Thursday, August 28, 2003 10:44 p.m.

my first few days in California

(note: seeing as how I was without internet for over a week, this entry was written 3 days ago, but just now added)

I know I should have written so much the past few days. And it�s weird, but after you�ve gone a few days w/o writing, it�s almost like you don�t want to write because you don�t want to have to re-cap everything and yet you know that you cannot just leave out any of it, because so much was important and needs to be recorded.

When I stop and think about it, it is ABSOLUTELY crazy that I am finally here. I�ve been here for a few days and I can�t decide if the �newness� has worn off, because I don�t think I ever really took a second and let the newness fully sink in.

It�s all the craziness of moving in to this brand new place, but also the weirdness in knowing that this is where I�m staying. Well, maybe not this exact apartment, but this new life. I�m not just taking a semester off, I�m not on vacation. I won�t get to go back and tell friends about the crazy adventures here. I�m outta school now. I�m living here. I�ve got to make new friends here.

I feel like I�m on �The Real World�. If cameras were to be documenting my life right now, they�d have plenty to tell. I�m living with two girls that I had sorta earlier known, but they didn�t know each other. One went to ACU with me. By all outward appearances, she seems to be as typical of an ACU student as anyone realistically is. She doesn�t drink and is a normal Church of Christ girl (for all I know). The other I interned with a year and a half ago when I was last out here. She�s from New York (Buffalo), a VERY liberal Jew and was highly involved with her school�s gay/lesbian community (she�s straight). And here I am, stuck in the middle, knowing both of them, yet not knowing either. I�m neither a liberal nor a conservative, Christian nor Jew. One expected me to be an encouraging fellow Christian friend in this crazy city; the other expected me to rebel from my conservative past and change into a brand new person. And I�m doing neither and don�t expect to live up to their expectations either.

And then there�s the whole job thing. It�s weird to think that I�m really out of school and am joining the millions and millions of people whose main time-commitment of the day consists of going to their successive workplaces. It�s also weird that I got here on Sun., made a call on Mon., interviewed and got a job on Tues. and start next week. I always figured that I�d have to wait tables for quite a while before a real job came my way. But what I always figured is never the way things really turn out to be.

It�s also strange how unorganized my life currently is. Everything is everywhere. I don�t know where I�m going. I have NO food, except for a box of fruit snacks and water from the faucet. I have no T.V., no internet, I feel so alone (yet so independent) lying on my bed on the floor of my scatterbrained room, trying to somewhat keep hold of the reality that me, or whatever makes up �me�, is fully aware that I am the only one who knows who I am right now.

I�m probably going to always wonder what this exact feeling feels like...I�ll probably come look back on this completely unrestricted part of my life, wishing I could do it all over again and trying to remember how it all felt. But what�s funny is that I don�t really know how it feels...I�ve gotten so caught up in getting it done and in just experiencing that I can�t even tell you about the experience.

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