How old are you now.

My birthday was yesterday. If you exclude some annoying physical pains it was really quite a nice day. I feel like I’ve had so much given to me for it really. First when my parents were up two weekends ago they took Jo and I out after the concert “for my birthday”. Now I’m sure we all would have gone out anyway, but still. And mother had a gift of random knickknacks. Then Jo was all insistent upon special food. I found this cake recipe that really was quite ridiculous. Holy sugar. And she especially made some chicken that really was quite good. Now she does cook and bake regularly. But he whole it being specifically for Carlin’s Birthday is what gets me. I guess I don’t like being the center of attention when it’s like I didn’t really do anything to deserve it. I also got like a million (or what feels like it) facebook messages. I don’t really talk to most of these people hardly ever. So it’s always special to get so many messages. It makes me feel like people do actually like me. This is something I can’t figure out the reason for. Take it and run with it I suppose.

Being 22 is playing with my brain in some other ways already.

Recently in certain situations I've just been feeling a lot older than the group I familiarize with. Mostly its college friends. They're still all living there in that really completely different little world. And I'm out here. The differences have caused issues and in general difficulties. I miss being at LVC so much really. I would gladly fall back into the sometime bliss of that life.

But most of the time its blatantly apparent how young I am. Yesterday my co-workers had cake and all as is our tradition here. So I got the question of so how old are you now? The responses to my answer were nearly always amusing. You see the majority of the people I work with every day are over double my age. The majority of our patrons have a good change of tripling my age. And for the most part the majority of my coworkers have become accustomed to how young I look and don't think about it much at all. They just know that I'm a good worker and can do things. In fact I'll probably do them easily, quickly, and well.

I'm even younger that my roommates and most of their friends. They don't realize it often just because while I may look younger I act more like someone nearing retirement or something half of the time. And then there's the whole age difference with the new boy now. It's kind of sad how we don't quite understand some things the same way because of it. But the funniness of it can be quite amusing.

The biggest age quandary came from my father however. He, in delightful father fashion sent me a Happy Birthday email. In fact both he and mother did. And amongst the well wishes and rambling was the line "Your mother wasn't quite 22 when we got married...mmm, puts things in sort of weird perspective!!!" Ya, I'll definitely agree with the weird thing there. I can't imagine being married right now. I still feel so very very young for that. But then I do have 2 close friends engaged. Plus I just found out another friend just became so. And really when I look at my life and whats in it and what I want to be in it its almost like marriage really ought/might as well be the next thing up.

It's all pretty crazy.

Silence is painful.

How very odd for me to say. You see normally I love silence. I’m a loner who was always off by myself reading books to fill my own quiet. I never have the volume up high on anything. It drove me nuts when my roommate would have music on while I was trying to work. The sound of snow falling is my favorite sound in the world.




I’d like if it snowed and I could go out into that quiet. But I think I’d cry.

Going nowhere quickly.

The phone is not ringing. In fact it has only rung like three times in the past hour. This is rather quite a miracle as of late. I relish in the silence.

Except that now I’m kind of bored again.

Basically I’m never happy. I was trying to decide if it were possible that I would ever really be truly happy/content. The way I am now I don’t think so. But little one said that I would. So I put her in charge of having hope for that. Although she did bring up a valid point; I could change. Yes, change is possible. Is it probable? I don’t think I’ll hold my breath. In general I don’t like change and I’m really not much inclined to fix my negative disposition.

Sometimes it seems very strange to me that I really do have such a negative disposition (or black little heart which ever you prefer) because it so many ways it seems like that goes against the essence of me.

I am so scattered today. I have no focus and I can't even manage to write anything decent. I've just had so many things going through my mind recently. It's pretty crazy.

Thank goodness for fridays.

Working 11 days straight is not good for my health. Working 11 days straight when every single day has been ridiculously busy is particularly bad for my mental health. Working 11 days straight when every single day has been ridiculously busy and there have been two major crisis that were my doing/responsibility is just a good way to make me want to kill myself.

I've totally not managed to do any of my new years resolutions like at all either. So for some things seeming so good right now I just feel like I suck at life in alot of other ways.

Thinking about it.

I'm considering trying to do this: http://www.witf.org/FM/believe.php.

More to be posted later maybe.

Tricky questions.

So on one of my trips home this holiday season the thought came up: What is it that I want people to think of me as? How do I want to be viewed?

I can't come up with an answer at all. Its a bit disconcerning. The whole "This above all else: To thine own self be true." Yea I don't know what that would take. :-/

A look back.

So I'm a bit delayed but I decided that in honor of the new year change I wanted to recap 2007. I would have been much sooner with this entry but work suddenly got like crazy busy the past 3 days. Goodness.

The year opened in the traditional fashion with my family up at the lake house. Good times. I don't think I even cried that year finally.

By mid-January it was back at LVC and my final college semester began. Classes hmm...let's see. The only classes I had that I needed to take was Small Business Management and Entrepreneurial Music Business or something like that. They were like the same class and both quite annoying and easy. I took 20th Century Music just for fun and because I liked the teacher. Except then we opened fairly quickly with discussions about the in depth form and structures plus 12-tone. I had taken only up to like half the level of music classes that my fellows had. But I still ended up kicking butt and actually learning material and learning to like the music and most importantly learning to be a better learner. She really was one of the best teachers for me.

At LVC for fun I took a boat load of ensembles. I was in all three major ensembles. I got third chair in the Band and so was also in Wind ensemble. It was all my least favorite ensemble. But we won't harp on all that. I sang in the college choir, and had a good time. I was the principle player in the Orchestra, definitely the capstone experience of my playing career I'm sure. In the spring semester we got to perform amazing things like selections from Kiss Me Kate, Rhapsody in Blue, and Dvorak's New World Symphony. But the best was the chance to play with a very small select group which our director said was a particularly good group because he'd never had quite enough good players to do this piece before. I had a hard time believing that I could actually be one of those good players. But I love it. The piece was Milhaud's The Creation of the World (more commonly found in the French). It's modern, crazy, hard not get lost in, hard to play, and amazing. I was also in two small ensembles. In bell choir which I had rather haphazardly 'joined' (but never registered with the registrar for) in the fall our director and one of my private teachers quickly recognized that I had potential and so I was trusted with parts and got to play a crazy 5 person thing. In flute ensemble I had my last semester of fun on Alto flute (which I shall miss, I'm sure I'll never get to play again) and also got to play a trio which was beautiful.

I also had my lessons. I had started taking piano lessons for fun that year. And my teacher made me such a better player. I can play Chopin preludes which are amazing and I never imagined I'd be able to do. On flute I continued. I don't feel like I improved particularly much that last semester. But to look at where I had been when I came into college the improvement is vast. I've come out a totally different player in so many ways.

That all was my technical school work as far as I can remember. Outside of classes I had a few extracurriculars.

In SAI I was the Vice President Of Membership. So basically I was supposed to recruit and train us some new members. And really we're a dying chapter so we needed them like whoa. It really didn't work out so well. Long story really that I'm not quite at liberty to tell. But while I still feel completely like I failed I know it's really not my doing. But I came out of it with my little one. And I love her dearly. Plus I still love all of my sisters so much.

In PHD I just continued to let my natural grace carry my through those dances and had fun with it. The girls that I met through that group are all incredibly amazing and such great people. I miss it so much.

So between that all plus the two on campus jobs that I worked at and spending time with my friends outside of activities it was a quite full semester of greatness.

In March for Spring Break I had one of the best experiences ever. Having never done anything before at all with my Spring Break I had made it a mission to come up with some kind of adventure or something. Banana, having the same break week, was in with me from the beginning. Little one got in a bit as we grew closer and so by the start of 2007 she was a contributing member of the task force to come up with something. A camping trip was decided on. By necessity the location was designated to be Florida. Much to cold anywhere else. While I don't know that I ever care to drive straight to Florida again it was so totally worth it. I love camping to begin with. And the whole actually going to Florida on our own and seeing those amazing new places was incredible.

Come May it was graduation time, or kind of as in my case. I went through all of the motions, but it never quite seemed like it was real and for me it kind of wasn't. If you're going to graduate it's much more fun to have your closest friends there with you instead of a group you hardly know. That's the downside of graduating early. You don't know the people you're grouped with. So I went and did the class picture the reception the baccalaureate and commencement. And I smiled and walked across the stage. But I didn't even get my real degree. I got a folio that said I had to return it right after the ceremony. Cruel.

And then I didn't even stop to breathe. Commencement was on Saturday morning/afternoon. I took some things home but came back on Sunday evening to move into my LVC summer housing. Then the next morning I made my first daily drive out to Harrisburg to start as the intern for the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra. There I spent the first four days filing. No joke, I really did. It was more or less ridiculous and I went crazy. The internship was good because I liked the people, they all liked me, they'd answer any questions, and really they wanted me to have a good learning experience. That being said I spent a good bit of time nearly dying of boredom.

At the very end of June I had a quite exciting experience. On labor day the family always goes up to the Lake House. So I figured I'd go up. And I recruited Little One to come with me. So she drove out to LVC because she'd no idea where she was going. Then we were driving up 81, its practically a straight shot, easy drive. When about an hour into the trip (1.5 hours remaining) my good old Ford Taurus caught on fire. Seriously. Yea, thats some intense excitement for you there. But no one died or was hurt, and I got a new car. So alls well that ends well. Right?

Back to the internship now. The best part of the whole thing is probably that on August 15th I became a full time employee. "Patron Services Manager" to be exact. Being paid is nice and the benefits (which started in November) pretty much kick butt. They still think I'm amazing, i'm still bored all too often. But so it goes. It really was quite a good thing though. Because having been a full time intern through the summer I integrated myself then so it was such an easy transition to being an employee. The only thing that was new as that I got a pay check. I still love the people, the mission, the music. And I even really do enjoy helping the old people (and people in general) which is a huge part of my job. Really my jobs another lot of blogs worth of material.

So also in August I made the crazy move to for the first time in my life not technically living at home in Pennsburg. Over the summer when the job was looking like a real possibility I looked at many living options found via internet. Eventually I found two girls looking for a third roommate, after meeting them I was still a bit iffy but in a lot of ways it seemed like it could be a good fit. So far it's worked out splendidly. I was my normal shy self for quite a while but now I'm good friends with both. It's pretty sweet.

The fall was a bit rough just because little one was in Germany. And trying to do the whole completely new mode of life without the best friend being there for me all the time was not good. Plus the whole best friend in whole different place thing really just isn't so fun to begin with.

So really most of the fall and the start of winter has been getting used to this whole new life. Trying to take control of the real world fun that is finances and insurance and all kinds of things. Plus I'm dealing with alot of issues of what on earth do I really do with my life now? What's my goal? It's hard.

But things seem like they might be swinging my way at the moment. So here's to an amazing 2008!