good afternoon, seattle—i'm listening...
i usually avoid coming back, but when i do i'm generally glad that i did. this is the second time i've been home this year, and i was greeted by my mother waving from the porch as i came up the drive. haha. she helped me get my things in, then promptly showed me where she had stashed all of her easter chocolate. now i'm sitting in my old room, at my desk in front of my dormer window, enjoying the cool evening breeze off the fresh rain-washed hills surrounding our home. kinda sounds like something out of the waltons. or something like that. just watch, by the end of the week you'll be hearing about how much i want to get back to columbia. nah, i think it will be a good week. started off good, so that's always...erm...good. tonight my parents and i sat down and watched the fourth disc of the second season of frasier (current disc at home from my blockbuster total access membership--highly recommended, btw). i've been mixing in some of my favorite television series in with the movies. somehow they're always better, though, when you're watching them with people you love.
being in a different place for eight-to-nine months out of the year kinda messes with your sense of family. i guess i've been trying to build one in columbia, out of friends and coworkers and such, but i've been failing rather miserably, haven't i? half the time i want to throttle my friends in their sleep, and i guess i'd have to work in order to have coworkers. kinda refreshing to remember that i have people who love me here. and always will. i definitely feel very blessed and very fortunate for that. sure, there are tons of problems, but the wonderful thing about family is that you always get a "get out of jail free" card, so to speak. and if you're not sure the card will work, you can always hide things away and hope they never surface. haha.
talked to my hopefully future boss today before i left columbia for home. her name is val, by the way. she said that it would probably be the first of may before a decision is reached. i played it off, ("oh, that's not why i stopped by anyway" -- it sorta was) but that is cutting things a little close. so now i'm going to be on the edge of my seat for the next month, praying my butt off, insides churning, wondering what i'll do if i don't get it. i'm trying to stay open about it and accept that if i don't get it, then God wants me somewhere else. but the more i think about it, the more excited i get. really, it's not exactly a lucrative position. but i really do want it. haha. i have all sorts of ideas running through my head--grand schemes about what i'm going to do to make it a better place. no, i'm not exactly imagining all of us spontaneously breaking into song and holding hands around the fire (or television, i suppose), but i really do want to make a difference in that place, and it would be a wonderful opportunity for me. the waiting just heightens everything.
i like spontaneity, but i'm the sort who kind of has to pencil it in. i like plans. details. even writing this book without a set plan drives me crazy. not knowing where i'm going to live in a few months drives me crazy. and yet, to completely nullify everything i've just said, in other ways i hate having things set out and detailed or listed in order. sometimes things just have to be messy. like life. life is messy. life is insane. the more i try to find a sense of purpose, the fuzzier everything gets. the more i try to reach out and find a family of my own, the more impossible that seems. i'm twenty-three, almost twenty-four, and i know some still see that as young. then i see all my friends getting married, former "girlfriends" having their second round of children. i know there's no reason for it (or at least not a lot), but i begin to imagine myself alone at forty, the reclusive writer living at home with his parents, assuming they don't kick me out. and i can't help but think about how much of life i'm missing out on, either by worrying about missing out on it or by wanting a certain thing so badly that i pass up all of the other experiences that come along. with every week that passes (and they seem to be zooming by lately), i see the wisdom of henry james's "the beast in the jungle." appropriately, it's about a guy who has this great feeling that something amazing is going to happen in his life, and he sits at home waiting for it to happen, only to have it pass him by, not realizing that he had it within his grasp all along. i am definitely that type of guy. the wallflower. so how do you carpe that diem, i wonder?
it completely devastates me to think that in approximately a month and a half i will have allowed the enjoyment of my college years to slip through my fingers.
i guess solace can be found, though, in mom waving from the porch, the cat rubbing against your legs when you walk in the door, and sitting down with some breyer's black raspberry and a couple dove dark chocolate eggs and laughing along with a good show.
goodnight, seattle. we love ya!