composure

It's funny how awkward and uncomfortable it feels to return to a big room full of my colleagues. Actually it's not an issue with my colleagues but rather one of being in a professional setting, sober, and attempting to be articulate after three months of using the word fuck as either a verb or a noun in every other sentence I spoke, sentences that were never more than 6 words long.

Today was TA orientation day. All the incoming grad students and returning students introduced themselves and listened to the talk about how our funding works and our responsibilities to the program. For whatever reason, I was just not mentally ready to be back in that building, in that meeting room, talking to all those folks, especially all at once. A little overwhelming. I've seen my close friends from school over the last two weeks but having 50 of us in one room staring at one another after being away for three months was just heart rate elevating in a not good way.

I need another month off. Seriously. There are seven boxes of my shit from Simon's house laying around waiting for me to stub my toe on them. I've got some new school year resolutions though. I am going to focus on not losing it. That probably entails scheduling myself time to exercise, watch Heroes, The Office and My Name is Earl, and even go out to see people. These things did not happen in year 1 of this program. I watched almost no TV except for the news during dinner and very rarely went out. Relaxing it was not. I'm determined to make this not the worst 4 years of my life. I want to have a life this year, just a little bit.