We meet again

So now it's 2010. LATE in 2010. It's almost December, and it might as well be, as the school year is winding down. Reading through this, I find that I left off last New Year's, commenting on how demented and twisted 2009 was. I can't say that 2010 was much better.

I'm finding that the perceived quality of a given year in the life of Paul is largely based on the fun I had during its summer. Well this year, I had no summer. I spent the summer driving around in Rednecktopia, and while it's a 'topia for the Rednecks, it's the doldrums for me. Having just arrived back at school from Thanksgiving Break, I am realizing that my head is the clearest it's been in eight months, because I had no chance over the summer to clear my head. The Monday after the weekend in May when I moved out of school was the day I started my job working for the state department of transportation (DOT), and the weekend after the day I quit was the weekend I moved back down to college in August. My job title may as well have been "idiot," though my brain makes me capable of so much more.

With 2010 having largely passed, I find it safe to make concluding statements reflecting back on this year, and with that, I conclude that it was the most anxious year of my life. This year was nothing but a ride on a bullet train barreling through nature, arriving at the station wondering what the fuck the scenery looked like.

The anxiety came from five major sources, the first of which was the measly fact that I never fucking got a break to collect my thoughts until just this past week. I had literally no summer. I didn't even get a family vacation.

The extent of my travels was to New York City, the city of chaos itself, and the second reason for my labeling 2010 the year of anxiety. Fuck the nickname, "The City that Never Sleeps." All that means is that no one ever gets a break, and if no one gets a break, no one is ever happy, except maybe the people who make shitloads of money from always having to work so hard.

Third was finding my summer job so shitty that I actually doubted my major. During the process of getting my thoughts together this past week, I have come around and concluded that I was wrong to doubt it, but how was I supposed to react if I hated just about every living thing around me during the whole summer? I just learned that one thing's for sure. I don't care what my dad says; I am NOT getting a job in rural America. I am working in the city or the suburbs, and that's final. All my coworkers talked about were the terrible songs on the radio, their daughters' softball games, and pooping. One of the guys could have started a twitter account just to post updates on his bowel movements.

Fourth was getting the new apartment when I came back to college. I wasn't ready for that commitment yet, but you have to start sometime. It really wasn't that big of a deal compared to my fifth reason, but these last two reasons combined simultaneously to create a formidable duo.

The fifth, last and largest reason why my life has been so chaotic lately is my decision to launch myself into a relationship with someone I wasn't familiar with yet. Please note how I wrote the words "MY DECISION." It WAS my decision, though you're right, she was way more into me in the beginning. It was much too great of an opportunity to pass up, so I jumped on it. Unfortunately, the drastic change was so great that it took me over a month to get used to the idea of being in a relationship with her.

I told my mom about this inability to handle drastic changes, and she compared it to when she first moved in with who would become my father. She had a new place to live, a new partner, and a new job, all within the same month, and this made life hard to handle. It makes me wonder how hyperactive people like my girlfriend live their lives. Maybe they aren't hyperactive; they just didn't ever learn what it was like to chill out and become comfortable for a while. Either they didn't learn to, or they are less capable of chilling out and fully grasping where they are in their lives. I can't live WITHOUT that comfort; the lack of such comfort is what makes me anxious. And it's why I've BEEN anxious for the length of this semester.

My girlfriend and I are both dysfunctional in our own little individual ways, which I guess makes us compatible. I've noticed a fundamental difference between the ways in which we deal with ourselves, though. When I don't know how to deal with a social situation, I shut the fuck up, be respectful, and spend time thinking about what I can do to pitch into the conversation. She just blurts out whatever comes to mind, and half the time, it's discomforting or offensive. It makes me feel like she's inconsiderate.

That's the problem. I can't tell if she's even trying to be nice. She tells my brother he smells like tiger piss, declares she hates Dairy Queen while standing at the front counter of a Dairy Queen, and tells me I'm all sorts of things I'm not going to bring up. I'm going to talk to her about it right now.

There's been way too much going on that I don't like. I feel like my life is out of control. I'm starting to get it back though, and I'm going to make sure that nothing stops me from doing so. 2010, shut the fuck up. At least no one I know died this year.