It’s my birthday! Actually we’re one day after my exciting birthday filled with family and new friends, and lots of strangers telling me, “Happy Birthday.” Overall, success.

Now it’s over. My roommate is gone to the beach for four day, and I’m trying to complete the ridiculous amount of work my two MBA courses have pushed on me. I haven’t been given the next week’s work so I have permitted myself some extra time to write a few words.

I was planning on writing how it feels to be planted in a  new city where the cultural norms are vastly different, even two hours away from Auburn I feel like I’m experiencing a little culture shock, but I think I want to steer into this new feeling where lack of “my people” is really, in no other words, “freaking me out.” Like, there’s this thing when you first graduate college and move, you have to get use to not having planned group lunch outings every single day. I went through that a little, I mean I did move twelve hours away to a new city before. But, then, I came back. In just a few months maybe even weeks I established my posse and had enough ‘people’ interaction to never feel too alone. And really 2017 has rocked for me in terms of filling days with lots of hanging out with friends and filled weekends.

So now, again in a new city that I’m really not that alone in, when I go one single hour without some communication, I freak out. Maybe freak out is too broad of a term. I’m not crying or having panic attacks; I just am really uncomfortable with it all.

Frankly, I’m not “that” alone in this city. For instance this weekend on Friday I went out, I did the complete let the bartender hit on me, post a loud snap story of myself surrounded by friends in a neon lit dance floor, birthday event. Saturday was spent touring Atlanta with family followed by the nice dinner and dessert to Instagram, and Sunday a peaceful day spent riding and chatting with barn family. Like that’s a lot of people in a weekend. I feel like the old Claire-version would be over-whelmed as a self-proclaimed introvert. However, now I’ve just been in my apartment studying for a few hours after this busy weekend, and I’m worrying. Who can I text? I don’t have any unread Snapchats. My apartment is quiet. I just had the most cliche social birthday weekend you can hope for, but I can’t go two hours of quiet now without some sort of negative or uncomfortable aura creeping in.

Part of me looks back at two years ago after graduating and moving, a slightly similar panic that lead to some depression that I wrote about. I wrote about seeing a professional and mental health help that helped me see big-picture versus little-picture problems. But this is different, and I’m just not sure how to conquer it yet.

This feels more selfish. I even get a little ticked off about it. How can I get ticked off when I just had the best weekend. It’s 10:40PM, I’m supposed to be by myself and in bed asleep.

But I am, I’ll sit up for a few more hours probably and read horsey news and flip through Instagram.

It’s just an in-progress challenge, I’ll keep you guys UTD on conquering it.