Escape

This is the blog I escape to when I don't know anyone I know to know what I'm thinking. Not that I don't want to tell them, I just want to figure it out on my own first.

I'm now living in a small town and I'm going to be here for a year. I'm studying for my master's degree. I don't think I've quite yet come to terms with the fact that I'm going to be here for a year. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that I've never lived anywhere so small, and compared to the places I have lived, so rural. If you stipulate that anywhere you have been for longer than 4 weeks as somewhere you have lived, I can count (in order of longest to shortest time):

1) Los Angeles
2) New York
3) London
4) Honolulu
5) Orlando

All of this places, in my opinion, qualify as big cities. Although I don't remember much about Orlando, except our apartment complex and Disneyland. Comparatively Aberdeen is tiny, you could probably fit all of it below Houston (the street in NYC) with room to spare. Except that things are a bit more spread out here. They have the silly idea that people shouldn't be all jammed up on top of each other. I don't know what that's about. I like being about to live on the 26th floor, above a butcher and baker and a candle stick maker and 25 floors of other apartments. The University library only has a total of 6 floors, and one of them is a basement, but it has full length windows and isn't really underground. Silly architects and their desire for natural light, don't they know that vampires need somewhere to hide during the day?

What all of this means is that I've having trouble focusing on things like school work and trying to find myself a regular hang out. Also, I'm trying to find friends. So is everyone, but I feel like maybe I'm having a harder time than anyone else. I feel like I don't know how to act around "normal" people. I've grown up in the entertainment industry and I did my undergraduate degree in the entertainment industry and most of my friends are part of it. And we are different. We think about things differently and have different kinds of common knowledge. Things like this become blatantly obvious when, for example, I was watching a movie with my new roommates last night. Immediately I knew who all the lead actors were and other things they had done, the screen writer had attended my department at university and I was familiar with the music videos of the director. My new roommates were impressed. But compared to the peole from my old school this is a game I fail at. They would also have been able to list off the credits of the director of photographer or offer up trivia about the making of the movie.

I'm also lost in the realm of drinking. For me its just a casual activity that you do when you're socializing. You have a beer and a chat, or a gin and a joke, or anything. You don't need to drink yourself to black out or anything, it just loosens the mood. But I find that people in the real world either don't really drink that much, or they binge. It makes me feel like a chronic alcohoI lic. Mind you because of it I could probably hold a beer better than some of these people. I've also learned, that I happen to know a lot more about alcohol than other people, which is something I always felt I needed to improve in.

That's only the beginning. I don't even know how to describe the differences in devises used during speaking: humor, sarcasm, wit, euphamism, and just being dry. I'm going to have to learn to adapt.

Also, I miss having a NY deli around the corner. How I could go for a ham, muenster, tomato sandwich or grilled mozzarella. yum!