Yay for Fridays! Yes, I'm home on a Friday night writing in my blog instead of being out partying or dancing or some other such excitement. But that's perfectly alright with me. Life has been moving quickly and I don't feel the need to be out just because it's Friday night; a quiet night at home in my pj's is just peachy for me.

I've been getting lots and lots of happy wonderful letters and things in the mail the last couple of weeks. Things from some of my favoritest people in the whole wide world -- my big brother, star-sister, and both Mommies! :) It's very wonderful to get letters, and I keep meaning to sit down and write some of my own one of these days. Why does it feel like I never have time to do the little nice things like that? It seems that I'm always either working, in class, or studying, and when I'm not I don't know where the time goes because I don't ever seem to get anything accomplished that I'd like to. Sigh.

I was talking with Hugo last night on our way to the pub after morris practice, trying to figure out where I might possibly be going with my life in general, and what on earth I want to do with school in particular. Part of the reason for taking this year off was to try to get more of a focus on what I might want to concentrate on with the rest of my time at Stanford, by getting further away from it for a while (though it has turned out not to be so much a year "off" after all, since I'm taking icky classes all year -- sigh). I declared myself as an Earth Systems major about a year ago, and I like the ideas and principles that the program offers and supports, but when I really think about it I have no idea where I would "go" with such a major. I think I'm technically in the "Oceans" concentration at the moment, but I'm leaning further and further away from that. The thing is, I can't say for certain what I'm leaning towards. None of the other Earth Systems tracks particularly draw me, but neither do any of the other majors at Stanford. Hugo said he couldn’t see why I’m in Earth Systems at all to begin with, observing that I don’t posses either of the two traits that he would expect to drive somebody into choosing that major (driving being a good thing): a thirst for knowledge, and political motivation (or even an opinion once in a while). Which I suppose is true. I like to learn things, but my memory is abominable and I can’t seem to retain any knowledge from one quarter to the next, let alone anything remotely permanent (academically speaking – I remember dances quite well, thank you). And anybody who knows me will know that I don’t have any sort of political inclination, so I’m not going into Earth Systems to get into the politics of changing the world. So why am I in Earth Systems? I say that I like the broad variety of the program, yet I complain that I have to take a whole bunch of classes that I don’t like, such as differential equations, economics and computer science. To be brutally honest with myself, I’m beginning to realize that part of the reason I gravitated toward this major is that it allows me to stay unfocused; I get a little bit of everything, but come out not having a grounding or in-depth involvement in any of it. Which is just fine and dandy for the part of me that’s scared to death of committing to something as big as my educational direction (even if I don’t think it’s what I’ll do for the rest of my life, though I’d like to think it had some relevance); but for the part of my brain that is finally realizing this, it’s even more scary because it just reinforces the fact that I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing and I don’t have that long to get my act together and figure it out, at least on a two- or three-year time scale. But this is all too heavy for a Friday night. I think I’ll eat some more cheesecake and go to bed.