Oh, Poor Atlas

I think, I think this is what it feels like to bite off more than you can chew. I do believe this is what being overwhelmed feels like. Hear me out.

It's become a night and day kind of deal that I'm emailing my officers, texting Student Foundation members, finishing papers, studying, endless studying, and searching for the ever evasive down time. I literally went to go pick up my roommate 20 minutes early the other day just so I could sit in my car by myself and do nothing. I know, it's weird, but this is what it's come to.

Classes are laughably impossible, extra-curriculars are starting to drown me and I drink so much coffee, my hands are always shaking. My advisor/professor/savior is constantly asking me if I'm okay because I seem a little stressed and I either manically laugh or just brush it off, depending on whether or not I'm looking at my to-do list.

Alright, whining aside, I think I really like this. Sure, I've tried to get out of every major events I've been asked to attend, I had to buy a blazer and had my first day off in weeks yesterday, but there's still that thrill of perpetually moving, being the one in charge and learning learning learning every day. I'm excited for the changes that are directly because of me, for the events in which I will meet the cream of the crop. I'm friends with some of the most important people on campus, am one of those people not to toot my own horn.

Of course, it figures that my best year will be my last at Texas State, but I don't care. Besides having little time to think about graduation and life post-undergrad, I just can't focus on the future right now, as ostrich-sticking-head-in-the-sand as that is. The reality is that my present is too fun, too exhausting and too demanding to worry about what will come in May. So as I finish up a Spanish composition and field questions about who is bringing the sodas to the Comm Club meeting tomorrow and organizing a study session for Rhetorical Criticism, I revel in what my days are filled with and just enjoy the ride.

Till the Sun Turns Black

So I'm sitting in a coffee shop, waiting for some girls from my rhetorical criticism class for a study group. Thus, a blog should be produced. Well, at least before a study guide is.

I suppose the reason I haven't been posting much is that I haven't had a lot to say. There's lots going on (last week alone I met 5 famous people. Crazy.) I've been insanely over the moon about the weather change, it's intense. I never thought I'd miss a season as much as I miss winter, but there you go.

Something interesting that's happening with the weather change is how much I miss Australia. I miss it every single day, often more than once, and I want to go back so badly. I had said I didn't want to go back to Sydney, but maybe Melbourne and Adelaide, but I miss my home in Sydney. I miss walking down to the cafe for pain au chocolate and a latte. I miss taking the bus. I miss my crappy, little hostel with its warm bed and odd inhabitants. Nothing like an overcast sky and cool breeze to make me miss winter in Sydney.

School is school, I can't stop telling people it's crazy, which is the truth. I've never had to push myself this hard and have never wanted to do less work. Senioritis is real, except this time it's the opposite; I do not want to leave school, so hard work and doing well only means the minutes until graduate come all the more quickly. Therefore, I avoid all. So far...it's not working.

Alright, the girls are here, so I should go. But, the bottom line I'm selling is that I'm crazy, but I'm really happy. So there's that.

Make a Choice

In my creative writing class, the number one critique I have for every single story is "Make a decision." About perspective, about punctuation, about tense, it's all about making the decision and going with it, regardless of the consequences. Sure your story might still suck, but at least you had the back bone to defend it until the last period.

Well, ever the metaphorical conversationalist, I decided to bring this up when having an intense heart-to-heart with my roommate this evening. She's been, well, she's deep in a situation and can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, so instead she stands still, awaiting for the switch to be flipped for her. You can understand how this could frustrate her loved ones, especially one who is as assertive as myself. The conversation ended pleasantly, but I like to think she couldn't ignore the steel behind my sweet-lined analogies.

More often than not, it's the thing we don't want to hear: You have to make a choice, you can't just stand there waiting for the sky to fall. You can move forward, you can move back, just as long as you do something. Perhaps this is my naivete speaking, but when faced with a school year that is wholeheartedly devoted to some of the most important decisions I've made thus far, it can seem so much bigger than that. It's our lives. If we can't make up our minds, how can we expect anyone else to do it?

Nobody likes making decisions. It's so very easy to choose wrong, even in the odds are ever in your favor. Between yes or no, the gray area is boundless. But this is the life we have. We chose freedom, we chose free will. That should have been the red flag that decision-making would always be a burden over a glory.

I sit here, ignoring my Spanish notes, facing my life and wanting nothing more than to bury my head in the sand, pull the covers over my head. It's sounds more perfect than you could imagine. How could I ever choose between careers or paths when crawling back to my comfy college classes is so much more choice? However, I fancy myself a realist and I know without a shadow of a doubt that when May comes, I will have done the unthinkable and made my decision. Because I can't not. I'm too stubborn to fall to ground in defeat and have spent way too much time poring over flashcards and obscure theorists to not have the life I want.

So my friends flounder in their loves lives, their school lives, even their social lives and put off decisions with GRE tests and law school applications. Perhaps the act of not choosing is nothing more than the greatest decision of all, but the bottom line I constantly draw is that the decision will get made regardless of my actions; I would just rather have a say in what happens to me than not. That, above all else, is what makes me memorize the pasado subjuntivo and move on with my life.

All in.

I've somewhat been dreading this post.

It's been a tumultuous few weeks of school and life in general, after a summer of sheer chaos so I guess you can say whatever few moments of down time I've had have been spent lounging on the couch, gloriously and guiltlessly enjoying my new cable.

However, when I came home from school, I decided to bite the bullet, despite having no free time, a to do list that is comically long and an embarrassing amount of laundry to do.

Mostly, because I want to rant about my classes. It's fun!

Interdisciplinary: Kerouac--This one is super require by my major, which is why every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I spend an hour listening to the MOST pretentious, self-important lovers of Kerouac spout their ideals about the Beat generation in very loud voices. Ugh. Well, I do like the professor and I think he likes me, too because I am the only person willing to argue a point (shock, I know) and can actually back it up.

Creating Writing: WAIT, WHAT!?! I HAVE TO WRITE FICTION!??!? I was genuinely floored. And what sucks more is that there was always this part of me that kept being a writer/novelist as a possibility, in my back pocket. And then, whammy, turns out I am not creative. At all. We have 3 creative stories due this semester and I can't do anything about it. Crap.

Spanish IV: this is a joke, right? I don't know Spanish whatsoever. This will be my ending. Circlin' the drain, people.

Intercultural Communication: We had a geography quiz of America and Canada yesterday. That sums up the class pretty well. Luckily, my professor is the Comm Club advisor and he adores me, so we're good.

Rhetorical Criticism: I know nothing about this subject at all. There's no foundation, not even for the criticism part it turns out. It's philosophical and complex and multi-layered and also necessary for graduation. I had the professor for public speaking last semester, but this will not help me. My palms are starting to sweat just thinking about the upcoming work and my shocking ability not to find the easy way out at all.

Silly-ness aside, there is a deep-set panic within me about this semester; it's the slow ride to the end that turns out to be a heck of a lot harder and scarier than I could have thought. Graduation looms and not a day goes by that I don't have a minor panic attack about it. Fortunately, classes and various demands of clubs and work push the nightmarish thoughts out of my pretty little head.

Silly-ness back, I'm having fun! I've made some cool friends, there's huge interest in the club that I'm president of, and my professors are now my friends. There's tons of work to be done and I am eager to do it (so far). Speaking of which, I have emails to send, a family tree to make for Intercultural and On the Road to read. Oy. But baby, I'm back!

Hit the brakes.

Yesterday, we went to our favorite local cafe down the street, but were too tired to walk so we took the bus. I pressed the button to alert the driver that we needed to get off and instead of stopping at the next stop, he slammed on his brakes and we all almost fell forward. It was intense.

So yeah, that cold trickle of fear that soon I have to leave this city, and face the very real possibility that I might never come back, has started to be at the forefront of my mind. Tonight, on the bus ride home from the aquarium, I kept glancing into all these bars, restaurants, even mini marts that I have yet to explore. Granted, most of them probably aren't even worth more than that glance, but I keep fearing for the lost possibilities of what they could be worth. Even going down Glebe Point Rd, the street the hostel is on, there are a hundred reminders of how this city can be given proper justice in a mere month.

That's another thing that gets me about traveling, is the almost overwhelming amount of insignificance I feel whenever I venture into a new city. From a street to a nation, I feel as if I still don't know Australia and that I could spend a lifetime here and still be in the dark of so much that it holds. Then I expand that thought to everywhere else I would kill to visit; Paris, Rome, Prague, Athens, Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, Portland, Amsterdam, Moscow, Chicago, New Orleans, Bali, Capetown, and about a thousand other places I couldn't even begin to imagine. Traveling always makes me itch for more travel, but it also floods me with how very small I am compared to this world and it makes me want nothing more than to stay at home, happy in my small towns.

However, this city is now a part of me, because I have been a part of it. I have spent these last few weeks attempting to memorize everything I see to keep with me forever, because Sydney is too beautiful to forget. My hands tremble at the mere thought of never returning to Australia, but as many of my classmates say, there are too many other places to go to think about returning here. I have come to know the very depth of Australiana, and truly wish I could come back with everyone I know and love to show them how exceptional this place is.

So as people grumble, tensions and stress running high, I smile on, loving this city, this country. Missing home is evident in waiting awkwardly for the bathroom, wishing more than anything for filtered water, and a thousand other things that could hardly be called luxuries. For now, I cringe at the thought of leaving Sydney and snap one more photo, because the thousand I have just aren't enough.

This is Sydney winter.

Today is the winter solstice for Australia, well the southern hemisphere, but I feel it here. The rain has finally, finally stopped, much to the joy of most of NSW, since most of the state is flooded from it. This country is not equipped to handle so much rain.

However, it is still bitterly cold any time you step out of the sun. The sun is still harshly warm, since the lack of ozone here. The mountains were practically unbearable in its chill, although the rainforest was quite warm despite the lack of sun.

The mountains. They were...very close to being the death of me (cliffs are real, guys) but also perhaps the most uniquely beautiful thing I have ever seen. They are actually blue, due to the haze given off the eucalyptus trees covering the mountains. All the guides said how desperately they needed a bush fire, and that much was evident in the bush, which was crowded over with green, green life.

The three sisters, the three distinct rock formations that aboriginals call sisters, because myth says that their father, during a war, turned them into rocks to protect them, but died in war so they stayed as rocks forever. It was so, so strange a formation that I began to really believe that there were trapped sisters within the rocks.

I love Sydney. I love Oxford street, the book store-coffee shop-art gallery-shopping district of Sydney. I love the people here, and the fact that they love me for my Americanisms.

However, there is tension rippling throughout the group, obviously. We have been on a jam-packed schedule which leaves us little to no free time to get away from each other. Thus, there has been annoyance at the silliest things and cliques forming and breaking within 2 days. But, then we all remember we're in Australia and let it go. That is perhaps the best part of this place. It makes you remember how truly delightful it is.

I am ready to be home in 2 weeks though. I miss the most random things, like looking after kids and my bathroom. Hanging out with one of the girls from the hostel who was American made me remember how freaking lucky we all are to be American and from our homes. So I will count myself beyond lucky to be here, then be too eager the entire 24 hour travel time to see Texas.

Today.

Looking back, today was rather unremarkable. We just went to Featherdale Wildlife Preserve.

It was also the best day.

We fed kangaroos and wallabies (although I could not tell you the difference to save my life). We petted koalas. We laughed at a Tasmanian devil who would not stop running in circles. We took the train for a long time and without any tunnels. The weather was flawless, only raining for a few minutes in the morning.

We ate at the train station, unabashedly stuffing our faces with McDonald's (yeah, I know) because it was the first thing we'd eat that day. One of the girls kept drifting off on the train, only to jerk herself awake moments later. One of the boys was so hungover from last night (it was the State of Origin rugby finals) that he slept the whole way to Featherdale. I felt extremely happy to see the skyline on the way home.

I literally want a kangaroo more than anything in the whole world now. They are so cute and soft and quirky with their facial expressions and creepy human-like hands. They are so Australia that it felt so real that we're not America, if that makes any sense. It was too short a time to spend with them, feeding and petting them, helping the babies get to the food, too.

Anyway. I love Australia. I don't think I can say it enough. It is the most amazing place and everyone needs to see it.