texas

haters gonna hate, but i love it here.

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spent all day elsewhere, outdoors. making a good round of it this weekend. after another intense yoga morning, off to do some roaming and hiking. several miles first out. saw what seemed like a thousand spotted whiptails - they were everywhere. i love their tails.

sat with my feet in the river and read the new yorker. screaming children upstream too far to hear, thankfully.

more hiking. thinking. etc, etc, etc.

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i think i'm starting to warm up to grad school, despite the fact that i'm freaking out about the 32 book suggested reading list before august and the fact that apparently, unbeknownst to me at the time, the worst decision i ever made was to never take a calculus class. now i have to learn statistics and calculus in 3 months flat.

but the idea of being back in a structured learning environment is weirdly alluring (i can't believe i'm saying this - i left there so fast the first time i think i left skid marks. thought i could teach myself faster than they ever could - and i was right about a lot of that, at the time.) also, beginning to get into planning mode: the things i will be devoting my time to down there outside of school, but also, planning to stay well connected into the fort worth part of my life. i am thinking once a month weekend visits. i have a feeling it will be important to my sanity. also i can't let go of so much here. i just can't. whatever, i'll admit it.

by next week, too, it seems i may be all set up when it comes to housing (cross your fingers). it has a fig tree and a peach tree and garden boxes and epoch, the 24 hour coffee shop, is a 5 minute walk away.

i am still so torn about it all, about for the first time ever not being 100% excited about a change. but i think this is because i see so much potential here for the long-term: there are more people here i love than anywhere else, at least right now, and there are deep friendships and long histories and the potential to affect change in the place that matters most to me of anywhere, really.

so of course in my dream, i will come back. but who knows how i will feel in 2 years. i'm secretly hoping i'll feel the same. and that all these people will still be here. this is seriously the crap i worry about. lame.

also, my graduate advisor is posting weekly videos to blackboard and i guess he felt like demoralizing me this week, because i've never considered myself a good bellwether for the supposed "millenial generation" that i belong to. that is, until i watched this (very interesting) video that made me feel like the angsty-est conformist ever. ha.

enough, enough, enough. i'm gonna go dream about lizards and lightning storms and holding hands and streambeds and some other rainbow-y type things. and then i'll wake up in the morning and get right back to the intense rollercoaster that is me.