It's a good thing I have visitors soon.

Save me. I'm quickly becoming one of those people who tell their life stories to anyone who has the bad judgement to ask "How are you?". Several things have combined to make me this way - let's take what I hope is a comical-and-not-too-whiny tour of my descent into crazy, shall we? A.A. Milne has agreed to be our tour guide, so there's that.

We need to start way back in May. My boyfriend left me unexpectedly after 2.5 years, then almost immediately after, I moved here to Peterborough where I know no one. I subsequently hermitted up in my apartment for the month of May because I didn't feel like making new friends just yet.

This is the greatest rendition of Eeyore I have ever seen.

I don't think that was an unreasonable reaction given the circumstances. So then my field work started, in which I got to do what I love (watch birds), but I did it alone, and it required ridiculous hours such that I wasn't able to start, let alone maintain, a social life. 

You're damn right I talked to the birds. 

The only people I had any semi-regular contact with were Joe, my supervisor, and Kristen, another Master's student under the same supervisor, but even then I would go a week or more without seeing them. I would hear  my neighbours downstairs, but we had opposite working hours so we didn't really cross paths. So I didn't accumulate any friends, needless to say, although I did feel like I learned a lot about birds and agriculture. I also hit the first round of homesickness. This marks the point where I began telling cashiers stories of my friends and family, and expounding on the plight of grassland birds in hay fields, just to be able to talk to someone.. Even I want to tell Past Sarah to shut the heck up.

"I've got a twin, and my best friend gets married next summer, and bobolinks are at risk!"

Then my field work ended at the start of August, as it did for everyone in the same line of bird work that I do, so Joe and Kristen both took well-deserved vacation time. Kristen left for a cottage, then went home to Windsor, and is now camping in Algonquin Park. Joe tidied up loose student ends across Ontario and has now gone to the Adirondacks for a couple of weeks. Which leaves me both work-less and aquaintance-less. This was fine for the first week, as it let me catch up on sleep and go back to a regular eating/sleeping schedule, but without the field work to keep me active, that quickly led to too much of both of those things.

A month of this would not have had good results.

I loathe jogging, but needed some form of cardio, so I started skipping rope. At first I had to stop every 20 jumps or so because I had mis-timed the hop. And, the day after my first round of skipping, I thought I might be dying. Muscles and tendons I didn't know I had were screaming at me. Walking was painful and stairs were problematic. It took me three days to recover and try again, but I am pleased to report it has gotten much better now, and I'm even coordinated enough to do at least 150 jumps without having to disentangle my feet. 

Proportions eerily accurate. Minus the tail.

But skipping is not a multi-person activity. I had solved my couch potato-ness but not my lack of social contact. But now I had gone so long without seeing people I knew, and without any social obligations, that the thought of making the effort to ask someone I had met once or twice to go out to eat/go to a movie/go for coffee, or even do these things by myself, was actually more than a little stressful. Especially when one of those few people would ask me to do something without any advance notice.

You mean...I'd have to shower? Now??

I'll make no excuses for myself: I'm being a baby. A shy, somewhat lazy, non-confident, nervous baby. Which brings us, finally, to present-day me. I haven't seen anyone I know in 2.5 weeks. I haven't had a real in-person conversation with anyone for that period of time as well. I've been trying to arrange to go see a movie with someone but it hasn't worked out yet. My self-confidence swings between so-low-I-don't-make-eye-contact-at-the-grocery-store to so-high-I-think-everyone-wants-to-know-everything-about-me. Most recently I swamped a few people (who I haven't seen in years) on Facebook with the whole story of my university career and fieldwork to date, along with some random Italian language knowledge, just because they asked me how I was. Before that I was having trouble responding to texts because I didn't think I had anything interesting enough to say. My confidence is bi-polar.

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         :D I'm the only one! :D                                    :( I'm the only one :(

I am so very glad that I have some visitors arriving soon. Not just for my sanity's sake, but for the sake of the people who have to deal with me. And soon after that I'll start classes at Trent, in which I will hopefully make some friends - if I don't scare them off by being neurotic.

And I've just realized this whole blog is just me telling my life story to people, like I've been doing to random cashiers and Facebook friends. Heh. I hope you find it funny, if not interesting :)

<3 BirdNerd Sarah