rest stop

I don't usually ramble on here, but sometimes it's nice to get some words out. I was never one for keeping a diary (I'd always forget about it) but I'd like to get better at pinpointing where I am. Staying at home over the summer, regardless of my commute to the city 5 days a week, is a strange thing. Of course, having air conditioning and all my kitchen accessories is nice, but after being away at school for most of the year it's weird staying in my old bedroom, that was most recently decorated when I was 13. My dorm at school feels so much more like myself, but at the end of the school year it gets packed up and stored away. It's hard to say which one feels more like my actual home at this point.

Your college years feel like a lot of little rest stops strung along together. From dorm to home to dorm again, neither is really a final destination but rather just a temporary resting place, vaguely adorned with trinkets that make the stay more comfortable. I know it's only temporary, but that makes me appreciate it more. There's almost even something empowering about it that makes it so much easier to start trying new things.

This summer I've been learning guitar and ukulele. It's been a while since I really attempted anything musical but it's so satisfying to feel my fingertips grow more calloused. It's refreshing to learn something new just for the sake of it.

At the same time, staying at home is also a reminder of old things. My many dead pairs of pointe shoes hang on my wall to remind me of the years I dedicated to ballet, even though it's not a part of my life anymore. It anything, it can be a bit jarring having so many reminders of the past laying around.

But still, my room is filled with thing both old and new. New projects are scattered about and given up projects lay tossed to the side. It's impossible to keep my room neat with all of the things I have going on — or at least it just feels pointless to neaten up my room when there are so many other things I could be doing. I like to think that it's a healthy amount of clutter though. A clean room is a sign of being settled, and I'm just not quite there yet. Not here, anyway.