big jumps

It's been snowing all night and it looks pretty outside, dark and white and frosty.

I lack the patience to write much of anything really, I just promised A. I'd post. Maybe this takes a long time to become natural again.

I turned 21 a couple days ago. I have literally no friends here, and with the addition of a family Christmas party, it was shaping up to be a pretty depressing day. My extended family on my dad's side are a bunch of strangers. They enjoy and feel comfortable in this town; I find it soul-crushing. I am pretty sure I know how I appear to them: the antisocial and stuck-up, hyperserious city liberal. They communicate. I sit down and pull out a book. I know it looks bad, but as my mother has said, "You can't make a family close if it isn't close." We don't get each other and that's okay.

Anyway, luckily Marla extended a hand and I ended up in a bar in East Lansing with her and her friends and consumed throughout the course of the short night two gin and tonics, one delicious beer, and one amaretto sour. With the jetlag (still!), I was pretty much falling asleep by 12:30am, and I crashed on her couch with a very antsy cat and was up at 7:30am the next morning and reading. This sleep schedule is not very good for the nightlife.

My birthday could have sucked but it didn't. I guess it depends on what you do with yourself.

One of my goals for next year (always wait for the completely arbitrary date of January 1st!) is to become far more assertive than I already am. Assertive enough to do the things I want to do--get to know the people I want to know, go the places I want to go, and be involved the way I want to be involved. If you're curious about the person you sit next to in class, ask that person to coffee. If your birthday appears destined to suck, step in and make it not suck.

Just... be involved in your life. Don't wait to be pushed. Push yourself.

I say this wishing I'd been a lot more productive today. Ah well. Looking out the window, the snow is burying today.