As I've been spending a lot of time by myself this summer, I've had time to reflect on quite a lot of things. When you're alone, you have no one to talk to so you have to figure out other ways to pass the time. For me, I like to think and put my thoughts down in words. I end up thinking about a lot of things. Some of that stuff is just what I'm going to do for the week and it's pretty unimportant. But other times it's more serious, like how I reflect on the person I have become in a short amount of time.

One of the things that I've noticed is that I'm not the person I used to be. It's common for someone to constantly be changing. I remember in high school, people would say you change so much when you go to college. I just thought whatever and didn't give it much thought. But now that it's the summer before my last year of college, I can see that they were right. I've changed so much. While some of those changes were good, I'm seeing that perhaps I've lost a part of myself in the process.

I used to care and was so passionate about things that I considered bigger than myself. One of the big things that I would say I identified most was being a vegetarian. I've always been an animal lover and became a vegetarian because I thought it was wrong the way the meat industry treated animals. Meat ended up becoming a commodity and factory farms didn't care about the way animals were killed as long as they had their product. I ended up becoming a vegetarian for three years because I thought it was the right thing to do.

I was also very open about atheism and telling people why I didn't have a religion. I probably shouldn't have done that because I don't like it when people tell me what to believe in and I shouldn't do that as well. I would spend a lot of time outdoors as well. I would go on weekly hikes with my family and I would bike everywhere. I liked being outdoors and having an active lifestyle. I've always believed being outdoors and appreciating nature was good for you.

I was very outspoken about a lot of things, and I probably annoyed a heck of a lot of people. But I thought it was important to voice my opinion on these matters and perhaps get people to think differently.

But I don't do any of that stuff anymore. It's been a year since I stopped being a vegetarian and I thinking about animal rights. I used to think it was wrong of me to be contributing to that injustice. But this year I didn't care. I ate whatever I wanted. I hid being an atheist from people. I stopped going hiking and riding my bike and preferred to stay indoors. I had become like everyone else. I was following the crowd and lost myself in the process. Who had I become?

I barley started realizing what was happening to me. I used to care about so many things and I've allowed myself to become passionless about things that I felt were important. These are just a couple, but I became apathetic towards a lot of things. I would like to think that this is due to reverse culture shock. But I don't think I am allowed to say that. This is a bigger thing that just being sad about coming back to California.

Maybe I should try and be like how I used to be, or maybe not. This isn't something that can happen over night. I need to be able to find myself again, as crazy as that might sound. Perhaps I need to walk alone for a while to find myself in places I never thought of looking in before and figure out what really is important to me.