The Brown Recluse Spider

"Also known as the violin spider, this is seems to be one of the few poisonous (occasionally even deadly) spiders not found in Australia, and instead found in the U.S. Despite my current location in the southern hemisphere, this seems to be exactly what I have turned into. In the past week I have watched approximately fifteen episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, read five issues of The Uncanny X-Men, played an uncounted number of hours of Neverwinter Nights, looked up more information on spiders than any one person ever should, spent almost every minute on Skype, and cleaned my room. In between these tasks, I have attended classes, meals, and slept. Needless to say, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time alone. In my room.
Somehow, I failed to notice this until very recently."

This is what I wrote, intending to publish it, one week ago (scratch that, it's been two weeks now). I fell out of writing it (obviously), and though I could continue along the lines on which I started, I think that a distinct break between that and this is necessary. Much has changed. Namely, the fact that I am no longer a hermit.

Originally, I was going to go into detail about how my reclusive attitude, though not good in many aspects, at least gave me time to think. I would say now, however, that such an "opportunity" to ponder was exactly what I did not need. Thinking, in these days, translates to worrying for me. When I sit down and think about something, nine times out of ten it means that I am worrying about it: wondering what I should do, how I should handle a situation; hoping that I will do well on a test or assignment; being paranoid about how I reacted in a certain situation, and wishing I had handled it differently. I think that I may have become my mother (for those of you who know her, this should make far too much sense, as well as make you cringe).

There was a time when I rarely worried about anything. Indeed, I probably should have worried a little bit more than I did about things like my physical wellbeing (I had a tendency to ignore what my body told me), but it was nice to be free. That's really what it was; free. I have decided that stress is the ultimate prison. When I worried less, I was much more creative, much more philosophical, but since this web of stress has captured me, I seem to have lost some of the traits that I prided the most in myself. I don't know when my transformation occurred. It must have been a slow process, that I did not notice it, starting most likely around I began college.

Almost the entire reason I am in Australia right now is because I recognized that I lost myself. I suppose I've seen it for a little while now, actually. I have several suspects for the reason, but they all seem to biol down to stressors that I did not have before. I must admit, a great deal of my logic was something to the extent of "if I get away from it, maybe I'll see the problems more, and know how to deal with them." Sitting around and thinking for the past however many months has done nothing to solve my problems. My hope is that forgetting about my problems, allowing myself to gain some new perspectives, will prove a better solution.

And so, my conclusion is that giving myself time to think via becoming a recluse, is the worst possible behavior I could possibly engage in.

(Incidentally, I was going to put up a picture of my clean room here, but it is no longer clean. Perhaps I will try to get it back to its less cluttered state and get a picture of it up with my next blog entry.)