I'm bringing back this blog as sort of a tool of my own personal growth. If anyone cares to read and follow or offer support or advice, that rocks too! Here's an example of the free writing (typing) I've been doing lately. Names aren't included (just initials) to protect my and their privacy.

I'm really trying to focus on improving my life, building my life here in MA. This means I need to figure out what I want from my life and how I want it. I have a really promising 2nd interview on Tuesday night with a job that I think will be fantastic for me. I would be able to build a music curriculum with K through 3rd students and possibly become a founding member of a growing charter school. Would this change my grad school plans? Maybe, maybe not. I'm open to the possibility of staying in this job for more than a year if I really love it and see growth.

I need more socialization in my life. I spend a lot of time with BF and I love that but I need girl time badly. B works a lot and often strange hours, and she often spends time with A (her BF) whenever she can. Friday dinners have helped and they're a great thing to look forward to each week - especially since B usually has Friday off or opens. But I need more than that. I need girl friends to chat with about things that I'm interested in - gender, feminism, psychology, music therapy, media literacy. I need to get off my ass and go to these feminist meetup group events and stop being such a chicken. I need to make connecting with my long-distance friends (like S, K, L, M) way more of a priority. I need to keep trying to make new friends here, even though that's really scary for me.

I love it here but I need to make this more of my home. Right now it's a place where I live (I love my apartment 90% of the time), spend time with some people (C and the roomies) and work. But that's not enough. I know it took a while for Ithaca to become my home and most of that was the people. I can immediately feel at home in a place if I have even a few people I care about. I know that this can be a fabulous home for me.

Blogging and journaling will, I hope, get me thinking more and give those thoughts some more substance. Right now I'm setting a goal to write weekly about whatever I want - just freewriting.There are so many new, exciting, interesting things going on in my life and in my mind right now.

Some possible topics are:

My apartment - this place has real character. We have an adorable old Armenian couple as upstairs neighbors, a tacky but sort of charming mural on our dining room wall, a few dying plants and constant home improvement projects always in the works thanks to my roommate who has found a new hobby in amateur carpentry.

My jobs - The fact that I have a nutty schedule, interact with some really interesting people every day and work with kids could probably be a blog in itself if I wanted to. These kids crack me up, tug on my heartstrings and test my patience daily. As much as I complain sometimes, I couldn't ask for better "starter jobs" after my graduation in December.

My relationship - C and I have been together now for 1 year and 7 months and our relationship is always interesting. We're dealing with this really interesting "post honeymoon" phase where we're learning a ton about each other, our communication and how we work as a couple.