A year ago I was embarking on my second year of graduate school and anxiously anticipating Michael's return. Today I am enjoying a lazy morning getting ready to go celebrate my goddaughter's first birthday at her daycare and reflecting on the year that has passed. Being out of school and not teaching anymore should hypothetically leave me oodles of free time to organize my life and find a fab job, but the past week is really the farthest I've gotten on that! I got back a week ago from a month-long trip home to Washington, and it was only getting back from that that I really felt like I'd had "vacation", thus making me feel at liberty to seek out my new occupation. I say "occupation", because at this time I am really mainly seeking something to do just that (albeit in a more-than-mundane way!) - "occupy" my time. I also have become accutely aware that, despite my ambitions of being a wildly independent woman who has no trouble moving from place to place and being constantly uprooted (read = leaving amazing friends behind at every turn...)...I am, in fact, very much in dire need of human contact. Michael's and my latest additions, two cats, have been very entertaining and do help me feel a bit less alone in the apartment until he gets home, but even his company doesn't satisfy my desire for "girl talk" sometimes. He does do his very best to indulge that, but let's face it, it shouldn't be a requirement of his "job description" as a husband, though many wives do still expect that of theirs. So, I digress back to my "occupation" quest. I've put a couple irons in that fire and will hopefully hear back sooner than later. In the meantime, I am going to focus on getting a firm budget in place and keeping in touch with those I count dearest.
My first few months back in Columbus were fraught with realizations that shook me up, despite the fact that I had expected that such a thing might very well happen! It's a bit irritating when you do know your tendencies but then realize that you don't actually know yourself as you would like. That being said, I don't think it's God's will for us to ever get to a point where we fully "know" ourselves, because that is one of His everyday miracles: revealing us to ourselves through Himself. (He is always about sentences that you have to read and reread because of the presence of so many darned similar pronouns/nouns, I have found.) And so I blundered through various daily struggles, many of which left me wondering why my friends didn't call or write or email. Out of these many moments, I had a bit of an epiphany: was I calling, writing, or emailing THEM? Well, yes AND no, but for the most part I spend most of the time that I could have been doing that wishing my friends were getting in touch with me. Oh, humans. Such little minds we have, and so SO slow to learn and even slower to change! Friendship will never be a one-way street. At times, there are stretches of one-way, but never should it continue. We all have moments of need that prevent us from meeting in the middle at the yellow line, but the fact of the matter is, keep in touch with someone if you'd like them to keep in touch with you. This isn't a sermon to make anyone feel bad, it's just what I believe and was not living out! One goal that I came up with while in Washington the past weeks was to do my part in keeping in touch, because even if you can't fit all the visits in, a little note or a call can literally make someone's day. If someone calls me and only has the time to say "Hi, I'm thinking of you", that means the world to me. They could have just as easily said to themselves, "I don't have time to have a 30-minute conversation, so I'll just Facebook her to say hi." Hearing someone's voice or seeing their handwriting and knowing they took the time to get out or choose a card and mail it seem to be luxuries today. So I'm going to try to be better, because it's the least I can do!
For now, I must go, but more of my recent musings will be forthcoming, maybe even later this afternoon! (I can dream, right?)
