I'm back, sort of. After the semester from hell, burning my brain out on anthropological theory and the first half of my trainwreck of an undergraduate thesis, I honestly wanted to never write another word in my life. Burnout is a bitch with heels.
I graduate in May. I leave for Africa sometime in the fall. I am on my way towards something brilliant, something that will look good on a résumé, something that I'll never shut up about. Something that will haunt my nightmares and fuel my rants for the rest of my life. I'm more afraid of closing this chapter of my life than opening up a new one --- ever since I made the decision to leave for the other side of the planet in service of soft imperialism, I've met the most amazing, engaging, challenging people.
This is how it's always been. I make a decision to leave, and I make friends in droves. They come out of the woodwork, flock to me. I'm getting invited to parties, invited to hang out in bars with hot chicks, invited to get high with after work. I get random 3 AM text messages. People call me. I feel like I'm socially integrated for the first time in my life, and yet, here I go, clipping this blossom in the bud. Typical.
But one thing I've learned since I began to call myself a man was that life isn't nearly so neat and delineated like that. I might run into someone I smoked a bowl with twenty years down the road. I might marry one of the hot chicks I never went to bed with after a night on the town. Who the hell knows? Or, I might go off into the sunset and never return to anything like this. It could go either way. I could never run into any one of my friends again, disappear, get my head chopped off by some revolutionary guerilla army, show up for fifteen seconds on CNN. I honestly have no idea how the next three or so years will pan out, so I'm holding on for dear life.
All I know is, I better pay attention. They tell me these are the best years of my life, and I don't want to miss one single solitary thing. This includes getting back to writing. This is what passes for a New Year's resolution for me.