A Fortnight In The Windy City
So!

Here we are again.

I've been in Chicago for two weeks now (hence the subject heading, duh). And I feel like I've come home. I feel so ridiculously comfortable here in so many respects already. Granted, I'm not really living here yet (consult me once I have a job and a place of my own), but in terms of my relationship with the general envirionment, I'm loving it. Any lingering fears of not having the constitution for or ability to adapt to a more urban lifestyle have been pretty much obliterated at this point. Suspicions that I might actually thrive in the Big City are panning out.

And beyond my relationship with the city itself, I feel like I've left my stifling Cocoon of Despair a couple hundred miles behind me. As long suspected, Indiana was breaking my brain. Not Indiana per se, of course, but rather a web of destructive Indiana-related associations in my head. Getting away from that has made me feel the closest to fully-functional that I've felt in a looooooooooooooooooooooooong time. And so quickly!

I think I've seen gloriamunty literally every day that I've been here. Which has just been so incredibly fantastic. We've been working together for several hours every day during the week (she on writing, I on my portfolio). That in and of itself has been wonderful, insofar as I'm producing work again. Being productive. Not just idling, for a change. And if my productive presence is helping P. to be productive, all the better. And then, I've also begun going out and attempting to have something resembling a social life again, hanging out with P. and prayinmantis (who, quite frankly, I have not seen nearly enough of since I've been here...but she's one of those people with a "job", so I guess she has an excuse) and their extended group of friends an awful lot more than has been the norm for me of late. And I'm enjoying it so much.

Now, I'm not delusional. Not completely, anyway. I know that, given the short amount of time I've been here and the nature of my stay thus far, this has been almost like a vacation. So I'm biding my time until the honeymoon is over to make anything more than tentative statements. But I will tentatively state that I feel better than I have in a long time, and I can see that generally being the case for the foreseeable future. Because I've started living again. And that rocks.

And expect to hear from me more frequently. The amount of difficulty I had in molding my thoughts into words and hacking this entry into something at all readable indicates that I need to start writing on a regular basis again, and how!