PSYCH.

This summer has been relatively busy, and I love it. I’m the kind of person who always has to be kept occupied. So I’ve been jumping around from activity to activity. The list includes hanging out with friends, reading, my Capitol Hill internship, and my job with Chuck Caputo’s campaign. Oh yeah, and on top of all that I’ve been catching up on a year’s worth of sleep.

In other words, I’m just as busy as I was during the school year. The difference, though, is that I’m doing things that I genuinely want to do. Which now includes bringing this blog back to life. However, my entries are probably not going to be as well-thought-out from now on… the plan is to just go with the flow.

For one thing, I’ve been reading so many books lately! The problem is that I haven’t finished any of them yet — I’m currently reading three books simultaneously. They are The Catcher in the Rye, The Unlikely Disciple, and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The first one is actually a re-read for me; I sort of just had a craving to dig into it again. Maybe it’s because of this particularly in-depth summary that I read a few weeks ago. The second is one that somebody recommended to me last year. It’s about a Brown student who goes “undercover” at Liberty University, an ultra-Christian college, for a semester. I started it a few weeks before heading off to Boys State (which happened to be at Liberty, too) and I’m halfway through. Talk about hilariously insightful writing. The third book was recommended to me a few days ago, and since I was at the library yesterday with my sister, I figured I’d check it out and give it a try. Ironically, when I got back in the car, my mom told me she’d actually watched the movie version in Iran! I thought that was pretty neat.

Congress is good, the campaign/canvassing is good, life is good… I’ll elaborate on all that good stuff later. This post is getting pretty lengthy, not to mention C-SPAN is on downstairs and I legitimately want to go watch. Looks like all this politics is getting to me.

PS: What does anything I just said have to do with Barack Obama? Nothing, really — I just thought it was cool how I could insert “ra” in the middle of “Back” to get his name.

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EDIT 6/20/2009: In hindsight, this entry is ridiculously funny. It’s essentially one big, incoherent teen angst discharge! Oh junior year, thank God I’m done with it.

Fast forward to 5:38 p.m. Yes, I remember the exact time. I was running out of the coat room to head off to dinner when a man, maybe in his 50s, asked me whether I was a board member. He was sitting on a couch with a wine glass in his hand; I wouldn’t be surprised if it was his fourth or fifth glass, but that’s beyond the point. I got into a conversation with him, and we mused about politics, networking, the importance of personality, Barack Obama, inspiration, the likes. I’ve always been skeptical about listening to adults who sound full of their “experience” and themselves, and he was tiptoeing that line. But there was something in his voice that sounded so humble, as if he knew that being around for a while didn’t mean the world. This old dog knew he couldn’t learn every new trick. Eventually I had to leave, and as I was walking away, he said to me: “You know, it’s going to be your generation that fixes things up. Kids like you.”

It’s not like any of this was new to me, or as if I hadn’t had this conversation with adults before. But I think the tone and the pure randomness of this encounter is what’s really gotten me thinking about my future. That is, my future as a member of Generation Y. It looks like we’ve got a lot of weight on our shoulders.

Now off to philosophy homework!

I may be a junior now — better known as a walking zombie — but Homecoming week this year was easily more lively, more unifying, and of course, louder than anything I’ve ever been a part of. Every day, I was able to lose myself at the pep rallies, with the deafening roars of cheers like:

“2-0-1-0: We’re the hottest class you know!”

“We are the juniors, the mighty, mighty juniors!”

And the classic: “We’ve got spirit! Yes we do! We’ve got spirit! How about YOU?”

Of course, sharing all of this spirit and the quirky traditions we have at TJ with my friends only made the experience unforgettably better. Nobody would have expected our class’ Musical Ex to pull through and come out in first place, despite its discombobulated state only two days earlier. Nobody would have expected a football team with unmatched hope but not as much strength to come out with a 34-7 victory. And as is always the case, nobody would have expected that a bunch of nerdy, idiosyncratic teenagers could actually have that much fun.

It’s like they say — expect the unexpected.

However, this was not without paying an unparalleled price. To those who died on September 11, 2001: You may be lost, but never forgotten.

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In other news, it’s my birthday! Sixteen is a big year — that is, a big year for accepting frivilous, unnecessary privileges. I can officially drop out of school, work at the McDonald’s next door, and throw a big party and declare it “sweet.” Despite the fact that none of these privileges actually apply to me, it’s symbolically just as exciting. And looking at this turning point from a different perspective, it’s obvious that the near(er!) future has a lot in store! One year from now, I’ll be allowed to watch R-rated movies, and before you know it, I’ll be voting, clubbing, running for office, receiving social security checks… oh the glorious list goes on.

Until then, I suppose I’ll have to settle for being “sweet sixteen.” Though with physics, three AP classes, and the college admissions process looming around the corner, that may very well be the biggest paradox I’ve ever heard.

Firstly, my blog’s name, “Life is my nutgraph,” is really quirky. I mean, one doesn’t usually think of life in journalistic terms. (In case you’re wondering, a nutgraph is the sentence or part of an article that tells why the story is being told.) Originally, I tried a million-and-one traditional potential blog titles — Carpe Diem, Time is Money, Cellar Door, the list goes on — but they were all taken. So honestly, I challenged myself to try and come up with the most unique phrase that I could; if I couldn’t use a famous one, I’d have to make up one of my own. Eventually, after much brain-barfing, I threw together “Life is my nutgraph.” After all, life is a story, and it needs a reason to be told just as much as any newspaper article.

And the second thing that came to mind upon opening this blog today? Beginnings are awkward. Think about it. Starting a class, meeting a new person, opening an essay — all of these are beginnings, and they’re certainly not easy. As humans, we’re naturally inclined to go towards things that are in our “comfort zone,” so when we step out of that, it takes a little more effort to transition. When we reach a new beginning, we find that we have to shift gears or deal with a completely blank slate. It’s different. And yet eventually, as the ball gets rolling (in whatever direction), we step closer and closer to that zone that we’re oh-so used to.

Entry # 1, this beginning, is officially out of the way.