Observation:

Blogger makes communication, and privacy, and my own personal mental environment, all very strange and new.

So does the whole internet, I guess, but Blogger made the strangeness all bite-sized and digestible and user-friendly.

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Addendum:

Everything is weird.

At the beginning of this year -- which, incidentally, is the fabled year 2001 -- I was starting back at school, starting to hang out in the science library where I used to work, starting to sink into in the ancient 70s chairs in the film students' lounge, running into friends along snowy paths on campus.

Now it's a long hot summer. I'm in California. I hang out and watch movies with people that I would never have met if it wasn't for the Internet. I made a giant leap to get from that snow and that film lounge to this house and the trees and the sun and the beautiful sky. And here I am, just taking each step one after the next, trying to accept my life for what it is. Even when that life is lying in a pile of old clothes under a Goodwill trailer at 2 AM, something that I basically would not have ever been doing before.

I think what I'm saying is that I need to appreciate things more, appreciate the gravity of where I am and what I'm supposed to be doing. Not that I don't enjoy life -- I do. I laugh and I smile and everything is wonderful. But maybe I'm allowing myself to settle into routines too easily.

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Unrelated: I really like Rowley the bear. He has this nice detergent smell from going through the wash. He is smaller than PJ, the bear that I had back home since I was about 10 years old, but he is nice. Incidentally, as far as I know, PJ the bear never went through the wash. PJ's fur used to be silky and smooth and have individual strands, but now it is matted and clumpy and has an entirely different texture. Rowley's fur is like this too (clumpy), but I think he was made like that -- many stuffed animals apparently are, these days.