It can’t be emo if I don’t emote.

Posted by Steve Hanna on November 28th, 2007 filed in Random Tags: bouldering, changes, chaos, emo, exploits, life, piercing, research, riot grrl, school, thursday, wine

It’s almost satisfying to look back on some of the blog posts I’ve made while I’ve had this site. More often than not, I merely updated with random musings or events that recently took place in my life. However, after looking through some logs, someone found this site by searching for “what is senioritis” and found my post so *this* is senioritis. After reading over that again, I realize how much my life changes all the time. This may seems like a commonplace epiphany, but really, its often easier to accept something as truth than it is to truly become cognizant of the changes that have taken place. I look back on that post and I once again feel the uncertainty and tension emanating from the words. Tumult and chaos are pretty much the ingredients I used to take those words in that post and turn them into a viable reality. I like to think I’ve finally struck some balance between school and my life. If you notice, I refer to those things as mutually exclusive entities; well, that isn’t completely true, but the overlap so far has been minimal.

I’ve found time for climbing, biking, reading, lifting, films, cooking as well as experienced some extreme euphoria and satisfaction while coding, something I haven’t felt in a while. It’s most excellent when I can do anything I want in a week’s time. Perhaps this is the life of a graduate student and only the inkling of desire that I had when I wrote that post set this into motion. Maybe by making my thoughts public drove my desire to follow through and make my words into more concrete actions. What I know is that every few months I have these fleeting moments of lucidity where I take in how random my life is and how everything is always in flux; this is a good thing, I think the drudgery of a static life would be too much to bare.

Here I sit, I’m working on wrapping up this semester within the next week before I head on a bouldering trip with Steve Cavazos. I think of this summer and even these past few months and they just seem to be a complete blur. As a nascent graduate student I had so much anxiety and much to my surprise it was not regarding the coursework, it was due to the integration into an environment that was completely foreign. So many times in my life I feel like I’ve wiped the slate clean and completely started over. The emptiness felt can be overwhelming. The bedrock of previous relationships and friendships will always exist and I’ll always have people I can count on, but there’s something to be said about having people nearby that can share in experiences. I always have this fear that people around me in new situations view my silence and solemn attitude as a barrier or perhaps even arrogance but that’s never the reason I act that way. Really, I just want to get to know everyone, there are so many people around me at all times with ridiculous stories and experiences that I just want to drink it in and absorb as much as possible. But in my fervor I clam up, I remain silent. As of late, I’ve been more outgoing and I’ve done my best to put my guard down and really try to get to know people. I can tell by the number of new experiences and chaotic nights that I’ve had lately that I must be doing something correctly. I’ve made friends at the climbing gym and I’ve made some great friendships with fellow graduate students but I always find myself wanting more out of everything. Life would be considerably easier if I were more of a dilettante because my hobbies and interests would just fall by the wayside. However, every facet of my interests seems to be completely insatiable and I seem to find new things to keep me preoccupied every day. In fact everything about me is insatiable but why is that such a bad thing?

What I am certain that I don’t know is that I have no clue what the real world is. I just have the images that are evoked with I think that phrase. I scarcely even know what to think when I juxtapose my life with people from home who are getting married and playing the grown up. All I know is that my current situation fosters unbelievable, edifying experiences and if this proverbial real world involves static moments, drudgery, monotony and ::shudder:: settling down, then I will embrace the fleeting phantasmagoria* that is my life for as long as possible even if it contains tumult, chaos, flux, anxiety, happiness and even heartbreak.

I am drinking life and I won’t ever be sated.

And for those of you who need an update I present *Keywords that sum up my life lately*: Detours, new vw rabbit, eek!, eyebrow piercing, c++, song of ice and fire, philip k dick, timbuk2, woven hat, panda skateboard, wine…a whole lot of wine, lost verizon env, new motoq, virtualization study, import address tables, presentation, summaries, slides, results, euphoric belligerence, experiments, integration, bug fixes, coffee…a whole lot of coffee, frugality, thursday, riot grrl, sleeping outside and nocturnal.

*(I really, really wanted to use that word).