i've been freaking out a lot lately, which is probably why i haven't been blogging so much. i'm so busy having mini crises that i can't think of superfluous things to dump here. of course my mini crises are pretty damn superfluous and stupid when viewed from a rational point of view, but if you know me, you know rationality is not my strong point. anyway, i feel like i've been suspended in some sort of weird anxiety time warp, where all i do is sit on the couch with my laptop, shove hummus in my mouth and slave obsessively through craigslist listings. because, nearly five months before i have to move to chicago, i am already freaking out about what to do.

see, i've made the perhaps premature and self-destructive decision that when i go to northwestern, i want to live by myself. probably in a studio apartment. this of course leads me to think of several questions: how am i going to find a good place to rent in a city that's very very far away from me? through telepathy? will i end up in a 10x10 box? am i going to become an hermetic alcoholic? (hermetic as in "the hermetic confines of an isolated life", not, like, literally sealed.) how many cats am i going to have (because it is a foregone conclusion that, as an alcoholic hermetic journalism student, i am going to have at least a dozen)? how long can i keep eating delicious hummus before i get too fat to fit in my tiny cat-filled studio apartment? etc.

you see, the idea of living all by myself is both appealing and terrifying. on one hand, i have sort of this idealized grad school student existence in mind, wherein i am studying all the time at a cute ikea desk that'll fit perfectly in the corner of my room and being all academic and thoreau-esque (well, except in a city instead of on a wild lake or whatever) and having a lot of plants on my windowsill and FINALLY BEING ABLE TO DECORATE MY SPACE HOWEVER THE HELL I WANT which has been a lifelong dream of mine.

on the other hand, pesky reality keeps edging in on this hyperidealized existence, wherein i realize that a) i have never, in all of my 25 years, lived alone b) i'll have no money to decorate anything and c) i have never been able to keep even one plant alive. so i have an alternate, probably uberpessimistic view of my life alone, wherein i am drunk all the time, surrounded by dead plants and talking to "eileen," my imaginary friend.

i dunno. on the other other hand, i have this strange thought in the back of my mind that living alone could "be good for me" or something. like, character-building. is that idiotic? or will i end up like the bluth's father in the attic, hosting tea parties with glassy-eyed dolls and spying on people through a vent? which, to be honest, sounds kinda fun.