February 13, 2013

I haven't updated with a daylog for a while. I feel I should, because there is some important stuff going on.

I moved to the Oregon Coast. I got a job instructing at a community college. After three years of sterility and unemployment, I am now in a new place and doing new things. I have a job that is meaningful and almost prestigious. And I have dozens of miles of ocean and mountains to play amongst on the many days when there is not otherwise a call on my time. And there are palm trees. There are many more palm trees here than there are in Montana.

Every day, I think about what I am doing, where I am. And I know that, most probably, five years or so from now, I will remember this time of my life as a halcyon time, rich and wonderful and excellent times. An epoch that will be hard to summarize or rediscover. But every day, when I try to find those feelings inside of myself, what I actually find is: "What am I doing here?", "I'm tired.", "What if this all falls apart?", "I need to buy more bagels." Whatever is going on around me now, whatever essence is infusing my life, I can't feel it currently. I just feel like yet another man, rushing through life, late for an appointment.

In what is a conveniently easy analogy, the Pacific Ocean is a mile's walk away. Since arriving here, the entire Pacific Ocean has been something I've barely seen or dealt with. Even when I do visit it, it is more a barrier to my travels than an object of concern. There just isn't much to do with the ocean. Like Life and Being itself, it is so large and universal that it is hard to comprehend anything by thinking about it. I instead find myself drawn more upwards to the mountains, to the rivers and streams that cut into the mountains.

Some things are too big to grasp directly. Only when traveling in the other direction, and seeing their small, insignificant origins, do we come to understand what they are.

Lately I've been very interested in weather and Alzheimers, neither of which is predictable or controllable. Weather has always been something I notice, perhaps in relation to gardening or plans to do indoor or outdoor activities, usually involving house upkeep. I like knowing what the moon is doing, how meteorologists collect information, how they forecast or how they cover weather events during and after the fact.

I look for measurements, whether it is rain, snow, wind or the UV index. I've been learning new terms for my own amusement or maybe to keep from being saddened by the confusing relationship I now have with my husband. Like some nights, the stars are so bright and clear then an hour later, clouds cover more than half of the sky. I might be mistaking sundowning with noctilucent clouds, but I think it's the wrong time of year for this hemisphere.

lyrics, by Paul Simon

My new job, being in a niche unfilled by poor writers, begins on the 25th. For the last week in February and the first few days of March, I'll be braving the cold of Chicago in search of that sweet sweet paycheck.

After that, being a remote writer, I am free to move about the country. I'll head back to San Francisco after going home to the love, and then maybe to DC to see some other folks. When it's warmer, I'd love to go to New York. Maybe I can finally make it to other, smaller places like Minneapolis, like Iowa City, like Denver.

This is all great, but even better, I once again have access to the thrumming pulse of the Internet, the data centers. Not on those raised floors that I've walked and worked on before, but somewhere new, somewhere exciting beyond the drivel of the old job and the possibility of the Company Raise.

I can't wait.

Here's to the new year and new beginnings.