my knoxville

just so you know my lack of entries lately is completely due to the fact that i have not stood still for more than about five seconds, which generally isn't long enough to create blog entries, especially if youre as long winded as i am.

so while my wedding images are batch processing i'll finally sit down and collect my thoughts.

the past two weekends have consisted of constant travel and movement that has left me with some awesome memories, but completely exhausted.

returning to knoxville was a surreal experience, i knew it would be. seeing the haunts and dives i frequented now some nine months later gave me a feeling i can't quite describe. i'm not sure if I just believed that these things disappeared after i did or what. ultimately i feel that my relationship with knoxville is somewhat of an unfinished life. part of me is still there wondering how things would have played out if i had stuck it out. part of me is still there going to art classes and maybe part of me is still there, never really moving forward, just replaying and reliving the memories i have there on repeat over and over again.

the difference is that im not there anymore, there are new things i don't recognize, names of streets and buildings whose names, even after such a short time, i have forgotten. sloan has a new apartment now, its in a neighborhood i never knew existed until now, it's foreign to me.

all that made me realize that knoxville isn't what it is in my mind in reality. the memory of knoxville for what it was to me stays the same, save the pieces that fall away from my memory with time. the reality is it is a real city, with changing people, places and things. my life is different now, and in various ways so is everyone else's. it doesn't mean we are now strangers to one another, it just means we are living beings: we pack up, we move on, we deal with things as they come and that usually means making some changes. theres nothing wrong with it.

most people would probably think that i hate knoxville because of my experiences there. they think that now since im enjoying uga i am automatically a hardcore bulldog. what they dont know is all the good things that happened while i was there, all the good experiences i had. i wont even go into detail here because perhaps some of them are so small and "unimportant" no one else could possibly understand. perhaps more than anything, knoxville wasnt about what i did there, it was about what i became from being there.

thats my knoxville. the naive scared girl in a city she didnt know trying to figure herself and everyone else in the world out. running around the Old City like Mary Tyler Moore singing "you're gonna make it after all". attending intaligo classes and jogging by the river. everyone has their knoxville. that place and time that lives on within them, an endless continuum that despite its flaws lies perfect in their mind because it is remembered not for what happened, but what it was.

twenty-one

this time last year:

"twenty is a scary number, but i think im so caught up in everything else im feeling right now i really cant be upset about anything else. the strong realization that im growing up with surely hit me eventually. twenty is scary but twenty one is fun. i hope that twenty one treats me a little better. but until then all I can hope for another wonderful year on Gods green earth."

what a difference a year makes, and i can't even believe its been a year. my life this past year has been such a blur of things not worth remembering, and things i'd rather forget that i cant believe its already come and gone.

so here i sit at the final cornerstone of youth: twenty-one.

i think i used to be far more sentimental about these things, then i realized they happen whether you dwell on them or not, youre far better off just living your life instead of just thinking about the days that have passed.

i feel inclined to do something crazy sometime soon, this is a most important occasion, saying goodbye to all constraints of adolescence...if only i had something crazy to do haha.

crazy or not, today is my day. tonight i'll sit down for dinner with some really awesome people, perhaps not reveling so much in another passing year, or a mile marker of age, but how far i've come, how far we've come in a year's time.

woohooo...nobody knows it

fall is coming, i can feel it. it might be a colder winter than normal if it's already cooling off. my birthday is soon, 21 is old. i love special occasions like this, particularly birthdays just because it's the one day of the year where you get to be completely selfish. however, as per usual something that should be fun has turned into something else for me to be utterly stressed over. i wish i could just turn my mind off like everyone else seems to be able to do. i wish i had my priorities in line. it's obvious i don't. that and my birthday is falling at like the worst time ever.

ive got to finish this drawing soon, but dear God, a 36x48 picture of myself? even i feel thats a bit narcissistic, and I'm the one presently typing out my woes and minute thoughts and feelings to an online audience that probably doesn't care. i just need to do it, get it done. that and that stupid geography lab that doesn't make sense to me. i need to get organized as per usual.

where do people find motivation to do all these things? to keep trying when its not working, to go through the every day, to adapt? do you all just take drugs or something? i'm not really into drugs and such, i'll have to find my own way. but how do you pick yourself up of the ground, and stop thinking about it and start doing it?