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!

Step one: Workin' it and why I do it

Okay, this is brutal to write. It's brutal because once I thought of the idea to write it down, my will-power flew out the window... But I'm getting ahead of myself. Okay.

I can WORK IT. And by WORK IT I mean that I can make my humanly-flawed body do what the heck I tell it to do!!! Dangit.

When I was little I was good-naturedly teased by family that I ran like a duck which was "so cute." No big deal. But to my overly sensitive 10-year-old self I was devastated and mortified. I thought "I'll show them," and just not run. If we had to run to the car because we were late? I'd walk briskly at most. Playing sports? MMmm... nah.

Although I grew out of this mindset fairly quickly, in the back of my head I remained self-conscious about the way I ran. Even in college I would usually skip activities with friends that involved sports and running, and when I did participate I would have to battle inhibitions to not slow to a trot in embarrassment.

The second week of May in 2011 I began a running program. A beginners running program. For two months, three days a week, I would run, gradually feeling the difference as my body grew in strength and I grew in confidence. I played soccer with my friends and only thought about the sun being in my eyes and getting the ball from between the feet of my friends and into the net. How incredible!

My goal with all of this running and such nonsense is to run a marathon, or a half-marathon, when I'm 25. So next year. No big deal.

I'm going to increase difficulty levels every six weeks until I can push myself further.

Okay, now to the real embarrassing part. Agghhhhh..... So when I first started thinking of writing this particular blog post at the beginning of the month I was instantly hit with the lazies. Instead of running? I would take a LOOOONG nap. And that hasn't changed. Though, my goal is that tomorrow it will, it's a new month after all! I'll have to work up a little to where I was but I feel okay with that. As long as I keep going, it doesn't matter. I have great support in a long-distance dear friend who happens to have her certification in Personal Training and who will also be running with me in said marathon. I can WORK IT.

The Illusionist

I've recently watched the French film "The Illusionist". The story of a simple magician who travels around Europe to mixed reviews.

At one particular stop he picks up a stowaway in a young girl who has every faith in his acts of trickery and slight of hand. Though they are not overly familiar with each other the magician finds little ways to please the girl and through his influence she becomes a graceful and confident young woman.

This made me wonder, how much of what we feel has changed us, or improves us, is actually an illusion? When we are changed for the worse, can we point to an event in our lives or just on our handling of that event? When we feel more confident, or feel that we have matured in some way, is it something real? A change that cannot be removed? Or does it just have to do with the opinion of those around us and the clothes that we are wearing?

Does any of this matter?