what their expectations of me are, at least for the most part. it's a much more stable environment in that sense, but less so in the sense that i don't have my own transportation, or my own food, or really any sort of personal space or schedule-planning ability.
i don't really know what i'm trying to get at; i think i'm just ruminating because i'm really freaking hungry and i don't want to start working on my lesson plans.
being with my family was really great this christmas again, and even though it seems everybody is getting more and more fed up with christmas-as-shoppingasm, it seems like they're actually scaling back the present-buying a little and focusing more on keeping themselves happy first, which is good (at least in my opinion).
the christmas gig we were going to do at the behavioral center didn't work out and neither did going to rochester, but all in all i think it's been a pretty great vacation, considering the amount of living that has to fit into 2 or 3 weeks. there's never enough hours in the day, really. i think regret is a natural consequence of time. which isn't to say there's not a yang to that, because there is. i'm just too hungry to figure out what it is right now.
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