Catching a glimpse...

Setting goals can be easy. You write lists on a piece of paper. You forget about the piece of paper, or the goal, and you get wrapped up in your life, in putting foot in front of foot. Then some time, you have the urge to look back, and see what you have already accomplished, and you look forward and you catch a clearer glimpse at where you are going.

I've been seeing glimpses of goals becoming reality. Of the change in myself. I like it. And I am more determined that it is possible. Reinvention is doable without feeling a loss... but feeling a growth. Reinvention is a weird word, one of too much intention and forethought. But if you notice that you make one small goal, and move forward in accomplishing it, other things fall into place, backs straighten, shoulders square, knees forget to wobble.

I am so woefully behind in everything I want to do yet. Today is a weird day to be typing this since I've just been wading in my own inadequacies and I need to remember to hold onto that thought. That I can become what I envision, and I am capable of doing what I want. Regardless of expectation.

Settling in...

Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you feel like a beggar? Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and difficult?
The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life.

Life of Pi pg. 77

I've slipped into a routine of wake-up, put on clothes, train, internship, train, shave-them-legs-at-a-public-bathroom, work, ride, sleep. Being so busy forces me to cram productivity in the few minutes I have to be unproductive and I do not miss that down time. Though I do miss my own place, almonds (I should buy those this weekend), and Sundays at Jeffy's and Dan's.

I was raised with this fear of public transportation, this rule of anyone who takes it is a bum, druggy, crazy, don't-talk-to-them-or-make-eye-contact. You will be raped, murdered, molested, and accosted. So it takes a moment for me to realize that the creeper/bum with brown eyes isn't trying to find out my schedule so he can  jump out of the dark on my way home. He just wants to talk about the book I'm reading. He caught me on the train ride between internship and shave-them-legs-at-a-public-bathroom so I twisted and contorted so he wouldn't notice.

It was nice to know that not everyone is a creeper. But I'll take my chances so next time a balding 60-something asks when I get off work and laughs when he says "Yeah, I guess you could say I work here," I will continue with my vague answers and walk in the opposite direction of work, instead of introducing myself and making direct eye contact with a guy named Marco Fox.

Screeching halt.

There seems to be one thing that never fails to wind me up, spin me around, and cause all forward movement to cease. Luckily, I am better equipped to rev my engines this time around. As grinding as it may be.

I have not resigned myself to Utah life. I love being in Salt Lake, it's kinda crazy and familiar and alien all at once and is just the energized place I long to be right now. But when I back up and think of where Salt Lake is located, and what surrounds me, I struggle to breathe and have the desire to rocket myself to the coast, to the south, to the moon.

Yet, I have never felt more like this exact location is where I need to be at this moment. So I'll just keep my view narrow at the moment and plow through whatever it is I need to do while here before getting that change from this change.

My internship is pretty much the best thing in the world. I am familiar with the content, and have been trained for four years to hone the skills to accomplish what is being asked of me.

My job is pretty much the best thing in the world. I'm constantly at a complete loss -- information glides over my brain like water over a glass dome. But the people, the atmosphere, and the moments when those drops of water permeate through, it's just the best. I look forward to feeling productive, in the meantime I'm thankful for YouTube.com.

This experience has been perfect to illustrate that change is hard, uncomfortable, and tiring. But it can feel so right at the same time. I do not want to go back, and I'm trying to see the time when this will be just as good as I have felt in the past, like how I feel in my heart.

One thing I wish would change.

But am getting better at accepting the way it is.

"You are not my world."

of scenery

Finding a home is a difficult thing. A few weeks ago, I traveled to Salt Lake City with my former boss and good friend, S Morgan. I had an interview, and she had to go house hunting. The interview went really well.

As we drove from Pleasant Grove to Brigham City and searched condos, houses, and half-a-doubles, I was trying to imagine trading in a home I've made into a safe haven for some unknown. With noisy neighbors. Less square footage.

I've had several places that were home to me. A drafty narrow house built on the side of a river bank in Pennsylvania. A crowded apartment that smelled like stale spices in Idaho. Somewhere between two parking lots at the base of a hill in a teeny tiny town. And a young man's arms.

Each place had been hard to leave, and though I may sometime revisit each, it's never the same. There's been transition periods in between, sometimes lasting years. I know that I have out grown places. I don't know where my next home will be. My stuff is in storage in a different town. And my bed is wherever I can stretch out.

But a job is a good start. Thanks for the welcome, SLC.

"You aren't you without short hair"

Do you agree? Do you find that when you are stripped from something you've grown accustomed to you are not able to fully be yourself? To be comfortable around others?

I know that for me there are people who I am not comfortable with because I relate something in their gesture or attitude as not really willing to get to know me, to see past my clothes, to see past my words, and to feel who I am. Maybe these people don't realize this about themselves, or maybe the fault is in me -- I could be intimidated for some reason, or judgmental myself.

But in my mind, saying that I am not me because of the length of my hair is absurd. It's like saying "You are not you without clear skin," okay, so since it's hot and especially humid in Rexburg this summer and my forehead has a few more blemishes than usual, you're saying I must not be myself? I am me with or without that attribute. Long. Short. Bald. All of it is me. Maybe it distracts you from trying to get to know me? I am not my hair. I am me all over. You can not personify a piece of a person because we are all. I encompass my toes and my shoulder blades, the fat on my tummy. This is who I am. And I want long hair.

Sometimes you just have to grab it with both fists...

Change is not always easy. There's this part of me, a significant part, that fights against change at every moment. Changes in online social networks send me into a rage. Changes in my life, send me into a strange anxiousness coupled with lethargy and apathy.

I turned in my two-weeks notice on Friday (and by Friday I mean Tuesday). I went to the school and tried to print it out on their computers (but the file was incompatible, so I waited). While driving there, I was filled with a sinking lightness and heaviness in my toes, the area behind my bellybutton, my finger tips, and throat. I print this out, and in two weeks I will not have a job. I will not have a job, and I will not have a place to live by the end of the month. I did not mind that the file was not compatible and I went to work and could pretend that nothing was different. Regardless, I knew it was coming while I sat there. Listening to the heavy machines puncture fabric and leaving behind a row of thick thread like a scar in skin. This was not meant for me.

I knew I was turning in my two weeks notice, I had dozens of applications in four major cities. Two fall back plans. I was leaving my job. And I'm leaving this state.

I have an interview for a job in SLC next week thanks to the thoughtfulness and connections of friends. I have  five more days at a factory. I am looking at my pictures on these walls and I know they will be in a box in the matter of days, a week or two tops. I don't know where I'm going, or what I'm supposed to be doing. But I can make change happen in my life.

I can get up and go for a run tonight. Oh, I went running three days last week, and once already this week. I can do this!