How to destroy my self confidence in ten seconds or less

Tomorrow afternoon, I depart with the Boy for some quality time in the mountains with him, his parents, his older brother, and his brother's girlfriend. In the days leading up to this trip, I have been very excited about it, mostly because I hope it will be fun and relaxing and good for all relationships involved.

Then, on the phone with the Boy tonight, he dropped this beautiful comment:

"And there's a hot tub at the cabin, so we can enjoy that..."

The ironic thing is, I asked him when we were still up at Notre Dame whether or not I ought to bring a swimsuit home in my limited suitcase space. We decided no, that was silly, why would I go swimming in December? Yes, dear readers, both of my swimsuits are hundreds of miles away in Indiana.

It's not that huge of a deal, really; I could potentially wear shorts and a t-shirt in said hot tub, or procure a cheap suit tomorrow sometime. But it triggered a whole host of other issues. My legs aren't shaved, I'm out of shape, I've gained a little weight during the food fest that my break has become, etc. These led to feelings of discomfort, anxiety, and general unhappiness, of course accompanied by natural envy of Joey's brother's girlfriend, who is gorgeous and will have no problem looking great in a bikini. I'm worried about how I'll look in a one-piece. All of this sent me reeling into a fanatically depressed anxious introverted mental fetal position. It doesn't take much to push me off the edge, huh?

So now I find myself hopelessly awake at 3 AM, worried to pieces about my ability to be generally cheerful and fun to be around with people I'm apparently not all that comfortable with for days. I'm ok with Joey's parents, but I haven't spent nearly enough time around Eric and Meghan. Yes, you read right, somehow a minor swimsuit incident led to a complete loss of faith in my social skills.

What else is there to do at this point but blog about it, laugh at myself, and hope that someone else will laugh with me? I'm obviously not backing out of the trip based on something so minor. I will end up being ok, probably embarassing myself a few times and never entirely relaxing around Eric and Meghan, but parts of it will be fun. This is one of those beautiful times in life when you bite the bullet and hope for the best.

I spend way too much time organizing my life

I end up going overboard with the whole internet/ connectivity/ online organization thing. I just get so excited at starting new ways to share things- thoughts, photos, opinions, wants. It's silly, but can lead to good things if done in moderation.

That being said, I spent quite some time this evening exploring 43things.com, and its interconnected sister sites, 43people.com, allconsuming.net, and listsofbests.com. This is New Years resolutions to the extreme, and much more. It's all really pretty interesting- people swap opinions on books, movies, food, places, destinations, other users, famous people, and lists. Just go browse around, it's much more fun to look around than to read a description.

I also have decided to give this photo-a-day-for-a-year trend a try. It might actually happen, it might not, but when better to try than the first day of the year? I started a new blog just for these photos- flashbulb365.blogspot.com.

At this point, I know at least Maria, Joey, and my mother are snickering at me, but I love doing stuff like this. It's like looking at the first clean page of a beautiful notebook or filling a plain piece of cheesecloth with stitches. It's so exciting to me. :-P

Yep, I'm ready to go back.

Being home is nice for a while, but eventually exuberance at my return starts to fade, and I remember why I loved the idea of going far away to college in the first place. I love my family and my high school friends, but right now I also love that I will be mostly out of town for the next couple of weeks and then back at school. So it goes.