And the goal of 'daily' falls down...

...but this week has been exhausting.

Good exhausting? Yes. I've met so many cool people and I'm looking very much forward to spending four years with them, getting to know them better. I'm also oddly excited for class starting -- I'm aware that THAT won't last. We've had tons of fun events.

Bad exhausting? Yes. I'd forgotten how tiring making friends is. The maelstrom of first impressions and worries about what kind of impressions you're making is just so draining. Add that to lots of bar nights and early mornings, and...well. Let's just say that I'm glad that there's about 24 hours between our last event this evening and our first event tomorrow night. I NEED those 24 hours to, like, organize my room. And get ready for classes on Tuesday. And sleep.

Over the course of this week I've been thinking a lot about friends and friendship -- not surprisingly. I think it appears that it's easy for me to make friends, and it is in some ways. I'm friendly and open-minded and enjoy people's company. But I'm also starting to wonder if there's an upper limit on how many really good, really close friends I can make in a lifetime. If you asked me to think of my BEST friends, I'd probably still think first of my high school friends. I have very close friends from undergrad as well, but not as many. (In some ways I think undergrad as a whole was more about my relationship with Answerboy.) Some part of my exhaustion this week lies in contemplating the energy it takes to push through and commit myself to friendships with these new people in the same way all over again. As a class, right now, we are all extra-polite, extra-chatty, extra-friendly, hyper-inclusive versions of ourselves. We know each other in two-dimensional terms -- "Oh, that's the guy from Alberta"; "That's the girl who got really drunk last night"; "That's the girl with the boyfriend in the second-year class" (my label). Everyone is in that nervous, adrenaline-charged state of having to be "on" all the damn time. It's hard for me to see how we are going to get to the state of comfort and understanding known as "friendship". And again, sometimes I wonder if I have the energy to make the trip.

But -- I'm pretty sure that's just the exhaustion talking. It makes me defeatist and selfish sometimes. So that means it's good that I'm getting some sleep tonight.

~isolde