how DO you waste a summer?

One day at a time, apparently. Ha. Waste = not working, not volunteering, failing utterly to make the world a better place or to figure out what I want to do with my life or to prepare for next year in HK. It is the quieter hours that make me realize how much summer has already passed me by, how many days I've spent the majority of in my parents' house, how many mundane, basic tasks I have left undone until tomorrow.

There are some good parts, though, too. I did get to take an amazing trip with an amazing person already, which was good. And I'm going to Boston next week with my cousin and my little sister, which should be a really worthwhile trip. I haven't seen my grandparents in almost two years, and my grandma's 90th birthday is soon (though after I've gone overseas), so it's a really important week for me as far as seeing family. I'll be sleeping on the floor of their living room, most likely, but I think it'll all work out fine. And there's a camping trip planned for the third weekend of July that should be good, one more chance to see the mountains here. I used to be pretty outdoorsy, I used to work at REI, go camping all the time, have a need for backpacking gear... now, it's like I get into the mountains on infrequent occasions, and, worse, I mistook them for being North the other day when I was trying to get around. This, clearly, a cardinal sin: in Colorado, mountains = West; in SoCal, mountains = North, usually. Home is a bed to sleep in, flaky phone calls to friends, flaky phone calls from friends, and a tv, on which I watch too many hours of sports (and tonight, the NBA draft).

I guess I've gotten some reading done, but compared to the real jobs and personal growth I'm seeing from close friends from pomona, it seems clear to me that this marking time I've done comes at the cost of great things, big changes, adulthood. Unfortunately, now that the unease I'm feeling about not doing stuff is rising like nausea, it's a month away from my departure for HK (35 days), and it's not enough time to fix what I think was wrong about the summer. With the Boston trip, the camping, blocked-out family time, there's not time left to find a regular schedule. There's hardly even time left to fit in an extra trip to visit friends with real living situations. Growing apart after college was bound to be scary and jarring, but I think it started May 15th. I'll hope that this time off confers some kind of lucid state of mind for when I leave in august, but all it's done so far is (apparently) made me whiny and short-tempered and emo >50% of the time. It's hard to find a good way to spin it.