Hit The Nail On The Head

Earlier in the week, I agreed to attend a concert with a friend. Since I barely know the band, I've been sitting in my room for the last two hours listening to their music, so when I see them live next week I won't feel like an idiot.

Great story, eh? Don't worry - despite my lack of creative blogging lately, something that mundane will never qualify as news worthy of a post. Paragraph 1 was merely the setup: my brain does its finest churning while under the influence of music (especially mellow stuff, which is the case tonight).

Since May, I've been taking note of the personality changes between my pre-studying self and my post-studying self.  I expected that my personality wouldn't come back right away (just ask anyone who's had a lobotomy), but now that it's been a few months, I've been increasingly worried by the fact that many of my pre-studying characteristics and hobbies have not returned (and will probably never return). I feel like the kid who dropped an armful of marbles and is now trying unsuccessfully to chase after every last one (feel free to insert a 'she lost her marbles' quip here - I backed myself into that one).

Tonight, while the unknown band's music played, I read through my entire blog archive.
Conclusion: I am a completely different person now.  Completely. I can still hear my voice in the older writings, yet I'm beginning to feel the same way as I do when I watch home videos of my toddler self; I realize that the person I'm staring at is me but find it hard to relate or identify with that former version of myself.

My interests aren't gone - they've just changed.  Because I've changed, which is totally normal between the ages of 22 and 24. Inserting a 7-month period of essentially cutting all ties with everything and everyone during that time simply accentuated/accelerated the changes that were going to happen anyway. Even without the studying, the changes still would have occurred, but it would have been more of an effort on my part to notice and track them.

So, much to my relief, my personality is not gone. When any event serious enough to temporarily erase your personality slate occurs (studying...or sickness, deaths, breakups, etc...), it's fascinating to see which old traits return, which don't, and which completely new ones pop up.
Kind of like a garden of unknown seedlings that are just starting to break through the soil (dumb final metaphor, but it's late, so forgive me).

What are they?