August 3, 2004
a year ago
I have been hanging around the house for several days since getting back from my trip, and the letdown is really getting to me. No longer being up north doesn't bother me, though. The real issue is my inability to deal with all the things that I was escaping when I went to Alaska in the first place.
We are rapidly coming up on the one year anniversary of my departure from Wyoming. I don't like the idea of that at all. The past few months, I have commemorated my departure from Webber and my relocation to Jackson with a bit of a smile. I didn't like that so much time had passed, but remembered those decisions as positive and happy ones. This time it is different. This time, I celebrate a full 365 days of not liking the direction my life has taken and doing nothing about it.
So the big question still lingers -- What are my plans? Am I returning to U of I and chambana? I called from Skagway, AK to check in with the family a little more than a week ago, and was asked if Misty and Jim had talked me into returning to school? No, they hadn't. In fact, their advice was to do whatever made me happy -- their implication was that I should not do what didn't make me happy. This only reinforced what I had been feeling all summer. I don't want to go back.
I am going to return anyway. It is a continuation of my year-long pattern. I am uninspired, or unmotivated, or unwilling, or unable to find something better. And as long as I insist on standing still, I may as well get paid to go to school while I stand.
In the meantime, I need to figure out how to get myself moving. I would have thought that my unhappiness with my situation would be motivation enough, but I just slide into an unfortunate, idle funk instead. Changing scenery doesn't seem to work either. I had hope that returning to STL this summer, and traveling to Alaska would help, but they served more to distract me than motivate me. This strategy also got in the way of getting a degree from U of I quickly, if that was even a goal.
I don't know what else to write. Things aren't really as bad as all this right now. I am enjoying being here with my friends and family in STL, and have some good, challenging work to keep me busy and in the black. Still, I keep torturing myself over these questions and with unrealistic, selective recollections of my lives in San Francisco and Boston.
One way or another, I am not going to let myself do this for another year.
So you thought a change of scenery would make things clearer to you? Maybe it has but you continue to ignore what you see. Maybe right now things are not black and white, nor straight and narrow. Maybe the picture you see has some haze to it, and you cant see the end clearly. Maybe now you find in your life that some of your goals are close too completion and you wonder what will I do next.
But nephew, you have goals yet to be defined, ideas to share, interest to explore. Keep questioning yourself, but never doubt yourself!
I will leave the light on for you (or did Motel-6 say that already?)
Posted by: Uncle Wayne at August 4, 2004 9:43 PMwell, you know California would always welcome you back. I could easily get you a job at my company. Come on man... you know you want to. I jest, but really, think about it.
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