on being nomadic

I am sitting in the living room in the house I used to live in over the summer. A lot of things have changed. The coffee table holds the TV and there is no coffee table. The entire house smells like cologne. The bathtub has grown hair and an ashtray, which was filled until D emptied it (I presume). The kitchen is a god-awful wreck. (On second thought, this last statement was probably true when I lived here, too, but I hadn't had a semester of living with G and M then.) Most importantly, none of my stuff is here, and I'm sleeping on the couch while my bedroom is empty, waiting on a sublet who won't come until after I leave. I paid L twenty bucks for letting me stay here for three days, which I consider a little over the top. She's a lot more distant than when we were here together.

I would have offered her the fucking empty bedroom.

I digress, however. It's certainly interesting being essentially a fly on the wall to their lives. I worked out living arrangements with the family for whom I babysit frequently, so I'll go from here tonight to (maybe) B's house tomorrow, then definitely B's house for the weekend, then to my parents' house, then to the F's house, then to Portland, then finally back to my own home.

My friends always act surprised when I tell them that I hate traveling. This is a fact. I hate sleeping where other people have slept--it just has a weird vibe. I hate not being able to control my own schedule, which I suspect is the major cause of my dislike of traveling and will probably ease now that I have no parents dictating a schedule for everyone. I don't like figuring out where I am and (newly) working my schedule around other people's ability to be home. I really, really hate the smell of cologne.

But it's interesting. Now that I've been single lo these seven months in a city in which I have lived a year, with the closest friend at this point a good thirty minutes away, I'm relying more on myself. I can't travel with my room, so I travel with my cellphone, laptop, and iPod instead. I fill my days with work--which I find very satisfying. I got out of spin class on the Tuesday I left school and called the Fs to confirm a job for them the next day, called Brooks to confirm a job the next and to get instructions for that day, and called L to figure out when she was gonna be home. I worked for B until I had to leave to go to the other babysitting job. The secret to filling a person-void in your life is to fill it up with other people. And, of couse, with the real and valid satisifaction of doing a job for which you get paid quite a lot.

I woke up at 6:45 this morning after going to sleep at about one. Luckily C was sick, because I was definitely drifting in and out of The Little Mermaid, Ratatouille, and whatever else we watched. She was sweet, though, and we had fun at lunch. And of course, when her mom got home, I got housing. God bless the nanny profession. I really enjoy having a real house in which to spend my time. Maybe it's not so terrible that I live in a dorm and have limited ability to decorate it.

But oh how I miss it. I love how clean we are. I love that it's MY stuff. I like having my own closet and my own key. I like reliable internet I am legally allowed to access. I love the company--even though we spat occasionally, we also spend the wee hours of the morning dancing around to *NSYNC.

I am rethinking graduate school. I shouldn't get a Ph.D unless I really want to go into a profession that needs it. I want to be in publishing. (And I am now Co-Assistant Editor-in-Chief of the paper. Yeah, that's right. Say it fives times fast.) That's a MS/MA, or a BA, easily. And Portland is calling. But it is so very far away... I am looking forward to this trip. By the time January 6th rolls around, youth hostel housing should be a snap and a half.

EDIT: I have three solid As this semester (not sure what the fourth one is yet, but it pulled up my GPA to the point where I'm pretty sure everything's gonna be okay), got the Editor-in-Chief job for next year, have money, am taking a trip to the city I love reading about, definitely have housing as of three minutes ago, and currently have the gift of alone time.

Tomorrow I will be able to shower, shave, and pick up my Netflix. As much as it terrors me to write this, because things that go up always must go down, life is going pretty well at the moment.