• I didn’t reunite with last summer’s boot camp personal trainer dude. Upon arrival I immediately got strep throat and was down for about ten days, then it felt like a succession of visitors and events and like I couldn’t really afford it, so instead I got a punch pass for the local gym. And seriously, that thing was like the loaves and fishes. According to my tally, I should have run out of visits about ten times ago, but I never got turned away at the front desk. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Sara + too much unstructured time = fear & loathing. I’m okay without my routine for three or four weeks, but after that…oy. I tried to sort of have a routine, but being displaced and not having the external things that normally help create routine made it pretty hard. This is one of the main reasons I’m so happy to be going home. I covet control (or at least the illusion of it) too much to handle eight weeks of absolute “freedom.” Doing whatever you want whenever you want really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and it isn’t freedom. Actually, it’s a kind of hell. FYI.

• Nonetheless, I did get done what I needed to on book #3. I still have a ton of work cut out for me as soon as I get settled at home.

I learned that I could never survive life in the suburbs, or any place too far from an urban center. Maybe some place in the country if it was really the country country. City or country. But not this in-between.

• It was good to take that four-week break from blogging and reading blogs and all the social networking stuff. While I was away, I read (in a Paula Huston book) this Pascal quote (which I might have wrong, because now I’m quoting it from my journal): “It is rare we see ourselves as we are. Instead, we strive constantly to embellish and preserve our imaginary being, and neglect the real one.” It seems like so much of the blogging and networking stuff is about embellishing and preserving our imaginary being, right? Creating a person that we want to put out into the world? I mean, I guess we do that in a way all the time, but the Internet makes it so easy. So it felt good and right to take a break from the buffing and polishing of that public self and get re-acquainted with the real one. Although, extended time with the real self is no day at the park.

Absence from my normal life does indeed make the heart grow fonder. I’m enthused about fall, and not just because it’s football season. I feel very back-to-school-ish. September 1 is always better than January 1 in my book.

• For the first time in my life, I wore shorts nearly every day this summer. And yet my legs are still as pasty pearly white as ever. It’s my fate.

See you next week, when I’ll be blogging from home sweet home.