Jeez, I would really like to avoid writing about rowing again, but its literally most of what I do in a day.
Here is my day (I will spare you the exact time increments, though I have micromanaged my time to that degree): Wake up, train at the gym, get on a bus, train on the water, eat brunch, work on my senior essay, nap, train on the water again, eat dinner, go back to campus, work on my senior essay, go to sleep.
oh yeah. tremendous variety.
So what will I write about instead? Just letting it happen.
It took me three years to learn that I'm stupidly stubborn. Sometimes, this can be a benefit, I tend not to give up on things or people and will just keep pushing until the goal is attained. The flipside is this means I often worker harder, not smarter.
The obvious application is rowing: sometimes, the harder you work as an individual, the shittier the boat feels because you're not working with everyone else. I learned this the hard way a few days ago and hope I didn't totally shoot myself in the foot.
But it applies to other situations too: I had been beefing with my senior essay adviser about the best way to narrow down the scope of my essay before a class of my peers pointed out that she (and I, if I'd thought my ideas out to fruition) had a point. Now instead of trying to force my essay in a certain direction, I'm just writing it, and its awesome. But good lord it is long...
But the hardest lesson for me about just relaxing and going with the flow is totally and purely social.
Something about getting to know people seems to contrived. And I'm hard headed and like what I like and refuse to go out of my way to do things that might be awesome but strike me as risky or otherwise threatening. Sure, new friendships require some enegery expenditure but you shouldn't really feel it like that, it should feel organic and fun.
That's why Rocky Horror was such a blessing for me. I mean, I was only half involved in that production anyway, but suddenly I knew this whole group of awesome ladies without having to actually have found some way to track them all down and meet them. Being friends with certain kids in JE got me involved in the Women's Center which is something I wouldn't have foreseen freshman year but is also great. Getting totally cornered at a function there led me to discovering that performing in drag is one of the greatest pleasures of my life.
In short, life is an adventure, and most of the time its just best to live it. I try not to think about the kinds of adventures I missed out on being a control freak with myself for so long, but rather, to see even that as part of greater trajectory of my life. Right.... Here's to three more months of this adventure (yale)!
You don't always have to be the driver to enjoy the ride
pe@ce
p.s.- this is amazing. http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/toys/randomsentence/write-sentence.htm
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