I think I'm changing

I feel like I've been acting kind of strange lately. This morning I woke up and the unknown man I invited to spend the night with me asked how much I would charge him and I said "Oh, don't worry about it," rather than taking the time to outline how much he needed to pay me.

I'm lying about that, but I DO think I've been acting weird.

Well, maybe I shouldn't say "weird", but I have been acting in a way that I don't readily recognize as normal for myself.

The biggest difference that I've been noticing in myself is that I've really been taking schoolwork seriously. I've been doing assignments ahead of time rather than the night before, I've been doing "close readings" instead of my normal "read and use context clues" when the language used is excessively...large (for lack of a better word), I've been participating in classroom discussions (which is something I usually try to avoid at all costs, and is very hard because about half of my classes have less than 10 people in them), and I'm just very excited in general when it comes to working.

I'm not saying that I never cared about school, but I have had the tendency to slack off as much as possible as long as I can still look like I did my work and get a good grade out of it. I'm hoping that this new attitude persists for the rest of my life because I must say that it's quite beneficial.

A couple other things that I've noticed:

1. I want to be alone more than usual. I've always had my periods of time when I just wanna be by myself and do my own thing, but it's hard to get those moments in college, so I've just been hanging around. But lately, I haven't been asking anyone if they want to go to the cafeteria and I just go to the snack bar, pick something up, and eat by myself in my room. When my roommates are gone, I rejoice in it and I find myself hoping that they'll be gone longer or that they'll leave period, which I feel bad about because I absolutely love the one (and like the other).

2. I think I'm becoming more emotional. I never had a problem expressing myself emotionally and I tend to avoid certain situations that I know will bring about a certain emotion if I'm not ready to express it at that moment. About an hour ago, I was listening to music on my laptop which was attached to my wonderful Altec Lansing speakers when I decided that I wanted to listen to some Japanese ballads. So I listened to a few and then I started listening to "Kohibitoyo" by Mayumi Itsuwa. It's a beautiful song about a woman being done wrong by her boyfriend and then left to die (if I remember correctly). Anyway, I've listened to this song quite a few times in the past, BUT THIS TIME, I felt tears welling up in my eyes. Then I started doing that thing people do when they're about to cry: Think of other sad things to push themselves over the edge. I never got around to a full-on cry, but it was a weird experience nonetheless.

3. This is TMI, but I started my period yesterday. I've been thinking about the change above and thinking that maybe it was a result of being hormonal, but here's the kicker: I've never been one to be so emotional when it's that time of the month, and I can recall other instances in recent months when I felt over-emotional during, so that's another change to note.

4. I also think that my favorite color may be changing from purple to yellow. I don't know how I feel about that one.

I have class in 10 minutes so I'm gonna go ahead and post this baby. I just felt like I really needed to get some things off of my ample chest ;)