I love my roomie!!!

I'm so happy that Laura is my room-mate. I love our talks and I love having her around as we face this new DC world together. Thanks so much for the chat tonight, babe. I really needed it.

It was easy for my Xanga to disintegrate into emotional ramblings of my mistakes. When I changed to Blogspot, I promised to write more analytical interesting entries. So here goes my attempt at an analytical discussion of what's been bothering me. Sorry in advance if this turns into an emotional bloodbath.

I have to face my new city. I've been living in a nice little world of denial and regret. It's not effective, and it's really getting on my nerves. And probably everyone around me is sick of hearing about it, too. Thanks for putting up with my whining. :) I often wonder if it's the city or it's me (haha....it's not YOU, it's ME). I mean, I disliked MIT too, so maybe I'm just unable to content with my current living situations. But I LOVED Boston. I love the vibrant, liberal, educated, and sophisticated culture. I loved being by a zillion colleges and having Greenpeace protesters stop me every few minutes. DC is stifled, suburban, conservative, Southern, older, serious, etc. The culture of this city focuses around the political houses, but it makes people extremely stifled and conformist. It's like they're afraid of being themselves. When I opened up to a guy at work with my passionate personality, he told me that I was a lot to handle. Tone it down? Can people in this city handle my personality, or Laura's for that matter? I mean, she was the one who set off the Pentagon's alarm...ask her why. Teehee. Is this the right city for me? Could I be happier here if I started to a real concerted effort instead of hiding in my apartment, behind my computer and my books?

I don't even want to integrate into this city. I don't want to be one of those housewives. People always tell me, "Well, you probably haven't met the right people yet." Sure, but HOW and WHERE can I meet these people? V struggled to name any girls my age at Orbital who weren't engaged or glued to their boys. Not everyone wants to get married and become a housewife before she's 25! If I haven't met the right people, I still think that I've met a high number of people. And very few of those have been ones that I connect with. I feel like so many of them are older and in a different life stage than I am.

In any case, I guess I need to talk action to improve things instead of whining about it. But for right now, I'm just going to wallow in this until I feel ready to move onward. It was hard for me to adjust to Phoenix too. Funny how I wanted to run back to Boston so vehemently during that summer as well. I think I drove Jia, Adam, and Mike insane with all the nights I cried to them. I'm surprised any of them are still my friends after what I put them through that summer. That's why I'm so hesitant to talk about how I feel with anyone. Don't want people to have to deal with me when I'm abjectly negative. That summer, Adam told me that I needed to ACCEPT that I was in Phoenix. He told me that, sure, I could run back to Boston or stick it out at Intel but that I needed to make a firm decision. It's easier this time around b/c I know I'm stuck in DC no matter what. But that idea of acceptance is still very relevant. What can I do in this upcoming week to start accepting my place here? What are some of the positives that DO get me excited in the morning?

Start small:
- I LOVE my kiddie Toyota Yaris, even if it doesn't have power anything
- I like being able to go to Panera and Pei Wei
- My manager and I get along very well and I get a lot of responsibility at work

Need to build on learning acceptance....how can I do that? If any of you have thoughts/advice/wise tales, I'd truly appreciate it. Thanks for being an audience to my whining.