This is just a note

[highlyeccentric]

To say that I am happy. Happy as in I spent an hour drinking tea from a tiny cup and reading a book about female friendships in early 20th century Australia/Australian expat literary circles. Happy as in my desk is set up and all I need now is a LOOOOONG LAN cable. Also my MP3 is charged and connected to my speakers and, to round off this set of excellence, I am wearing my favourite comfort jacket.

Probably still lonely, since I'm posting nine hundred times today. (Also I have a case of Disappearing Housemate, which is worrying since she was driving from Melbourne this afternoon and, as I have lost my phone, I do not know if she has sent me messages to say she's not coming home / running late / eaten by wildebeest.) But I'm feeling... optimistically lonely? I have a functioning social life, as much of a one as I had in Sydney and more than I had at home. The problem, such as it is, is that I spent last year with my life wrapped around K's, and the year-and-a-bit before that intensely twined with the Wife, and the year before THAT I was a sort of orbiting planet around the TessNReena binary star. I didn't go anywhere or do anything much or talk to many people I didn't live right next to, but they were always around. The last time I've been not constantly surrounded by people was first year, and then I spent every spare minute online talking to gryphonvere.

When I got to Canberra I was so glad to be on my own for once. The novelty is kinda wearing off, but I'll adjust. I really need to spend some not in the sort of intense friendships I seem to have formed in the last few years, remember how to be alone in my head again.

As for friends... I'm sulky about the necessity of making a whole new set, since I liked the set K and I gathered last year so very well. But I have xxlucyferxx and tahira_saki, and I would much rather have two good friends (and these two were good friends the moment I laid eyes on them) whom I see every couple of weeks than the kinds of friends I had for many years at uni: ones you ate with every day and then never emailed after uni broke up, ones you saw every week at church and bible study but never felt compelled to meet up with outside of those circles.

sommeille, when you come online: email me your postal address pretty please? If anyone sees her in person before she gets the intarwub back, pls filch her contact details for me ( I don't even have her phone number).

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hey Amy,

Just wanted to say that it's been good to read your updates and I'm VERY pleased to see you're happy and settling in to Canberran life!
Take care, dear one.
Love bec lindsay

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Good for you! Personally I have always been the kind of person who functions mostly inside her own head, and coming to Sydney has been a crashcourse in both living with a lot of people (even in Maples relative-isolation) and seeing my good friends every day. I think I'm achieving a good balance; I spend the evenings alone and that's generally enough to let me recharge :)

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

I'd always been a loner, but perhaps through necessity rather than temperament... the last four years were a wild rollercoaster ride between loneliness and Too Many People. Time to balance out again, I think :).

[anachronisma.livejournal.com]

You've kind of struck on the head one of the things I struggle with with this whole making friends business. I have very intense, deep friendships online-- for 6 years, those were my only friends who lasted more than a few months with me.

Now I'm doing this college thing and I've made some friends who are good for hanging out with but I can't tell them anything about me. I enjoy hanging out with them a lot, I really do, but it leaves me dissatisfied and miserable that I don't have the deepness that I have with the people online who are my best friends and know stuff about me that really defines me but is too strange to tell people who don't have experiences vaguely similar to my own. The whole "intense friendships" thing sort of became what I thought was the model of good friendships, and I can't seem to replicate it.

Come August though, I'll be heading out, and probably go alone, that is, without anyone I know now going to the same university with me. I'm not anticipating having to make new friends... because I hate being the new kid on the block, and I'll be coming into an established circle of people, which has always been a recipe for disaster for me.

The whole "internet friends" thing just has somehow always been easier for me. I'm more like the friends I'm geographically distant to.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

I <3 my Internet Friends to tiny little pieces - it's the Internet Friends who happen to be living in Canberra that I count as good friends here. *grins*

I need RL friends, too, though. *scrunches nose* The extrovert in me demands it.

Amy! I Miss you!

[tess-mier.livejournal.com]

AMY! The binary star TessNReena miss their orbiting planet! How is canberra treating you? I think i'm going to have to come down and visit you one weekend or you'll just have to come up and visit sometime soon!
All my love goregous
Tess xox

Re: Amy! I Miss you!

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Tess! (And by extension, Reena!) Canberra is treating me well but I think I am allergic to it! I have a mysterious red rash! it is very odd!

I will be coming up to visit on a semi-regular basis DO NOT FEAR. I will be up for Mardi Gras, for one thing, although i may be entirely booked out that weekend.

Also you should totally visit me. Have you seen the wonders of the National Library? It is WONDEROUS. As in, it is full of books. And they bring them to you in a neat and timely fashion.

The second part of the TessNReena Binary Star

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't realize that we pulled you into our crazy world that badly, I mean I did have a bad habit of kicking open your door every couple of days to scare you...I second Tess' earlier comment of coming down to Canberra for a visit.

Speak soon...xoxo Reena

[(Anonymous)]

Lovely woman, I'm glad you're settling in. Hope you find beautiful deep-friend friends. It is hard at uni, hey?
Love to you.
XX april