Today ends my second week of my college career. I'm a little wobbly getting back on my feet after taking two years off but I'm loving every minute of it and really, really excited and really, really scared.

I noticed something I do now that I'm in more. . . social situations. I watch people a weird amount. I don't really talk to anyone but I observe and poke around and watch their mannerisms to a weird degree.

For example, there's a boy in one of my classes I'm starting to use as a kind of test subject for one of my charachters because his personality matches, and a girl in my history class, etc.

And then I realize what I'm doing and I feel weird.

I don't actually talk to them, I just stare at them and analyze them.

I bring up a second, completley different point in the form of something Miranda's little sister said.

I recently got her into Kingdom Hearts (she's 12) and is discovering the joys of fanfiction, fanart, etc. We were sitting around doing homework and she looks up at me and says "Sometimes I don't like my life. I don't hate it but I just don't feel like I can deal with anything, and it's like when I think about writing stories and this other world, I sort of feel better. Like it's a different kind of imaginary place you have when you're a little kid but you're more aware of how you can control it. It's comforting."

I found that really profound for someone her age. I'm sure other people have already realized something to this extent and I'm sure I have at some other point but. . . I don't know, letting myself sink into the stories I write and immersing myself with these fictional charachters for such a long amount of time; I really do have to step back and remember they're fictionaol, even though they're constantly shifting and moving and technically "alive" in the sense I control them and manipulate them.

It IS an escape. I try and think about how crazy I'd be without having "my boys" as I refer to them (my slew of charachters I made up in early high school, Jay Beef Scott and all them), or obsessing about some video game or program and writing and thinking about them. It's a wonderful and weirdly terrible placebo for having actual friends and a life.





The end.