I'm really having doubts about living in Middlebury. It has its good points, obviously: great apartment, good job (the money could be better, but hey, I'm an English major:) ), and living about a mile from my parents is convenient for both of us in a lot of little ways.

But right now, it seems like my coworkers Megan and Kara and I make up the entire population of Middlebury between 24 and 42.

Exagerration, of course; especially since there's Middlebury College. But for comparison, I looked up this post again*. The thing that's kinda bugging me at the moment is not the inadequacy of my social life. What's bugging me is, quite simply, I do have friends and a social life, but it takes place an hour's drive away.

Multiple times over the past year I've passed up invitations to do something or other because I'd have to drive home afterwards. Overall I'm not spending too much on gas money, but when I make three 80-mile round trips in as many days, it sure seems that way. I wind up limiting myself to only seeing friends on weekends, because as annoying as a late drive home is on Friday night, it would be much worse when I actually have to get up in the morning. And I just now noticed that I try to schedule only one thing, at most two, for a weekend. My dad's birthday vs. a date vs. hanging out with a friend vs. some overdue work - well, wait a minute, why do I only want to do stuff on Saturday night or Sunday afternoon, why can't I make a lunch date the same day as my dad's birthday and stuff? Answer: because I don't have the patience to spend seven hours out of two days just driving all over the place.**

Well, I've made some very perfunctory attempts to find work in the Burlington area, or alternately, a social scene I'd enjoy in Middlebury. Unless something really remarkable happens, then those attempts will become much less perfunctory by my 25th birthday.

*And once I found it, I was a little amused to see that it was almost exactly a year ago. Since then I've killed Onyxia a dozen times and am well into Outland, I probably play about the same amount as back then - possibly even more, without my parents looking over my shoulder these days - but my "main" character is now a different one and I'm in a more serious guild, I go to Drinking Liberally less often but still now and then, I've had date-like events with two different women and used the word "love" in a semi-coherent state regarding a third, I haven't spoken to Gretchen in probably more than six months... not to have a general "year in review," but specific parts of that last post jumped out at me and demanded to be addressed.

** I could always skip Friday Night Magic in this example, of course. And moving wouldn't solve this particular problem entirely, since it just seems to be about wanting more time to myself than I need. But it sure wouldn't hurt.