Leave the wine glass out and drink a toast to never.
Overall, I'm not too scared of my paper. I still can't bring myself to work on it as much as I would like to (I'm maybe four pages in, with every intent to heavily revise once I finish this first draft) and it's not nearly as coherent as I want it to be (currently the first sentence is "I have no bloody idea how to start this paper at the moment.") Still, I got three pages in a hour this morning without really having to press myself all that much, so the paper will get done. I just have to relocate myself out of my dorm to do it, apparently.
Mostly, I can't organise my thoughts well enough. This wouldn't be so bad if I didn't find my focus changing mid-paragraph. I'm limiting myself to Purgatory as much as I can and I want to keep my focus on art and pride, but my explorations into other things to explore my other ideas are turning out to be as interesting or more interesting than my original idea. Also, I really, really want to prove that Dante doesn't repent at the end of the Divine Comedy, but I don't think I can do that within a week-long writing period for a paper that's expected to be less than 20 pages. Or without writing on the whole Divine Comedy, for that matter. I keep telling myself that I can keep it as a senior essay topic, but that doesn't stop me from injecting those ideas on what I'm writing now. It doesn't help that my tutors are getting on me for going off on non-text based tangents. (I do find it funny, though, that I seem to have switched extremes.)
So yes. Writing a paper I'm pleased with is doable, but a bit irritating.
Spring break was awesome sandwiched by epic. My spare was blown out sometime in February and I forgot to replace it until the day before I left to drive back to Houston, when it was too late. Because of this, I was on edge the entire drive down and nearly freaked out when one of my tires acted like it was flat. (It wasn't, but it was low on air.) Somewhere in Dallas, I pulled over in a seedy neighborhood and had a tire almost entirely refilled. Afterwards, on the tollroad, I nearly fell out of my car when "change made" turned out to mean "feeding a fiver in a laundromat coin machine." On the drive back to Fe, I started stalling on I-40 around Tucumcari. When I first pulled over, neither I nor some guy that wanted to help could see anything wrong. I made it by Tucumcari only to stall again ten miles later. I finally pulled over in Santa Rosa, found the only auto shop open on Sundays, and waited for several hours while Mildred got a new fuel pump. The car's mostly okay now, but I still fear she's out to get me.
The actual break itself was, as I said, awesome. I got paid to take photos, worked stuff out with old friends, worked a few odd jobs, reacquainted myself with people I've known for years (seriously, why didn't I really to talk Jose much before last Friday? He's fantastic) and found out I may be eligible for dual citizenship after all. I also hung out with Adam a lot and watched terrible movies with him, Andrew, and David, which was wonderful, especially since I haven't really seen him much since high school. I forgot how much I missed him.
Currently, my life is the quietest it's been since I started college, and possibly before that. There's no real crisis happening and no drama of either the organic or the "OMG BOY" variety. Hell, I'm not even interested in dating anyone in particular at the moment. Now that I'm convinced that I'll have enough money to last until this summer (when, worst case scenario, I'll be working at the museum again) to not panic about my current unemployment, the biggest issue at hand is finishing the semester and the aforementioned Paper. This is definitely not a bad thing. At the same time, I keep forgetting that my birthday's tomorrow. So much happened (good and bad, mostly good bordering on fantastic) between turning 21 and going back to school that I automatically assumed that growing another year was one of them. It astounds me that I could grow so much in the space of one year. What can I say? 21 treated me pretty damn well.
So. Tomorrow I begin the 22nd year of my life at a time when nothing really is happening and my only choice is to sit back and be content. I take this to mean that my life will stay quiet (which would be good) or all hell is about to break loose (which will at least give me good stories to tell after the fact). Tomorrow I'll be 22, and the biggest difference will be that I'll be embracing my eternal optimism more than usual. I hate to admit it, but I'm becoming a bigger supporter of growing up.