Chatterbox: Pudding's Place

I am back!

Hello lovelies! I'm back from my official hiatus, and man, does it feel good! I missed you guys a ton when I was on break, even though it turned out to be a good thing. (Not good that I was gone, but good in that I got my life going a direction I wanted it to.) (And side note, the reason why I said 'I am back' instead of 'I'm back' was because it was messing with the formatting of the post title.)

If you're new and you've never seen my name before, hello and welcome to the CB! I hope you love it as much as I do. I've been here about 3-5 years now (the timing is weird and complicated) but I recently stopped getting the magazine (sorry, Admins). I enjoy things like old British shows, Star Trek (TNG especially, but I'm watching DS9 right now), combat boots, and astronomy. I'm a writer (poetry, plays, and novels, but my main project is getting my novel This Dark Night published by the end of this year), artist (used to go by Shhh...Not Telling), dreamer, and reader, so I probably share common interests with all or most of you.

Here's what I've been doing:

-Immediately after my school year ended in May, I went to Europe! I went with my high school's top band, which I was really proud I made it into. (Fun Fact: I play five instruments, but the one I play in band is the clarinet!) I stayed for about a week in a small town in Germany, then drove to some larger German cities, across the Alps, through Switzerland, and to Florence, Italy. I was in Florence for only a few days before driving to Rome, then catching a flight back to Chicago and then back home. I'll probably post stories and pictures once this thread pops up, since I don't want to clog this opening post up too much.

-I was the costume designer for a play! My sister, Poetic Panda, put on a play this summer. It was actually fairly professional and we had an audience of about 100+ people attend. It was honestly kind of hard, but it was so much fun! The play was set in medieval times, and I tried to keep it mostly time-accurate, which meant no visible zippers, no visible buttons, no jeans, etc.

-I went on a mission trip to Flint, Michigan! I saw a couple of you mention that y'all were around the area I was at about the same time, which is kinda crazy to me. I worked around the city, cleaning parks, serving food at a food kitchen, weeding, sorting supplies for homeless people, things like that. It was eye-opening about the things that still need to be done in our world today.

And, uh... that was the fun stuff I did. I also did a lot of thinking about who I am right now, and who I want to be. That's why I kind of took this hiatus in the first place. I was becoming... I don't know, dissastisfied with myself. Like a midlife crisis, except I'm only (spoiler alert) 15. So I took some time off from life to "find myself", I suppose. (Oof, that sounds really, like, sappy and weird. Sorry.) And coming out of that, I can officially say this: if you're feeling dissatisfied, do something new. It doesn't have to be anything big. You don't have to cut your hair or travel to Europe or split from your friend group (haha, isn't that a story in itself). You can just... do something that you've always wanted to do. Drive to a grocery store and buy a pint of ice cream just to eat by yourself. Watch the sunset. Hang glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling. Sit down by someone new when school starts and introduce yourself. Change starts with you. If you want something to be different, do it differently. Take the first step and soon enough, you'll be walking.

So! Uh! On a side note, what's been going on down here? Who's left, who's joined, who's had a birthday or started a new RP or posted some art? I'd love to know! And I challenge you: if (hopefully when) you leave a post on this thread, add a drawing or a photo or a little story of something that you're proud of. Tell me about it. Maybe you got a new haircut. Maybe you finally drew a good hand. Maybe you got an A on a test you were worried about. Whatever it is, share it!

Anyways, thanks for reading this whole long post! My apologies for the whole parentheses thing I have going on in most of the paragraphs; I tend to over use them (see, here I go again). It's great to be back, and here's to another 3-5 years together! *hugs*

~Starseeker