Burning up my fuse up here alone

It's the weirdest thing, the song Rocket Man suddenly popping into my head as I sit down to write about my last residency in the Ashland MFA program. Ashland's summer residencies are these intense two-week writing boot camps with long days of lectures, readings, and workshops. They're grueling and exhausting and you'd think I'd be relieved to finally be done, but after I'm home a day or two, there's this crash. And I've realized just now that it's because I kind of get to be a different person at residency. Surrounded by other assorted freaks, geeks, and weirdos, I'm free to stop trying to rein in all my strangeness. I'm not the only one who has to stop in the middle of a walk across campus to plop down and pull out a notebook. I'm not the only one who fixates on weird trivia, who has a Google history that would make me look like a raving lunatic. I'm not the only one who bursts into tears at the drop of a word, or who bursts out laughing at the most inappropriate times, or spends an entire lunch hour alternately laughing and sobbing in public (That literally happened. Like, an entire lunch hour).
I'm not the girl they think I am at home. (I'm so freaking much weirder.)

And this residency was especially - magic is a horrible cliche of a word to use, but that's the only word I can think of. Magic. Like, you wouldn't think that spending an hour with your thesis committee going over all the things that need fixing would be a source of rapturous inspiration, but I walked out of that thesis defense (which I passed - yay) thinking "I can't freaking wait to start revising."
I know I'm usually more structured and coherent, but I'm kind of in this post-graduation haze, hung over and thrumming with words I can't type fast enough to keep up with. 
Anyway, you'll be seeing more of this here blog now that I don't have to spend most of my waking moments reading and/or writing. Any requests on future content?
Anyways, in summary, here is a picture of my kitten.