New Normal

I just had a mini-epiphany. It's weird, because I've been conscious of these facts for a while, but I never linked them.

So, there's no doubt that I love New York. I'm happy to be living here, and I'm excited to start my job. But these past couple of days, I've been in a weird funk. It's actually quite a lot like the mean reds. I'm nervous and a little sad and kind of afraid of, well, I'm not totally sure what. But here's where the epiphany comes in - as my dear friend Rachel said, "realizing it a bit is the first step." And that's what I did, I at least started to understand what it was that made me feel this way.

My life revolves around people. I'm so outwardly oriented - my mood, my happiness, etc. depend a lot on my interactions with others. And it's probably not the best situation that I've been living in towns where I don't have friends for the past 2+ months since graduation. That kind of thing can take a toll on a girl emotionally. You can be in the most exciting, stimulating place on Earth, but if there's no one to experience it with, a girl like me won't be satisfied.

Okay, so how do I fix this issue? Obviously, I make friends. This leaves me in a situation I haven't been in since, well, a long time. Even coming into college, I had several of my (at the time) closest friends coming with me. And we were thrown in a dormitory with thousands of other eager coeds just waiting to find their new best friends. I wish they did that in the real world.

Actually, they apparently kind of do. I'm feeling anxious/nervous/excited/anticipatory about tomorrow, when I go to TFA, get on a bus with my new co-workers, and head to Baltimore. These first impressions are important; these people could be my potential new best friends. Or at least people I enjoy spending time with. So, my feelings could be compared to the first day of Kindergarten: Will they like me? Will I fit in? Will the things I know/do be adequate? (Hey, I was a bright little kindergardener.)

Or maybe a more accurate comparison is of me going into Camp Crimson, the freshman orientation camp at OU. Impressions to be made, friends waiting to happen, ladders of influence to climb. It was when I was texting Ross and IMing Rachel that I made the connection. I had gotten used to being the counselor in this situation (after being a Camp Champ winning counselor at Camp Crimson, mind you). And now that I'm feeling like the camper, the world is a little flipped upside down. It doesn't help that Camp is going on right now, and it's the first thing at OU I'm missing out on because of this whole graduating-and-moving-on-to-the-real-world thing. So I'm feeling a little lost, alone and vulnerable during a time that any year prior to this I would be the one leading the pack, in charge and surrounded by family.

Life is so different, and I don't think it's just because of the city I live in. Unless I was working on campus at OU, I'd be jumping into a place where things feel different and a little weird. I just have to keep reminding myself that this stuff isn't weird. It's just a "new normal."

I think the song playing on my iTunes right now is more than appropriate:
I'm a new soul.
I came to this strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout how to give and take.
But since I came here, felt the joy and the fear,
Finding myself making every possible mistake

See I'm a young soul in this very strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout what is true and fake
But why all this hate? Try to communicate.
Finding trust and love is not always easy to make.
-- Yael Naim, "New Soul"