It's been over a year since I've written here. I apologize to then-regular readers and those who linked to me for disappearing from the series of tubes, and I'm glad to be back. There are three aspects of my life that I want to touch on as context for where I'm writing from these days:

1. Academia
I've been cracking the books for my Plan of Concentration (senior thesis project, for those unfamiliar with Marlboro College). I realized this term that I needed a grounding in theoretical literary criticism to really make my point, and as such I'm reading Eagleton's Literary Theory: An Introduction, Lentricchia's After the New Criticism, and a collection of essays titled Contemporary Literary Theory. It's all a bit of a mess to dive right into; I'm only just getting a sense of what Frye and Poulet and Derrida were on about. It would be wonderful to have the time and leisure to read through their primary works, but that's just not an option right now. I should have enough of the background to make my case over the next couple of weeks, though.

2. Work
I left my longtime work-study job in the computer lab (where the primary job description was to wait for the printer to run out of toner, then change the toner cartridge and repeat step 1) for a position tutoring in the academic support services office. I've been planning for a while now to go into editing when I graduate, and this job has done everything to encourage that path. I find fulfillment in the faces that come in and out of my office, asking questions about style manuals, comma splices, and paragraph structure. The joy of seeing someone come in a second time and learning that they took something away from their last visit, that I was able to help them work through their problem, is a feeling that I look forward to experiencing in a professional environment.

3. Home
For the first time in my life, and thankfully from here on out, I'm consistently living in the same place as my wonderful fiancée Laura. She graduated this past Spring and moved out to VT to be near me. I get to spend most of my days with her, as opposed to the two or three days per two or three months that we could arrange over school breaks. She's a good influence on me academically, and I can't express just how drastically my day-to-day life has improved on account of her.

3.5 Home (the rest of it)
The previous section ended up being much more about Laura than I had planned or expected, but it makes sense in retrospect. My home life outside of my time with Laura is, depending on which aspect you're looking at, either in a state of extreme flux or just plain boring. I still spend time with my friends at school, but not nearly as much as I used to on account of the workload we all have, and as far as my family goes, I have trouble keeping track of who's where when doing what and for how long. Either way, it's hard for me to extrapolate in great detail on either one; I don't have the background for one and the other means more to me if it's not noteworthy and merely an accepted part of my everyday life.

This blog began, in its original form as a way for me to keep in touch with family and friends when I was abroad in Sri Lanka. It shifted to become a place where I shared with a broader audience my thoughts, musings, and verbal art. With all the changes I've been through over the past several years, it's not hard for me to see how I had trouble drawing a line between what was and wasn't alright to expose. At this stage, I can see a place for this sort of expression in my life: a virtual location where I can talk about issues personal and global, without sharing more than I'm comfortable sharing.

And on that note, I have to go write a paper taking New Criticism to task for discounting extra-textual context. I'll be back. Soon.