I like Austin. I like the laid back atmosphere a lot. I dig the people. I really appreciate the landscape, too. It's all hilly and picturesque and crap.

But the job situation sucks. I hate the traffic. And yeah. There's reasons to leave.

I am starting to panic a little. I know I want to go back to Dallas. I know the plan from the very beginning was to get some experience in Austin and then go back to Dallas to use that experience, and that's what I'm definitely going to do. But I'm starting to wonder if, in fact, I actually learned anything at all on this journey of mine. And at the same time, I know that I did. Little things keep coming up where I say, "Wow, I sure did react differently to that situation than I did the year before."

An example of this, of course, is Matt. We've had a very interesting year. He dumped me for his dream girl. Dream Girl didn't work out, so now we're "back together". We're planning a road trip for New Years, which is rocktastically awesome.

I was looking back on an old diary of mine, which I tend to do sometimes, and I noticed that my whole entire life was Matt. If we couldn't hang out that weekend, or if he was off on a road trip (like his 3 week road trip to Alaska), I was totally lost without him. I dreaded when I couldn't see him because it was like I had no life of my own if he wasn't in it.

I can say with a lot of confidence that I don't feel that way anymore. It's almost been a year, and I have proven to myself that I don't need him or any other boyfriend to keep myself entertained. He once said that he wants to be a part of my life, not my whole life. And you know what? I think I'm ready for that right now. I think I can honestly say that when I go back to Dallas, I will have my own life. I'll have my own job, my own social life, my own friends, and I will hopefully have him somewhere in there too.

I also have slowly come to the realization that if we don't work out, that's okay. I'm not going to have the reaction I had last time. I'm not going to spend hours, days, weeks, months crying over how he wronged me. I will simply recognize the fact that we tried as hard as we could, and I will move on. I will grieve, sure, but it's not going to be hardcore. You know why? Because frankly, the idea of finding someone else to date kinda excites me. Which is bad if I want to stay with Matt, but right now, that's not really set in stone.

I just know that when I get back, I'm going to be paying attention. We aren't 17 and 19 anymore, just playing around. He's almost 26. This is for keeps. It will be hard, but if I really feel like I can't get past something, the time will be soon that I need to do something about it.

And I may be talking out of my ass, I admit that. I can't really know for sure what my reaction will be towards something until it happens. But right now, this is the way I feel.

And tomorrow is December! I can't believe that. Yesterday my mom and my brother and I went to Best Buy to buy her a new TV, and my brother said, "I just bought a new TV last year!"

And that was weird because it wasn't quite a year ago, but I was with him when he bought his new TV in January. That was almost a year ago, but it feels like.. a month ago or something. I don't know why my life is on such hyper speed, but I do kinda like it. Especially because these next 3 weeks before Christmas are probably going to get a little boring. I'm going to quit my job on the 9th. I'm going to give two weeks notice so that my last day is the 23rd. Hopefully they'll still give me hours. I wouldn't count on it, though.

As for the rest of my Thanksgiving, it was relatively uneventful. I thought I was going to be sad that I had to leave on Saturday so that I could go to work today, but by the time Saturday came, I was so ready to go. My brother lives about 7 minutes from me here in Austin. But when we have to spend 4 days straight together, that's just not a good thing. I was about ready to murder him with a fork yesterday.

But everyone got along. No fights, no outbursts from me like last year, it was all good. I didn't hear from Matt, but he was in his Doing a Paper/Doing Football Stuff world so I didn't really expect to. If this were a few months ago, that would really bother me and I'd try to investigate the matter further, complete with me trying to get in his head and figure out why he didn't want to see me. I didn't do that this time. That is good.

I have to pee. My toilet's flusher thingie is broken. That's wonderful! Yay.

And I have to go to work in a few minutes. I haven't worked in a week, so that's fun.

Okay then.

*****

a year ago...

"I think I need to stop cussing so much.

I came to this conclusion when, on Thursday night, I got up in a room full of my family and loudly announced, "MY WHOLE FUCKING FAMILY IS FALLING APART! I CAN FUCKING CRY IF I WANT TO!"

But, if you can possibly tell your whole family to go fuck themselves while they're all in the same room, I'd reccommend it. It's slighty freeing in a weird way."

2 years ago...

"Anyway, I saw a homeless guy who had a blanket on like a jacket. He approached me and asked for some money. He said, "I have to get into the Salvation Army, it's so cold out here!" I gave him about 50 cents and walked back to my car.

Then, feeling like a jackass, I chased him back down and reached into my jacked and gave him 20 dollars, and then raced away after he said "God Bless you!" I just felt dumb giving this nice cold guy 50 cents when I was just going to waste that 20 dollars on something useless in the long run, anyway. I feel like it was a good deed. And hey, I admit it, I wanted the karma points. What was that, like 2 points maybe? Give them to me, damnit!"