| Sunday, September 15th, 2002
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9:46p - Lost again...it feels oh so good. 24 hour staff duty is something I will most certainly not miss when I ETS. That being said, I have it again come thursday and will probably have it another 5 or six times before I go. Sigh On a dinner break right now. Dead cow marinated for two days in a wonderful Glen concoction. Throw in a baked potato and leftover green beans and we're talking bout some grubbing fare. It takes me back to a time in my life (read: college) where I had so much spaghetti with the cheapest ground beef there is (73% lean I think?) that I really can't remember what else I ate on a regular basis. There were pork chops every once in a while...but i stopped eating pig a long time ago. Steak was something I could only afford for really special occasions... Such a long long way I've been since then. Got an email from an old high school friend who'd stumbled on my homepage...and what startled me the most was not that i actually heard from him out of the blue...but just how LONG it had been. Yet the second I got the email, I recognized the name...funny that. 27 years old. It seems just days ago I turned 24, and just a matter of weeks when, at 20, I smoked my first cigarette. I remember both nights with startling clarity. I think the things I have most enjoyed in life (read: lasting experiences) have only gotten better with age...like fine wine... The present, in perspective, is so fleeting, so unfixed...yet exciting. Everyday I pause to reflect on the past, the present amazes me...and then the future leaves me breathless. The future is wide open. For a while there, it seemed fixed like the past. After so many years of wandering undecided, unaware, unfocused, I saw my life unfolding in directions I was consciously choosing. It made me happy in a bittersweet way. Part of me still wanted the search to continue, even as I saw the "goal" in sight. Now I feel like I've been dropped out in the wilderness again. I have only the weakest compass bearing to guide me, just like so long ago, but this time I have tools; tools I have gained through pain and realization and joy and experience. One thing that has not changed is doubt. Doubt in myself, doubt in reality, doubt in whether or not I can weather a storm or find my way...yet my path is lighted by prudence. current mood: excited
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