I've never understood why some people think I'm a people person. I mean, I love people of course. Humans are ugly and beautiful at the same time, and that grayness, that neither here nor there thing about our inherent qualities is a wonderful thing. I love seeing people at airports, individuals fidgeting when they think no one is looking, groups chatting. I love people just fine. But I don't like people. I have a problem with herd mentality, particularly in conversation. I have a problem with small talk and the pleasantries that come with meeting people for the first time, particularly people with whom you will only have a periphery relationship at best (i.e. meeting one's husband's co-workers or one's sister's best friend's boyfriend). I'm friendly and pleasant, but I can only smile for so long.

What I am good at, however, is making the most uncomfortable person in the room feel comfortable. I am nothing if not empathetic. I'm very good at reading people, particularly when they aren't saying much, mostly when they say nothing at all. I like making quiet people feel like they can talk, and I like making shy people feel comfortable. I'm not quite sure why. I suppose this is the "people" part of my person. Really though, I enjoy spending time alone, or in small groups. Quality over quantity. This, I suspect, is why I tend to turn down or avoid outings with large groups of people I don't know, and why I'm notoriously bad at planning and/or hosting parties and events. My empathetic nature, coupled with my dislike of "crowds" makes me THE most nuerotic party planner/host you'll probably ever meet. But get me in a corner, just me and you, and I'll make you smile, and I'll make you feel like you're the only person I wanted to talk to. This is also why tutoring on a one on one basis is a piece of cake for me, and why teaching a large group of 22 students, on the other hand, was almost enough to drive me nuts.

I'm realizing all of this as I look for jobs, and as I think about developing a social life now that a portion of my education has ended. I've been invited to visit a few old college friends in other states and cities (I'm most certainly going to be in New York in the near future), and I'm wondering how well I'll do. Are people going to refer to me as that weirdo/mean girl in the corner, or am I going to end up being like some girl from Coyote Ugly dancing on a bar top (sounds slightly fun actually...). Ah well, if all else fails, I can rely on my wit and sarcasm to shield me.

So umm, what kind of job do you think would suit me best?

The good thing about not having anything more important on my plate than my two part time jobs is that I have a lot of time to do things I haven't done in months, like catch up on my cheesy, ridiculously unimportant pop culture news (apparently Britney made a really naughty song), read my magazines (OMG Travel and Leisure magazine needs to stop teasing me with pictures of Greece) and of course contact with the human world.

It's the contact part that's kind of throwing me for a loop though. I mean, xanga crushes are one thing (yeah...I'm finally admitting to having a few of those), but there are real people out there, people who might want the pleasure of my company. Since this is the longest I've been single in 5 years (another story for another day) I'm finding myself cringing at the thought of dating. I don't think I've ever dated. Definitely didn't in high school, not in any serious way, and when I got to college it was series of non-dates (if you know what I mean. Ok, well not a series. That term makes me sound way more...fun-loving than I probably am) followed by the most serious relationship of my life to date. In essence, I am a dating noob. And to be honest I'm not entirely certain I'm inclined to date right now. Apparently there is a lot of merit to being single.

Not that I don't have offers. It's odd how many subtle and not so subtle offers I'm getting actually. I don't quite know how to respond. Still, all I'm craving is freedom (which, sadly makes it sound like I was caged in for a long time. I wasn't). I'm craving a trip to somewhere, someplace beautiful and different and void of all the people in the world that I know. Around this time last year I was coming back from Costa Rica by myself. It was wonderful. And for some reason I can't help but think about my trip in 2005. Being in London has changed my life I think. It has opened doors and windows in my head. I can go anywhere. I can, in essence, be anything.

And in this moment of transition, while I'm packing my things into boxes and waiting to hear back from schools, and looking for jobs in New Jersey (where I will be relocating to in a week until early summer when I will have, hopefully, figured out my life), those memories of freedom are priceless.

I haven't done much lately aside from work (library and now ESL tutoring) and reading, and reading about reading. I did a mix of that today, but I'm tired of it. Truth be told I'm a bit nostalgic. Sad even. So much of who I am has a lot to do with what I've done, the people I've met and been with. I've been writing here for a while. So much of myself, old and new is on xanga. Even that sort of saddens me, that there is an old me. It's a bit hard to explain, and I'm not much in the way of explaining tonight.

I'm not always so introspective, I swear. Or am I?

The truth is I'm not even supposed to think about xanga until after I take my Masters exam on January 17th. In the mean time I'm fluctuating between supreme panic and the ultimate swagger. Like..leaned to the side swagger. My older half-sister (yes, I have an older half-sister) mentioned that we may be more alike than we thought, seeing as how she is a procrastinating perfectionist as well. Yes, I procrastinate, and yes, I have a slight tendency to want things to be immaculate. That's problematic for so many reasons, the most important being that perfection takes time. And I? Well I give myself very little. The results are always...interesting.

But this is bittersweet. If you know me, if you have read this space for my ranting and raving for all four years I've been here you will realize that is yet another end (assuming I pass this derned test the first time). My undergraduate years ended and I wrote about it, my graduate years started and I wrote about it, and then promptly switched majors while there, and then wrote about that. And now this period of graduate school is soon coming to an end. My goodness. This time last year I was writing about going to Costa Rica on my own...and then heading to Costa Rica about a week later. No such luck this year. But oh, the people I met during 2008. And oh, the people I'll meet this year And my, the time I'll spend writing about it here.

But alas...I shouldn't even be thinking about xanga...

A part of writing is the unnamed "feeling". One can feel like writing but not have the words. One can have the meaning, the thing, the impetus. But not the words. I feel, I have that thing, but not the words. Not really.

Still, it's the last day of the year. And I'm wearing large green earrings and a pair of green sneakers circa 2006. And I'm thinking about writing about the mingled fear and excitement I feel about this new year. Unaccountably nothing will really be different about tomorrow, nothing that should inspire such introspection, such frenzy. But it's the last day of the year, which means tomorrow will be the first day of the first month of a new year. And the newness of that is intoxicating. We are drunk with it, the newness.

So, in my intoxication I am writing, and smiling. Sitting on my sister's bed writing on a borrowed laptop (hers) thinking and not thinking about how everything reminds us of something else, someone, a different time. Like a favorite song from a favorite time. Old things will remain, in memory at the very least, and new things will come and soon they'll come to represent something, someone. And there will be new songs. It's the newness we love, that we can feel in our bones. It is in the very air on this, the last day of the year.

But really, nothing will be different about tomorrow. Nothing at all. Which is precisely why tomorrow will be magnificent.

My best wishes to you all  Enjoy the new, remember the old.

I've been having a pretty hard time getting my life together. That becomes obvious when I can't even put any coherent thoughts together, not enough to write down. Everything is moving and making loud noises. I'm distracted.

It's the time of year. There's a general frenzy/business that happens at the advent of a new year. It's a different sort of thing than a regular holiday. It's the feeling that something relatively large and new is approaching, combined with the realization that everyone is aware of it. New year's resolutions are everywhere. People everywhere are re-evaluating themselves, thinking about the past and the future. At the same time. The world (or the country at the very least) is in chaos. That's how I feel anyway. That's the way my brain feels. Over load. Too much to do, to think about. When that happens I shut down, run around in circles (sometimes literally). There seems to be no way to do what needs to be done, to think about what needs to be thought about. I make things complicated. Think things complicated. Except it really all just means I need to do one thing at a time.Think about one thing at a time. Did any of this make sense? I thought not. Somehow though, doing this helps; writing this makes me feel like there's one less thing to do, some more room in the brain. When I write I let go, put some weight down as it were. Now the other things have less to bump against, less things to rattle around. One thing at a time.

Simple as pie.

Cheers to a new year!

It is Winter's Solstice today. It is also my sister's (and my very first college roommate's) birthday. It is a very cold day, but it was beautiful and quiet and fairly uneventful.

I looked up and realized that I have been thinking and talking (mostly to myself) but not writing, definitely not here. Which is a shame because my life has finally reached a certain amount of calm. My semester is over (I have no more coursework until next fall if/when I go back for my PhD). I only have work at the library (and a new tutoring position working with ESL students come January) on my plate. And reading and reading from the list of 61 books/plays/poems for my comprehensive exam on January 17th, the one that determines whether or not I get my Masters. Fairly important. But things are calm, minus the sometimes chaotic play by play in my brain. I'm thinking about the life ahead of me. About how different this year ended up...so different than where it started, and about how that's precisely how years are supposed to operate.

And I'm thinking of Christmas in four days, and looking forward to it, wishing it would snow here in the Delaware Valley. I'm thinking of Christmases past, and Christmases to come, and I wonder about being visited by the same ghosts that visited Scrooge.

My ghost of Christmas past takes me back to the early '90s, to Tobago and my grandmother's house. I am young, at that age where time blends and the only reason I know how old I am is because someone has told me and I memorize it, like my name. My grandmother's house is large, and not just because I am small. There are four bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen  and an open air veranda (or gallery as we called it) upstairs. The downstairs there are even more rooms and kitchens, converted into little apartments that my grandmother rents out. From the gallery upstairs I can see the street, the neighbor (my great-aunt)'s house, and I can see the sky full of slow moving kites made by little brown boys from kite-paper and Elmer's glue and ribbons. I watched my brother make one one day, watched later as he flew it from a roll of twine. I am young, and to me kites mean Christmas. There is a buzz in the air. I am young, but I can feel it. I can almost hear it, an imperceptible humming, even when the air is still. The winds are cool for the Caribbean, maybe mid 60's. It is slightly chilly to me, but it carries with it Christmas. Inside there is baking; the flour is on the counters and the metal pots are full of fresh boiling guava and mango for tart fillings. The grated coconut sits in a large plastic pink bowl, and over the bowl sits my grandmother humming. She is humming and grating and the "zip zip zip" of the coconut on the grater and the "mmhhmm" of her humming is all the music I hear all day, and the smell of the rolly pollies baking is all the perfume I smell all day. It is the day before Christmas.

On Christmas day the buzz is louder. There is talking, yes, and cooking too, but the buzz does not come from them. It exists on its own, electric and stirring. In the kitchen and dining room my aunts and uncle and siblings and cousins are cooking, eating, shuffling from space to space. It is a comfortable din, a filling of the place with unfamiliar but welcome noise. Soon they would all go back to their own houses, and only my siblings and I and my humming grandmother would remain. Soon even the buzz would go. But for now I basked in this Christmas.  I peek through a window from the bedroom, covered now in heavy red curtains, the Christmas curtains my grandmother and my aunts put up not too long ago. I peek at the sky, and at the kites, and in the distance I hear "Do you hear what I hear?" leaking from someone's radio into the streets, mingling with the buzz and sending the kites to dancing. I could hear, and feel and see Christmas.

In the wake of that Christmas, I beg you to enjoy a view of my humble abode, far away from the Caribbean.

The lights out on my very own veranda (kind of...)

Knock if you'd like to enter...

Well come on in!

I hope you like my tree. It's been an apartment tradition of mine ever
since I moved into my own place.

I found this guy and gave him the position every ornament wants.

But the others are pretty pleased too...

Won't you stay for dinner?

I'll see you out. Please, come again!

Happy Holidays to you all!

Much love and Blessings
 ~Tricia~

*whimper*

Was up until 4am plunking away at what will eventually be a 20 paged paper. One of the last papers of the last semester (wish I could say it was the last, but alas I have one more 5 pager to go after this. The procrastination was sooo bad this time). I cannot describe the immensely joyous person I will be come Tuesday morning, a morning devoid of responsibility..well...outside of squaring away the grades of freshmen. I should be writing or reading or anything else but this right now, but I am tired of reading and writing about Charlotte Bronte's tendency to love the magical and mystical aspects of life. Even though I love the magical and mystical myself.

I wish there was some magical mystical way to make these papers complete themselves...

I swear I'm still alive. I'm alive, and feeling great most of the time. I just don't particularly have the time or the inclination to pontificate, and so I shall be perfunctory tonight. I'm alive.

I'll share some Christmas decorations soon. I'm looking forward to Christmas very much. Odd really. I blame vanedave

I sort of feel like there's a laundry list of things I can complain about.

Oh....wait. I'm sorry. I'm being rude. Umm.. I had a lovely Thanksgiving (I tend to forget how much I love spending time with my family..and having my laundry done), and I truly hope you all did too, that you realize how much you have to be thankful for. Ok...back to me.

I could potentially be whining about various things at this stage in the game (2 weeks away from the end of the semester, PhD applications due, lack of fund for Christmas shopping), but I walked into my leasing office today to pay my rent, and just as I was grumbling about forking over hundreds of dollars I heard Christmas music playing in the background. And I thought about vanedave's admitting that the holidays make him sappy; I thought about happy Christmas-ey thoughts and I decided that I will do whatever is in my power to be the cheeriest busy person anyone ever saw. I actually am excited about the holidays (bad economy not withstanding). I'm planning on decorating my little apartment and decorating at home in NJ this weekend, and I might even go out and try to find a Christmas CD. Or...find some illegal file sharing situation...either way Christmas music will be had.

We really do have a choice to smile or to frown, and I chose smiles. Less facial muscles being used that way.