Summer is here!

This whole week has been me taking one HUGE BREEEAAAATH. This semester was busy. One might even say crazy busy.

I made some huge leaps towards my future, learned a lot about myself, and dealt with a lot of changes. As I finally have time to look back, while this semester flew by and I was so busy I often wanted to just collapse and sleep for forever, it was probably the most meaningful semester of my college career. For the first time since the days of the UC, I felt I really grew this semester.

Things I've learned:

• Friends are the people the treat you with respect, value your company, and trust you for support, assistance, and guidance and are willing to return the feeling.
• Teamwork is hard! But rewarding and lots of fun.
• Making my future happen the way I want it to is going to take a whole lot more activity on my part than just getting good grades and getting a degree.
  
• Knowing your strengths and weaknesses are both equally important in all aspects of your life, self-improvement can only stem from that.
• It's impossible to make everyone happy, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to keep from making anyone unhappy.
  

Things I've learned about myself:

• I'm more comfortable organizing and leading people than I am following and just "doing my part", and I actually have a bit of a knack for leading people when I want to.
  
• I'm a little bit of a control freak, which is probably why I prefer to lead.
• I need to work on a team/with people, I'm given energy by the people around me.
  
• I'm way more talkative than I thought I was, as long as I feel wanted and/or important.
• I clam up and get depressed pretty easily when I don't feel wanted or accepted.
• I can do almost anything I set my mind to, as long as I keep myself motivated.
• I prefer being to busy to inactivity.
• I can't be cool or hip, I'm a nerd and that's all there is to it.
• I hate being wrong and sometimes have a hard time admitting it (I'm working on it!)
• I can be independent.

I have sort of distanced myself from some people this last semester. It wasn't totally intentional, but I think I'm becoming better off that I'm not completely dependent on them for a social life anymore. I'm not saying who, as I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea. I love all of my friends, but I was feeling less and less welcome around certain people and I needed to remind myself that I am a valuable person, and that people enjoy having me around. I made several new friends this semester and I think I've become a better, happier person because of it. I'll still be hanging out with and in contact with all of my friends, but now I won't have to feel unwelcome or like "that guy" in the group, as if they don't want to hang out, they can just make up some lame excuse when I call them!

My plans this summer are:

• get in shape (for real this time)
• take a game from start to completion (making a game, not playing!)
  
• learn to motivate myself to get out and call people!
• not go broke.
• maybe take a trip or two to see some people (I'm thinking LA, New York, who knows, maybe even Ohio!)

Oh yeah, and I tried to take some pictures of my apartment, and I lost the software to upload pictures from my camera to the computer! The search begins...hopefully I can find it. Sorry!

Quick Update

Things are still super busy for me (two more weeks to go!), so here's a quick update on my life:

• I got into Manifest! I'll be displaying a Portal level design project I've been working on with a few other designers since January in the glass curtain gallery from May 14th to Mid-June!
• I still wake up at 7 am, go to school, work/class/have meetings, and return to my apartment around 10 pm every weekday.
  
• On tuesday, I turned in my keys to the slugger household. The end of another age of my social life.
• I'm in my new studio now! I'll try to take a picture of it on saturday and post.

That's all I've really got going right now. I haven't had the chance to to any self-reflection in the past forever, so no deep feelings about anything right now.