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| I've never been much of a goal-oriented person, but I'm more of one at 25 than I was at 20. When I was a child, I wanted to grow up to be an author, a writer. College showed me I probably didn't want to be a journalist, and the publishing industry... well, they call it "breaking in" for a reason. I ended burnt out from churning out tons of writing in those years. And were those pieces worth the writing? Some of them, not all of them. Upon graduating college, I drifted from job to job every year or two: guitar store, canvasser, security, retail clothing, now sometime teaching and copyediting. Graduate school has made me focus more, and it's got me writing again in a way I haven't in a long time, but still I've had a tendency to float along like jetsam, wherever the current takes me. The problem is also that the current has often been made up mostly of other people's wishes. After a while, I start chafing from a job grown stagnant, from toiling without reward or recognition, and without enough internal meaning for me to want to do it even without reward or recognition. I keep thinking about options, about what else I might do if I summon my courage and am willing to be lucky. Can I redefine my life and reinvent myself without losing everything? Or perhaps I should ask, can I do what I need to if I'm worried about losing everything? Truth be told, the process has already begun and is well underway. It's just a matter of how far I'm willing to go. (Heh, I promise, that's not as ominous as it sounds.) I just want the person in the mirror (literally and figuratively, I suppose) to line up a bit more with the person in my mind. To bring the best version of myself to reality. These days, I have bigger ambitions, bigger goals. I don't know whether I'll realize some of them; right now, I'm just focused on being the person who's driving the boat rather than drifting along on the raft. ...Someday, I might explain what Mass Effect has to do with all this... but until next time.... | | |
| Happy! 
(Vibram Fivefingers Bikila LS) For the past week I've been so busy with work and the wrap-up of the grad school semester (the teaching semester has a few weeks to go yet) that I've had to skip almost all my usual workouts. That's been making me a bit sad and stir-crazy, but I consoled myself by daydreaming about working out in new shoes I've been eyeing. I've been telling myself for a month that at the end of April I would let myself get a new pair of barefoot/minimalist shoes. I had my eye on Merrell's Lithe Glove...Read more... | | |
| E-mail yesterday: Ends today! Last chance to get 30% off! Get items for summer now at 30% off, etc. *raises skeptical eyebrow, thinks, Wait for it...* E-mail today: Sale extended! One more chance to get 30% off! I AM ONTO YOUR LIES. | | |
| I'm coming up on my 6-year Xanga anniversary this month; it'll be exactly one month before my 4-year anniversary with my fella (who was surprised in February when I told him he still had a couple months to go before he'll have been my longest relationship -- now it's only a few days). Guess I'm an "in it for the distance" kinda girl. I've taken intentional and unintentional hiatuses from Xanga, but I've never fully left; I tried starting a separate blog I'd have been more comfortable letting family see, but it didn't take; I've shut down my facebook page and returned a time or two, but I've never shut down my Xanga site. That's part of what makes this place valuable to me; for six years I've had this little chunk of cyberspace without trying to make it too much of anything other than "mine."
For a portion of those years, I've gained readers, friends, and friendly acquaintances outside the group of college friends who originally urged me to get the blog as a way for us to keep track of each other during the summers. In the time that I've known you, I've graduated college, worked a variety of jobs, moved in and out of several places, had a kind of breakdown, traveled internationally, wrecked a car, recorded a CD, had relationships and friendships begin and end, started graduate school, changed my whole outlook... and I've read along as some of you have done some of the same things. That's pretty cool. Bottom line, I'm glad I'm here. And I'm glad you're here (well, probably). 
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| So, all this stuff about how busy I am and have been, how tired I am and have been, has been just placeholders till I got up the energy, the will, or the need to write something more. And here it is. This is the real stuff. My younger brother is 23 years old, about to finish his 5th and final year of college with just one class and his senior capstone project this semester, and after, I think, a year of sharing a house just off campus with friends, he's moved back home for the final semester. My parents are worried about him because he's sitting in his room playing video games all day, not showing many signs of working on his capstone paper, not trying hard to get a job, helping out only a little with housework or cooking. He's smart and capable, and he can have a good work ethic when he's interested or when he chooses to, but if he doesn't want to... well, I'm sure most of you have read at least one article on extended adolescence and young men doing the same thing my brother is. My brother's a good person, but his biggest flaw is on display right now. My parents are good parents -- the more I encounter other people's parents, the more I like my own -- but they're puzzled about what to do now. They both work hard already, and for him not to pull his weight (or at least try) isn't really fair to them anymore. As far as I can see, my brother's behavior isn't attributable to any fault of theirs. He just needs to take another couple steps toward being an adult and be more responsible for himself -- things I believe he can do. He has a lesson to learn. I'm trying to help him and my parents out by talking and being supportive, offering help where I can, but I'm 200 miles away and it's a tricky matter. I say this all very gently now, but I wonder if blunt (and a little harsh) honesty might not be something to try. I have compassion for my brother, and I know it's downright hard for my folks. I feel for them.
Meanwhile, I'm busting my ass to keep up and catch up with work and school and taking care of myself, buying groceries, working out, paying bills, making decisions. This is the lesson I have faith he will learn, the lesson only taught by experience. I was eager to get my own place and support myself, and there were things I don't think I truly understood until I'd been in charge of my own situation for a couple of years.
* * * "The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’ Don’t you see?" -- from East of Eden by John Steinbeck * * * So, I'm a little late on the whole Mumford & Sons thing -- half of my friends were raving about them before I even heard the full album -- but I've really grown fond of "Timshel." I knew the word was familiar, and Hebrew, but it's been almost a decade since I read East of Eden, so I had to look it up to be reminded that it means "thou mayest" -- see that quotation above. A couple weeks ago, I traded work schedules with a co-worker so that I could accompany my BFF Jill on her trip out of state to see her family; her grandmother had just died, and her young aunt's cancer had taken a turn much for the worse. We put this album in her car's CD player, and I turned this song up a little when it at last came on, at first just thinking about liking the song and its peaceful guitar in the early morning sunlight; I quickly realized that there was more. We remained quiet during the song... I wanted her to hear the words. "You are not alone in this."
(You can skip the first 20 seconds if you want to get right to the song.)
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