Somewhere's a wasteland, Nowhere's a memory

My favorite thing I've ever written was a paper I wrote in high school.  It was a paper that was supposed to center around "Gone With the Wind" and had to be based entirely on our favorite quote from the book.  I picked this exchange between Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler:

“Yes, I want money more than anything else in the world.”

“Then you’ve made the only choice. But there’s a penalty attached, as there is to most things you want. It’s loneliness.”

You'd think someone who'd latch on to the gravity of that hard truth years ago would be able to escape it.  Unfortunately, and I'm channeling my best Jeremy Clarkson here, "You'd be wrong."

To be fair, I'm not exactly rolling in the Benjamins, or whatever hip phrase for "making a lot of money" is in fashion now, but my life is something that sixteen year old me would be really proud of: I'm a professional programmer, and I'm not saying that to brag or anything.  I'm a software developer working at a gigantic multinational company.  But it's come at cost.

Work stresses me out.  People stress me out.  At the end of the day, I don't feel like doing much more than coming home and just laying down for a little while, but I'm disgustingly, rock-bottomly lonely.  I guess I could hang out with people after work, but I don't feel like it.  You can see where this is a problem.  For all the soul-searching and spiritual enlightenment I tricked myself into thinking I had when I was a teenager, I'm pretty hopelessly lost as an adult.  I don't know how to juggle the internal conflict of wanting to be near people and wanting to get away from them.  I got what I wanted, but I didn't think it through.  I've even blamed this funk on the city I'm living in (which really doesn't lack a pretty severe funk of its own), as though Lexington or Nowhere would be places where I'd be happier.

Lexington with all of it's young nostalgia.

Nowhere with all of it's bittersweet memories.

I can't decide whether it's this city or just my life in general.  It's all good on paper.  Everything checks out.  The numbers add up.  I should be happy, or maybe not so far as happy. . . content?  Whatever.

I want to believe that this is just a chaotic period of restoration and eventually everything will be fine, and who's to say that still doesn't hold true?  Well. . . Margaret Mitchell, namely.

I think I'm talking too fast.

One Troposphere Shy of Enlightenment

I've got this routine I've settled into where I go out on my back porch, usually accompanied by some form of caffeine, and just talk to God. Sometimes I'm thankful, sometimes I'm angry, but it's always a sort of conversation. I'm not so spiritual to think that I'm having an active conversation, I usually just kind of lay my heart out and either ruminate on the nature of faith or ask tough questions. I always find that in the coming days I make some sort of minuscule observation that addresses my prayers and I call that an answer.

God's a great writer like that. A good narrator knows how to speak to his audience without interrupting his story.

But sometimes it's difficult to get into that mode of thought. I usually look at the sky when I'm praying. There's something about the infinite expanse of the sky that makes me feel more heard, or at least makes it easier for me to consider the infinite nature of God. That's poetic and all, but the downfall of relying on that symbolism is that when it's cloudy, it's like I have poor satellite reception. I look to the clouds and get this feeling of "Well, I guess God didn't plan to hear from me today."

And that's dumb.

Spring Has Sprung

Yesterday, I went to Shiloto park with some friends and played on the playground. We ran out of daylight pretty quickly, but the temperature was more than accomodating for us to stay even after the stars showed up. 

Winter gives me too much time to dwell on the past. The grey just shifts all focus to negativity. I just sit around and think about corpses, losses, and bad decisions. Why Sarah? Is dad's concern just divorce guilt? Why did I work at UPS? Winter is just an opportunity for bad questions to play Marco Polo in my head while I try to juggle an already demanding workload. Never pretty. Spring always provides this cathartic feeling though. I get to exhale all of the emotional tension and rejoice in all the new life that comes with the warmth; it's a fresh start to the next twelve months. I got that today, and I got to spend it with excellent people. 

Last night, I sat on the fire escape for a little while, hanging my bare feet off the edge while I laid back and gazed at what stars were potent enough to pierce the deep red glare of Lexington's light in the sky. It's amazing to think that any one of these little dots are likely larger than the sun, even moreso to consider that if a bridge connected us, I could drive for a thousand lifetimes without even getting close to the end. It's a pretty humbling thought and I can't help but be awe-struck by the beauty of our cosmic insignificance. 

How beautiful to think that despite this insignificance, and despite being such a mess, God would give me such a gorgeous day.