Home again, home again

I'm home for winter break! My break is always unreasonably long (ha ha, I'm not gloating) and my friends usually return to school before me, so I think I may very well be continuing my de-cluttering project over the next month.

Returning home has already been somewhat stressful. Even aside from all the traveling (I was en route for almost 12 hours yesterday, which doesn't sound bad, but it was real bad), I came home to find that my mother needs $1,000 from me to pay off her old University of Phoenix debts or something. It really depresses me and troubles me that my mother needs so much financial help to me, even though I'm only twenty years old and don't even have my own stable source of income besides the work study that I do to support my educational finances.

Discovering that she needed to borrow from me today put me in quite a bad mood, but then I spent some time with my best friends here at home and had such a good time that it relieved some stress. They are the one constant that I can rely on for smiles and good memories - the real reason I come home, honestly. I would say that I come home to see my family, but actually my family stresses me out. I think this is true for a lot of people. (Is it?)

So in order to avoid family woes as much as possible, I am planning on devoting my time to things that make me happy over this break:

• De-cluttering. The house looks rather worse than I think I left it, despite my mother's claims that it is better. But de-cluttering always gives me a strong sense of satisfaction that I intend to re-invoke while I'm back.


• Reading. A new guy friend of mine has inspired me to be more thoughtful. I have been a fan of the library since the end of high school (it sounds weird to say that - maybe I'm a late library-bloomer?), and I'm thinking of getting some Umberto Eco and perhaps Oscar Wilde to curl up with.


• Being creative. The same friend has inspired me to be more creative with my time. All of my past breaks from school have involved relaxing via mind-numbing intake of non-enriching media. But I do love music, and I love the prospect of writing (the act itself is a slightly different story). There are several projects in these arenas that I want to throw myself back into.


• Spending time with my friends. Friendship is one of the most beautiful things I have right now, and that may sound cliched, but only because the truth about friendship has already been discovered millions of times over. I love my friends.