October 11th, 2003
In a city of light and dark places
It’s strange how your life can change if you’re not looking directly at it. Everyone who survives has a strategy, a series of tactics worn into the folds of the mind. Each may begin as a joke, an imitated mannerism not taken seriously at the moment. But in the unintentional feeding of a scared and lonely heart, these little things soon become big things: tucking an errant piece of hair behind the ear, always walking Z to A in the video store. Things that are familiar are safe, and not wanting to wander too far from the warm places that we thrive, we carry a shoeboxfull of memories, catch phrases, and expressions wherever we go. The more places we go and the more frequently we encounter conflict, the faster this rubber-band ball grows. Some pieces fall off along the way, but some are as unforgettable as the scent at your mother’s neck.
Being out of school is strange. Some say that you have more freedom, while others claim you’re allowed less. My mentor at work said that time always moves faster as you get older. I figured this would be due to the fact that each year becomes a smaller percentage of your life to the present, but he thinks it’s because you do less. It always seemed to me that when I was doing tons of things, time flew by. It was when I spent a summer without a job that I felt the days really stretched out. What is a lot? People tell me that now at 23 I’ve done more than they’d done by 35. Is that a good thing? I have a lot of memories but recently I seem to not have my health. Am I burning too fast?
I want to keep learning, keep falling in love, keep discovering things I never imagined to exist. The directors of my graduate program enjoy boasting that in two years at the center, you get more than five years of knowledge for the industry. I used to joke that it’s because we worked 2.5 times as many hours per week as a normal person. I enjoy this time now in solitude to reflect, but I think that I don’t know how to handle it as well. I almost miss the light sweat of just barely squeezing everything in to a week.
I guess one thing that doesn’t change regardless of who I’m with or what they think of me is that I’ve alive. And that’s incredible and fulfilling enough a challenge by itself, even without all my mental jewelry.
