flows that glow like phosphorus

Photo from Friday night -Vidya requested that I mention her again, so I am. In a moment of amusement, I took a picture of Adit and Vidya with an old-school twenty - for some reason I felt this was worth memorializing. Remember how, only a few years ago, you wouldn't have taken ten shots of something meaningless, just to get it perfect, because you wouldn't have wanted to waste the film? Digital photography is so much more fun.

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Today was perhaps a taste of what my life will be like over the next few months. I don't think that I exactly regret coming on this trip - I'm looking forward to tomorrow night, in which madness will descend on the Magic Kingdom, fueled no doubt by an open bar. I'm also looking forward to hanging out with both Joy and Katrina tomorrow afternoon, since I would like to become better friends with both of them. However, it also feels just slightly anticlimactic - like I've already said my goodbyes, regardless of how hard they were, and that extending them now just seems like I'm holding onto something that I need to let go of.

That's probably why I chose to spend the day as I did. I actually got up around eight, caught up on the news, took a leisurely shower, and then had breakfast around eleven. After breakfast, I worked on my book for a couple of hours, took a nap, and then worked on it again for another hour or so. By then it was around four p.m., and I was on my way up to my room when I ran into Kim and Regina, quite unexpectedly. I ended up hanging out with them until 5:30 or so, and we ate some appetizers in the hotel bar and caught up on each others' lives. It was v. nice to see them both, and especially to talk to Kim, since I hadn't really caught up with her since she got back from India.

However, while I could have easily ended up going out with them, or with Terry, or Tolu, or Arod, all of whom contacted me, I instead retreated to my room, edited what I had written earlier, and read a romance novel. It's not even that I felt antisocial - I think I would have had a great time with all of them. But, I do have a cold and want to preserve my strength for tomorrow. More importantly, I feel like I need to start my break as I mean to go on - and if I start my break with a whole week of dissolute behavior, that's not a good sign. And frankly, if I can write ten pages a day (as I did today) while I'm on leave, I could easily have four books completed. Not that I expect that to happen, but if I could get ambitious and finish this one plus one more, I would be quite a happy camper. Given that I only really wrote for around three hours, ten pages a day seems entirely doable, even if I spend the rest of my time just staring at the wall and reading the gossip blogs and eating dinner with my parents. But I need to spend the next six months primarily focused on my book, not focused on entertaining myself.

So I'm still in a pretty great mood, even if I don't exactly feel like a standard twenty-six-year-old since I'm sure I missed out on some wild parties tonight. I'm so excited to be on break that it hasn't really even sunk in yet, and the unreality of sitting in a strange hotel room in a strange city, without a job to tether me to something, is quite interesting. But rather than continuing to ponder this, I think I'll go to bed - tomorrow, I will likely make up for my lack of dissolute behavior today. Then again, the hangover I had on Saturday reminded me that my hangovers have gotten worse as I have gotten older, and I don't really want to have another one. Ugh - if only I could drink without getting a hangover, since I'm really quite a pleasant and happy drunk. Regardless, it's time for bed!