Hello, old friends. It’s been too long. So long, in fact, that to be completely honest I feel terribly out of practice and have been stressing out a bit over what to post here first. So, to break the ice while I attempt to rediscover my blogging voice, here are some photos from this quarter:

(Click on each photo to see a description of it at Flickr.)

One of my good friends (and fellow Gutenberg students) has described summer as a “pit-stop on the highway of life”—a time to relax, refuel…. and just sit there. Going nowhere.

Mind you, take my friend’s words with a grain of salt—he despises summer with rarely-seen fervor. But this year, I think he has a point.

I know it’s an odd sentiment from someone whose summer has been characterized by ceaseless activity, but I, too, have felt “paused” since the middle of June. Partly, I know, this is due to the unsettledness of my worldly possessions—one look at my bedroom floor, piled three layers deep with clean (or dirty; who can tell?) clothes, reveals the story of a girl who is perching, not nesting.

Another contributing factor is the absence of friends who became dear to me over the course of the school year. This is the first time I’ve had to deal with class- and house-mates leaving me for the summer, and I can’t say I like it.

But more than the practical realities of far-away friends or a messy room, something else is not quite right… something in the air at Gutenberg that is as hard to pinpoint as it is conspicuously absent from my summer.

It can’t be simply the absurd level of busy-ness that my life reached last school year, because between working at my anonymous retail location, shooting and editing four weddings, and trying to get my fledgling photography business off the ground, I’ve been rivaling that level all summer.

There is a qualitative difference, I’ve decided, between my activities at Gutenberg last year and those I’ve occupied myself with this summer. My summer undertakings have all locked my focus squarely on this temporal existence of ours. They’re fun, they’re challenging, they’re engaging—but they leave me weighted to the ground—engulfed by daily matters and completely oblivious to bigger, greater goings on.

Thankfully, Gutenberg does not hesitate to jackhammer away the kind of cement shoes I’ve been pouring myself all summer—eternal importance is peeking through the very weave of its curriculum. One cannot put themselves through the readings and discussions and interactions at Gutenberg without asking themselves what this whole “life” thing is all about—about what’s really, truly important. My soul is beginning to yearn for this atmosphere of fumbling and frank exploration.

My parents and I stopped by Gutenberg tonight as we were running errands, and we took the opportunity to check out the room I will be living in come fall. This tiny room, which I have longed to live in since I was ten years old (a story for another post, perhaps), has been tickling the back of my mind all summer—a tantalizing reminder of the school year that lies ahead. But not until tonight, as we measured for curtains and a desk, did the reality of the coming year really hit me.

Suddenly, that amorphous feeling of Gutenberg nostalgia solidified into four walls, a ceiling and a floor—this room would be my Gutenberg. This is where I would read, and laugh, and cry, and have my mind blown in ways I can’t even imagine. It was all real. We were coming back for another year. And I couldn’t have been happier.

I have to admit: as far as pit-stops go, this summer’s been a pretty nice one (definitely one of those fancy gas stations that has really clean bathrooms). I have so much to be thankful for, and so little to really complain about. I know that. I do.

But even so, I hope you’ll understand me when I say: I’m ready to hit the road.

Wow. My freshman year is over. I’m a sophomore now. How on earth did that happen?

I don’t believe I have any poignant observations to make about this year’s passing that didn’t come spilling out in my last entry. Suffice it to say, it came and went more quickly than I would have thought possible—and my surroundings have changed so dramatically from two weeks ago that I’m having a hard time calling up the details of my life for the last nine months. It was a relief to see a couple of girls from my class at a small social gathering last week; their presence reassured me that this whole thing hasn’t been a bizarrely-detailed dream.

As I observed at the end of last school year, summer always sneaks up on me and then rushes by before I’ve had a chance to properly enjoy it. But at least, as I head into this summer, I already feel like it is practically over; this either means that I’m finally becoming more realistic, or that summers are getting even shorter. I guess we’ll see.

Part of my increasingly fatal practicality is the realization that summer ‘to-do’ lists rarely get ‘to-done’. But because I would hate to let that long-time optimist living inside of me die for good (that was sarcasm), I’m going to make one anyway. Here, to keep me accountable (and to give you an idea of what I’m up to if I’m not posting here) are some of my goals for the summer:

• Once again, I need to make some money. Quite a bit of money, actually; I want to cover as much of next year’s rent as I can before the school year starts. My primary source of income will still be my anonymous retail location, but I have several photography jobs lined up as well.
• As a corollary to that, I would like to develop my photography business further. I have already taken steps towards this—especially to improve my post-processing capabilities. More on this later. (Maybe.)
• We all know what very important book is coming out on July 21st, right? RIGHT? My goal is to read all six Harry Potter books in a row before the seventh and final book is released.
• As loathe as I am to contemplate schoolwork at the moment, I suppose I ought to practice my Greek a little bit—I’d hate to lose my whole first year over the summer.
• I want—no, I am going to build a bookcase. After expressing my desire to buy an unfinished bookcase and paint it up for my room at Gutenberg next year, Dad suggested that I just build one. That sounded pretty exciting, so with my Dad’s help, I’m going to do just that this summer. I’ll keep you posted on its progress.
• If you ask me, Lylium.org could use a little freshening up. It’s been almost a year since I unveiled the current design, and although I love it, feel that a nip here and a tuck there could help me set the site’s design perfectly in alignment with its evolving purpose and style. Wish me luck on that.
• Oh, and… I should probably finish moving into my Parents’ house before it’s time to move out again. (My mom just almost had a heart attack when she read that—my boxes of crap are currently lining all of our tiny houses’ hallways—just kidding, Mom! I’ll be done in a few days! )

So. There are some of my possibly-underwhelming-but-quite-a-relief-from-the-school-year plans for the summer. What about you? Are you doing anything exciting this summer? Let’s hear about it.

And so, another spring break hobbles to a close, and another quarter takes off from the starting line.

That is my way of saying that you will not be hearing as much from me for a while. I enjoyed posting every day during spring break very much; it did, as I hoped it would, re-enchant me with Lylium.org. So I hope to avoid any more month-long silences.

But the sad reality is that school is an all-consuming force, and if I am honest with myself, I know that posting every day is not a feasible reality. At least, not if I hope to also attack my schoolwork vigorously—which I do.

I have great hopes for this quarter. It is a fresh new start—and it is my last chance this year to really get in there and apply myself to the task of learning. I’m looking forward to taking on that challenge.

So, for now, auf wiedersehen. I hope it will not be too long.

Yesterday, as I mentioned, I got my hair cut. And because I was wise enough to realize that my hair would never look as good as it did when styled by a professional, I took advantage of the opportunity to have a portrait session with myself—something I have not done properly since last July.

There is nothing quite like trying to take a really good self portrait to make you appreciate being behind the camera. Framing and focus become dangerous games when you can’t look through the lens. And after spending a good chunk of time patiently trying and retrying to get the focus just so, taking my camera off of that tripod and taking pictures of other things was one of the most empowering feelings in the world.

It’s funny, though; I think that because of all the extra effort and concentration necessary to make a good self portrait, by the time I have gotten those few great shots, I have learned so much more than if I had taken a similarly good shot of another person. Kind of like how forcing yourself to translate English to Greek makes translating Greek to English a piece of cake.

Click on over to Flickr to see just a few of my favorite shots from yesterday’s session.

And so, after an excruciatingly long night full of writing and not writing and accidentally falling asleep and the consumption of obscene amounts of junk food, I turned in my final papers this morning.

Another quarter has sauntered to a close, and I am a free woman—For a week and a half.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve already put the bookend on my second quarter at Gutenberg. It truly seems like only yesterday that I was pacing back in forth in my parents’ garage in the waning summer, trying to decide if I wanted to embark on this adventure that could potentially turn my world upside down.

I did. And it has. And I’m glad.

This quarter has also seen another major transition in my life: my move out of my parents’ house and into a house with other students. The process of adjusting myself to life semi on my own has yielded quite a few humorous anecdotes (and perhaps a few sober reflections) that I really ought to share with you.

Which I should have plenty of time to do, because… in an effort to kick-start my blogging mojo, I am going to force myself to post once a day, every day, until spring break is over. Think of it as a mini NaBloPoMo. Or think of it as my effort to suck up to you after neglecting you for an entire quarter. Either way, it will hopefully make Lylium.org a more interesting place for the coming weeks.

So. Until tomorrow.

Green is basically my favorite color. I am part Irish. I have red hair. My name means Ireland, for heaven’s sake.

All of this means that I am contractually obliged to get excited about St. Patrick’s Day.

So it was with much jubilation that yesterday I donned my very green apparel and prepared for a big night of… grocery shopping. And watching movies with friends. And taking pictures of myself in my room at 1:00 in the morning, while the UofO campus caroused drunkenly around my house.

Personally, I bet I had more fun.

Every person on the planet has a set of defining characteristics. Whether we consciously articulate it or not, I think you and I both have a list of things that we take for granted about ourselves; things that we assume we can’t change because they are just a part of us.

My own list of these kind of characteristics has defined me for as long as I can remember. I am a redhead. I am creative and I procrastinate and I like to follow rules and be right. I loathe spiders. These are some of the things that make me me.

Also on this list, for as long as I can remember, has been the fact that I cannot sing. I still remember the patience with which my father tried to to teach me a song I had to sing for a play I was in—and my sad realization that it was not going to work out. I still remember my aunt telling me how her voice teacher in high school had dismissed her with the horrifying edict, “You just don’t have the pipes. Maybe you should join a choir.”

Through my entire childhood and adolescence, I assumed that I, also, did not “have the pipes.” I loved to sing on Sunday morning with the rest of our church and belt out songs when nobody else was in the house, but I still believed that I “couldn’t sing.” Of course I couldn’t. That was just part of being Erin.

So I was as surprised as anyone else when I decided to join the Gutenberg College “A Cappella Gospel Choir” that began practicing at the beginning of winter term. It probably had something to do with the fact that the flyer advertising the choir proudly proclaimed “No skill necessary!”

But a funny thing happened as the choir began to practice—I didn’t find out that I secretly have an operatically strong voice (because I don’t), but I did discover that I have a voice… I discovered that I could match a pitch successfully, that I could carry a tune, that I had a range and a name (soprano!)—in short, I discovered that I could sing.

And so it was with deep satisfaction that I stood in front of the gathered crowd with my choir last night at the annual Gutenberg College Student Art Show. I was not the strongest voice, or even close, but I sang my heart out. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself there. Life never ceases to surprise me.

One month—it is, as far as I can remember, the longest unintentional hiatus I have taken from Lylium.org since it began last February.

I say the hiatus was unintentional, and I mean it. Almost every night I have intended to write about something or other that was happening—about the stressfulness of school, about something funny my friends said, about this or that aspect of photography, about the fact that I moved out for the first time (!).

But it’s funny how evenings slip into days into weeks into… months. And there always seems to be a pressing assignment, an important conversation, and an existential crisis ready and waiting to fill that space of time that might have been used for blogging. It seems that no matter what I do these days, life is too full of living to make room for blogging.

I am not, however, giving up. Now that I have broken my month-long silence, I am going to make a concerted effort to blog more often—to let those assignments and conversations and crises seep into my writing instead of preventing me from writing at all.

I hope you all will come along for the ride.

P.S. I recently uploaded a multitude of photos to Flickr. Here are the highlights:

At the beginning of last December I had the privilege of a portrait session with some friends from our church and their children. You can view some highlights of that session here.

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I mentioned at the end of last year that I was shooting a wedding all by myself. I have finally uploaded my very favorites from that wedding to Flickr, and you can view them in a set here.

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And last but not least, I have updated my set of photos from college with some from the last several weeks—including a few of my new room and roommate! You can view that set here.

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P.P.S. I apologize that the pictures are appearing in a wonky way right now. I am too tired to fix it tonight.

As I mentioned Last year (which, by the way, makes me feel old and vaguely nauseas as I contemplate the speed with which that year has sped), snow is a big deal in Oregon.

Today (or rather, yesterday), it visited us again in such grand proportions that some friends and I were forced to abandon our studies and spend the morning building a snow fortress.

Because in Oregon you can STUDY every day; but how many days can you build a snow fortress? Eh? Eh?

That’s what I thought.

This was also the first snow I recorded with my “new” camera. You can see the photos from today here.