i was very curious to see if i was going to come out of the barrage enervated or energetic. the verdict was clear: it was one of the best weekends of my life. sometimes as i sit here and ramble i lose sight of the fact that i like to do things, and that the talking is so much sweeter when there are other people involved.
i continue to list towards being a group person, too. all five of the events were group events, at least six people, and i loved it. i didn't feel the need to ramble, and i think that took the pressure off and made the weekend overall even a borderline relaxing experience.
these events don't count the first day of school, which was today. after reading until four-thirty in the morning, with a class at nine, i was filled with trepidation about the annual migration back to a vocational mentality, which often comes off unsuccessful. but i got through class without any serious trouble, and had a kickass 80-minute meeting with my advisor. i finally managed to convince him that in fact, i've basically completely solved the problem, quashing his dreams of tying in another result by proving that it couldn't possibly work in this setting. a meta-proof, i suppose.
i'm more interested to see what happens socially this year. i think i've made personality strides in the last twelve months; as i've noted elsewhere, i tend to be terrible at things the first time around, and it would stand to reason that something of the duration of the real world would require a bit more ease-in time. it seems like there are more people in the math department around that i like than at the start of any previous year, through a combination of me getting to know more people (there were precious few now-graduated students i even made the acquaintance of, so i'm not losing any), me spending more time there, and perhaps a bit of serendipity.
the thing that most surprised me about the weekend, i guess, was that i was happy for other people. i've been spewing all of this vitriol about how i resent married people for being boring, and how i think it's the right decision for them probably but sucks for the rest of us. and other envious stuff. but i didn't feel that once over the weekend; i walked into the room on sunday and remarked to someone that everyone seemed happy, and was surprised to realize that i was pleased by this.
in a sense, the weekend served to jolt me back to real life. a lot of the theorizing i've been doing simply didn't survive contact with the real world; i may think that i ought to be envious, but i instinctively like seeing people smile. i talked to a lot of people i really hadn't talked to in a while (two weeks, two months, two years), and it really appears that my imagination ran away with me. i guess this is another instance of overthinking away from the present and being a complete intuitionist in the present.
so forgive me if i'm not as rhapsodic as usual. my life isn't perfect, but i really have very little to complain about; i can't even complain that life is simple or boring or anything. as my twenty-second year comes to a close, things are pretty good.