So how whiney is it to admit that, in the midst of my birthday month, with my friends and family all around me, social events galore behind me and sxsw and a wedding coming before me, I have never felt as alone as I have in the past few weeks? Cooped up in my apartment for over a week, sick with a cough that makes me unwilling to inflict my presence on anyone else, I stay inside and hack away, playing countless games of solitaire and wondering how to deal with the dust bunnies I discovered under my bed.

To some extent, it's been fairly depressing. On the other hand, loneliness has given me the opportunity to find out whether I can live with myself, and it turns out I can. I know now that I can go to the movies alone. I've made quite a bit of headway with the Scarf That Won't End. If this lasts much longer, I might even get my grandmother's photos scanned and give back the albums that I've had for the past 3 years.

It's made me think about what I'm doing with my life, as I appear to have reached 'contented' and stopped growing altogether. School isn't a challenge I am interested in tackling. So where else do I turn to evolve? Volunteering? I've tried that, and no matter how much it satisfies my sense of doing good for others, I still feel temporary and unincluded.

I question the bonds I have created with my friends. I suppose I should take comfort that I can have such good friends, and really, I have the best in the world, but I hardly ever see them. We appear to be able to maintain our relationships without the benefit of a lot of physical contact. Like my grandmother has told me time and again, if you don't write letters to others, they won't write to you. I'm taking this to mean that I need to reach out before others will reach out to me, but this is where I get petty and wonder why I always have to be the one reaching (not entirely true, hi Suzan!). Eh.

It's all a phase, and soon enough I'll be wondering where my spare time went and how could anyone feel lonely with my friends. I hope that by that time, I can speak and laugh without breaking to cough up a lung, but I wouldn't keep my fingers crossed. Codeine is my friend in the meantime. Mmmmmm, coooodeeeeeiiiine.

Completely off-topic, I told everyone I encountered after I first saw Hero that it was such a beautiful movie that I could enjoy it just as much without the sound and subtitles. Months later, on a long flight and unwilling to pay for headphones, I got to test that theory and it turns out I was right. I just watched it for a third time (keeping the sound/subtitles on, of course) (thanks dad!), and it truly is a work of art. Hard to knit and watch a foreign movie, though. I managed.