9/6/12, journal

Trying to take a nap, and all these memories of New York are flooding my head... It's all so far in the past. I feel like a different person. Well, I am different. It just makes me feel sad, knowing I don't talk to those people anymore and I don't do some of those things anymore. I'm not there anymore. I don't feel free like I did back then. Sure, I was trapped in loneliness, but physically I knew I could do anything. The city has everything. And I think of things I would have done differently. Hung out with more people, partied more, gotten involved in the community, went for my dreams. I guess I could still go back someday and do that. But I couldn't see Stefan living in the city. Chicago was bad enough. Even though I was super unhappy freshman year, I had fun. Everything was new and exciting. Jr year I got to know the city a little more, though still not as much as I'd like. I paid more attention to the people... Living in New York is the (my?) ultimate adventure. It reinvented life for me. It changed me. But now I've reverted back to plain, suburban self. I'm not doing anything, because I feel I have nothing to prove. Oh, but there's still everything! I can live that way here and now, but for some reason I haven't been trying to. I've gone back to how I used to think. Or maybe this is an entirely new train of thought, way of being. I just need to care again. Care about my life, care about what happens, what I experience. Really experience each moment. Write things down, capture them on film. Those things used to make me. And now I barely have them. I feel like I've lost a part of myself. What's sad is that I could get it all back! If I just stop being lazy and stubborn. If I try to open my mind again, be creative in the ways I know how. Look at life through new eyes. Maybe that's what it was, everything was just so new. I took the city head on. Now I just sit by and idly watch. Watch as life happens without me.

i'm mainly putting this here as a reminder to myself.