Guten Morgen Pubski! Been a while, huh? Wow. Lot has happened. Let's get some subheadings going. School? Continues to go. I'm now in the middle of my third year, sitting on a 3.85 overall GPA and a 4.0 in my major (German Language & Literature). Plus, I have one gen. ed. class left, and then I can focus on my major // whatever the fuck I feel like studying. So academics are 100% not a worry, which is super nice. I'm pretty good at school. More importantly, I'm going to Germany!! I got funding from the department to go to Berlin for a week (beginning of March) and start work on my honors thesis (on ETA Hoffmann's Nachtstücke); after that, I'll begin a two week tour of German-speaking Europe with my study group, and finally settle down at Freiburg im Breisgau for a full-ass semester at the Albert Ludwigs Universität. I'm incredibly excited for all of this-- mostly just being able to speak German exclusively for so long. Since getting home, I've kind of realized that I need to be speaking German regularly to be happy now? Like, I haven't met any German speakers in Texas. Expected. But now that I'm fluent enough to think in German, it feels like there's this huge part of my lived experience that I can't communicate to the people around me. Looking forward to removing that, lol. (And honestly I'd rather live 100% in German than 100% in English) Friends! Ha. haha. ha. Wow. Over the summer, my best friend broke up with his girlfriend and started dating an acquaintance of ours. Apparently some of our friends thought he moved on too fast or whatever, and this became an excuse for them to air out dozens of grievances with him reaching back to, like, freshman year. The people that actually had real shit to be mad at him about are no longer mad at him, but certain friends can't get over their empathetic anger or whatever. It's mostly been a really great way of seeing who our real friends are. Became clear that a few of our friends may be cool to hang out with, but they kind of suck as friends, and they only act like our friends because we're convenient to them. Which is kind of a shitty realization to have, but better to have it than not. So we don't hang out with them anymore-- I pretty much have like 4 friends, all of whom I'm super close with. It's kind of ideal. Love or whatever. I'm not gonna get into details because there's no point, but since we last spoke: A few failed attempts at relationships A few flirtations Vague sadness Nothing earth-shattering. But I watched this weird German film about a dude in a weird relationship and had a sudden realization: when I look for relationships or sex or whatever, I'm trying to fill a need that I absolutely won't fill by finding a relationship. I don't know what that need is, or how to fill it, but I have at least a bit more clarity than before. We'll see if that goes anywhere. Odds and ends I started seeing a therapist at school after a particularly rough depressive episode. It was cool to have time to just think about my mental health and not feel guilty for not doing work or whatever, but my therapist kinda sucked. After our first session, I told him that I was out of the depressive episode, but I'd like to still talk about strategies for coping, root causes, etc. We talked for the next 3 weeks about adjusting to college and friend drama. Not what I was looking for at all. Hoping to find a better therapist, either in Germany or once I'm back. I started working out over the summer. Body positivity is at an all-time high. Not only that, but I realized how nice it is to just be able to do things? Like, I don't have to worry if I'll be able to lift a medium-weight thing. Or, I'm better at climbing trees. Or, I picked up a(n American) football for the first time in years and immediately was throwing well and farther than I can recall ever throwing. It's great. I'm sure there's more, but it can wait. We have 51 more Pubskis in 2018!