An Over-do Update

I'm back, and as Radiohead would say: fitter, happier, more productive, etc. The mold catastrophe-cum-mental meltdown actually turned out to be one of the best things to happen to me. Well, here's what actually happened...

After returning from Christmas break, I came back to my room in Barton Road. I promptly became quite ill with nasty fluish symptoms. After two weeks of this, I was getting worse, not better. Went to see a doctor who said, yes this is odd, but I don't know what it is. Super. So I went home and searched my room. I found a lovely patch of mold on the wall just under my bed. After this was a two week stint of "homelessness" where I lived in various places including Gareth's tiny flat, the college bunk room, a spare visitor's room, and college sick bay. Finally, they found me a spare room where I could relocate on a permanent basis. However, after whiling away half of term either being very ill or severely stressed out, I ended the rest of term just being very stressed out. This was supposed to be my final year, and it had all gone horribly wrong. I became very depressed and didn't leave my room for a whole week.

So I thought, bollocks to this. At the end of term, I took off and went to Morocco for a couple of days by myself to sort out my head. After that, I worked as a teaching assistant for a group of Japanese teenagers who came to Cambridge during our Easter vacation to learn English. And during that time, I began proceedings to intermit my studies, which meant that I would take off the remainder of the year and restart in the autumn.

And that's precisely what I did. During the time from April to October, I worked as a receptionist, daycare worker, and a nanny. I went on a surreal road trip across the UK with 11 of my most favorite Americans, which ended with my blessing ceremony (which was so wonderful and beautiful and fairytale-esque that it hardly seems real). I went on a family vacation with his family, my new in-laws. I attended two conferences, one on propaganda and spin and the other on cultural implications and ideas of obesity.

I also spent a lot of time trying to work out this "ADD-thing" seeing many useless people ("What was your childhood like?" being the 'how-Freudian-are-you?' smack on the forehead question) but finally finding two very useful people who helped to get me the UK diagnosis and help remedy the behaviors.

Getting that kind of help feels like I've been trying to paint a room with a tube of lipstick for years and someone has finally given me a roller brush and a can of paint. To continue the analogy, it's really easy for me to get upset and think "How didn't this get sorted out sooner?! Think of all the wasted lipstick! The wasted time! The wasted effort!" But then I remember, I can't think like that, because thoughts like that are just more waste. So I shrug. I think of myself as having been remodeled with new opportunities and situations at hand. When we're kids, life is full of "do-overs"; if it didn't turn out right the first time (or even subsequent times), all you have to do is say "do-over!" and a magical new opportunity arises. How many grown-ups would do *anything* for a do-over for something in their lives? I feel like I just got the biggest do-over of my life, and I think it's awesome. I feel like I am my own renaissance, and I'm making this year my masterpiece.

Do-over starts now.