Brian's World

Moving Out

Today I moved 95% of my belongings out of my dorm room at RPI. I wasn’t very sad to be leaving BARH A110, the room I’ve enjoyed for the past two years, but I did find it interesting that I can pack up all of my non-clothes items in under 30 minutes. My walls are decorated with a very small selection of posters to break up the whitespace, and I only include enough pictures on desks/bureaus to provide an even backdrop. This is in stark contrast to many other rooms I visit where people cover the walls from floor to ceiling, sometimes even decorating the ceiling. For a second I was like wow, self, you are a looser if you can pack all of your worldly possessions in under an hour but then I realized that I was actual just being efficient with my possessions, and that most anything important is digital these days anyways.

What did stand out as different this year was the parking lot crowd. It’s possible I didn’t recognize this last year, but it seemed just about everyone was being moved out by a parent (usually a father), While I don’t hold anything against my parents for not helping me move out, I’ve been doing this routine alone since sophomore year and it had never really occurred to me. I suspect a day may come when I wish that I did interact more with my father, but moving out probably isn’t the best way to do so.

Being home is rarely an enjoyable experience these days and I’m starting to think it probably will never be. Despite the fact that I am nearly 22 years old, my mom consistently dictates when I am to do and what she is comfortable with me doing. For example, my dad proposed that I move my desk from the basement to my bedroom so I could spend the majority of my time working in a nicer room that has some windows and lighting. I didn’t even have a chance to consider this idea before my mom installed her opinion, whereby she is uncomfortable with me working in a bedroom because then people will come and visit me in a bedroom and a bedroom is not a hang out zone. Clearly she is afraid of people sitting on a bed. She actually has been for years, while my brother is playing video games upstairs in his bedroom (where there is a desk and a desktop computer) my mom is always weary when Katie and I sit on the bed, which is next to the desk, to interface with my brother. I’m not sure why she is so afraid of people being in bedrooms, but thinking back to my childhood I wasn’t really encouraged to hang out in my bedroom with friends, ever. I almost wonder if I haven’t complained about the aforementioned home issues as much because I’ve been able to easily discuss them with others. Unfortunately this season both individuals I’ve spoken with on this subject are unable to fill in their roles, one moving away from me to deal with more personal concerns and the other only reminding me it’s my fault for being here in the first place because I failed.

Most people enjoy summer as a time to relax, hang out with friends, and take it easy. I do not enjoy any of those things, and would much rather summer be cancelled. During the school year it is moderately acceptable to request time to yourself to work on school assignments and project deadlines but during the summer that all becomes far less easy to do. Its not acceptable for me to spend 3 hours in the evening playing around with an exciting technology project because I should be relaxing and hanging out with others or something like that. Yes, I understand that summer break is one of the few times I can “socialize” with “friends” (read as: ‘hang out’ and ‘2 people’ respectively) but I don’t have a desire or need to do that all the time, and whenever I do try and express this alternate logic I am quickly cast away as a terrible person who is all work and never interested in doing fun things. I struggle to balance more commonly accepted views of “fun” with what I personally find as fun, it is really hard to swing between both ends of the spectrum.

Good night moon.