The Swing of Things (Update)

To sum up the last two weeks in one word: wow.


I really didn't know how or where to begin with this post. So much has been going on, and getting back into the swing of things has been pretty difficult. So many new things have developed and so many more things are coming up. I do want to express some thoughts, review a few lessons learned, and take a look ahead just to clear things up a bit. To do this in a way that is most coherent and easy to understand, I'm just going to list everything out.

This update post was difficult to do for many reasons, one being so much time has passed that I don't remember as much of it as I would want for a good post, so instead I'm just going to summarize everything really quickly. If I have the time/motivation, I definitely want to revisit these individually because each of them has been a very defining incident in my life, but unfortunately, my brain is not cooperating and I don't want to write something that I'm not satisfied with, so this will have to do for now.

1. Hospital
As some of you may know, I had a brief stay in the hospital the first three days of July. I was not injured physically, but I needed a break from issues at home for the sake of my mental health and safety. I do intend to go more in detail about this in another blog post (hopefully in the near future) about mental health and self help, so look forward to that if you're curious. I apologize to all the friends that were trying to contact me but couldn't, as my phone was dead and no wifi was available. But since I'm back now, if you're reading this, contact me and let's go do something!

2. Internship
I've started an internship at the San Jose City Council working in the District 4 office (don't worry, it's nothing like the Hunger Games... yet...) and so far it's been pretty amazing. I've been given an official ID on one of those retracting badge reels, which probably made me more fascinated than it should have, but as I always say, it's the little things in life that make it exciting. I'm lucky when I started when I did, because in July, the dress code is a lot less strict, something that I wasn't quite aware of, but should have been. The work is typical office work, and there isn't always something for the interns to do, so I spent my lunch break on the second day reorganizing the supplies in the drawers. Still I'm never too bored as the people watching opportunities are endless; the office is on the top floor of the building and the view is spectacular.

I conveniently take the bus home as it leaves just a few minutes after my shift is over, and in those fifty minutes I listen to music and practice my "resting bitch face" so no one dares to sit in the seat next to me. I end the day feeling pretty badass (and productive).

3. Blog Name
As you can see, I've changed my blog name to "The Quintessential Introvert" because I feel like it embodies me as a person much better than the previous one. Obviously, the entire title is a mouthful, which is why I shortened it for the URL, but I don't like it too much. I know I'm definitely going to change it in a year, because I have some big plans coming up and hopefully I can follow through with them. I usually intensely dislike having to label myself, but I feel comfortable being an introvert because it explains so many characteristics of my personality. I am guilty of being a self-diagnoser, so far coming up with a range of mental problems, including ADHD, depression, OCD, anxiety, and bipolar disorder, and that's just the ones that I can remember to name right now. Obviously I don't have all of them to the degree where it's an actual concern, although some of them I do, but after really looking into the introvert-extrovert spectrum, I found that some of these "problems" are actually just introvert personality traits. I'm reading a book right now called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain and so far it's pretty interesting. I have a draft of a post about being the "quintessential introvert" waiting to be expanded on, so after I finish the book, I will be working on that and hopefully posting it very soon. ◊