Some things I've been thinking about.

Do you ever stumble across journal entries or blog entries from years ago?
I had forgotten all about having a blog until a few days ago, and I discovered the blog I started my freshman year at UNT, when I was eighteen.
It was a kind of look at myself, kind of a mirror of my past.  However, I found that the majority of things I wrote in my blog were about boys. :) It was extremely vapid, but still funny, and an appropriate finding for the way I've been perceiving myself lately.
About a week after my birthday, I was in kind of a depressive funk.  For those of you who saw my posting about my birthday party on facebook, I had all kinds of jokes about being old, denture cream, etc.  After that, whenever anyone mentioned it or asked about it, I explained myself.  It's not that I really feel like I'm old.  I just never saw myself at this age.  Let me explain: when you're young you picture what your life will be like at 18,  and you anxiously anticipate 21.  Nothing really happened when I turned 22.  About a week after my 23rd birthday, it was like time was moving at the speed of light.  I couldn't stop thinking about every second, every minute, every hour, and how my whole life is just going down the drain.  I know it sounds like complete nonsense, but stick with me here.  I was so painfully concious of each minute, and I felt like I wasn't living my life the way I was supposed to.
When it didn't go away after a couple of days, I talked to James about it.  He told me this is normal, and what most people go through at 25.  I was still too concious of everything, and basically depressing the hell out of myself.  Then Saturday when James and I went to Germanfest with my mom and dad, I decided I wanted to talk about it with her.  She also told me it was normal, but with a cheesier twist: that I'm becoming a "woman", but that has already been in the making.
What it really is, is a glimpse at my own mortality.  I see that now, and talking to my mom actually helped me realize that.  I'm still a young woman, but I'm leaving a part of myself in the past.  In a way, I'm grieving my childhood.  I'm not so painfully aware of the seconds lately, but I'm so much more aware of consequences of my career decisions, my health, and of the actual act of growing older.  I'm so motivated now to do things I've been putting off for months, or years even.  Even though it still sounds weird to say I'm 23, I accept the fact that I will continue to grow older to ages I've never seen myself at, and I accept the fact that I will grow old, and I will die one day.  Even though it's terrifying, it REALLY REALLY is, I'm going to embrace it and make the most of it, because I owe that to myself.

And in honor of my old blog, I'm going to start the old tradition of including a five song "playlist" of songs that had special meaning this week, or I've been listening to a lot:

"The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
"Climbing Up The Walls" - Radiohead
"Get Gone" - Fiona Apple (about an ex I wrote about in my old blog)
"At The Bottom of Everything" - Bright Eyes
"1901" - Phoenix