Curing Boredom

I never thought I'd start a blog. I've been against them from when the first of my friends bought into the idea of creating one. I always thought they were nothing more than a public journal - a cry for attention falling on public ears, but with a certain anonymity to the general reader. This anonymity leads one to tell more than one should, reveal details about him/herself that shouldn't be told. Ever. And yet they are.

Yet, here I am, typing away at this blank page, at nearly 3 AM because I just can not get to sleep. Maybe I am desperate. Maybe I'm feeling lonely, and just need someone, anyone to listen. Mostly I'm blogging because I was told I needed some way to occupy my free time other than pestering people with texts. Free time, something most people strive for and desire. I have far too much of it. Anyone interested in taking some off my hands?

But really, my lack of activities has become a serious problem. At the end of August, I moved away from my home. I left my family and friends behind. My beloved friends... the Nerd Clot of SCASD High School's North Building. How I wish we were back in those halls. Every hour of the day was caught up in school or after school activities. Homework drove us insane. Yet, we still found time for each other - the time between classes, passing in the halls, lunch periods, and even the very early mornings when we first arrived at school and gathered to clot the hallway. I've been thinking about those times a lot lately. Laughing at each other's crazy antics was always something I took for granted. Now, I want nothing more than to reclaim those days, those laughs, that love we shared.

But those days are few and far between now that we've all graduated and gone off to college. Members of the NC are scattered far and wide across the country - from far to the north down to the deep south. I moved from a relatively large house I shared with my mother and little brother to a small Honors dorm suite in Erie, PA. It's nice compared to normal dorms, believe me, but it's not home. The bed is crap, first of all, and there's a street lamp right outside the window that shines in every night if we don't close the blinds tightly. I share the bedroom with my roommate, whom I shall refer to as A. We also have access to a small "study area" (we call it the kitchen, it has a mini fridge, microwave, and cabinets) and a nice bathroom. We share these spaces with our suite mates, E and M. The other girls are nice enough, but again, they're not my beloved Clot friends.

While we were in high school, all the teachers pushed us harder and harder each year. They told us "it's to prepare you for college, when classes will be much harder and you'll have more homework." Well, I don't know if my Senior year of high school was just too hard or if my Freshman year of college is way too easy, but, thus far, I'm bored. I'm taking 17 credits (more than is required to be a full-time student), and one of those is an honors course. Even so, I don't have enough classwork to keep me busy. After I've done all my work for the day and gone to all my classes, I find myself with hours of empty time. At first, I was texting my best friend every spare moment I had because I had so much time in which to feel lonely. I didn't realize that his schedule was much busier than mine, and that my texts would pressure his already full-to-bursting days. Now, though, I've learned otherwise. It was a painful lesson to learn, but I will hold to the promise I made him not to drive him nuts. Texting constantly is not a good way to occupy my time.

So now what do I do? I got tired of the computer games I had at my disposal within the first month of being here. Macs suck for gaming, in case anyone had forgotten. I've done some reading, but nothing holds my focus. I've actually been doing more writing these days than I have in a very long time - I've made some serious progress on the novel I'm working on revising. And I found a new hobby: writing computer programs. Simple ones, but which do cool things like say "Happy Birthday" to my little brother, and "Go Away" if you're anyone else. I've explored the entire top floor of the campus library, and taken walks all around campus and even back into the woods to the Gorge. The Gorge is beautiful - a true natural wonder. It's a small canyon out in the woods behind our campus, with a creek running along the bottom and steep sides blanketed in trees, all turning colors in the fall weather. At night you can't see the bottom, but if you look up you can nearly reach the heavens. All this, and still, I'm bored.

So in an effort to restrain myself from texting, desperate for companionship, I've decided to take up blogging, the once-hated past time. My blogs will probably be long ramblings about my life, like this one, but I hope they will each have some sort of point to them.