06 September 2006

details, details.

Finally back to classes today, and I couldn't be happier. Back to 7am diving physics, 10am swimming, and drafting night school. I have tomorrow off again, but now I have some new homework, more things to think about, ideas to mull over, more classes to prepare for. I'm glad to be busy again, glad the preliminaries of the first week are over, and that we can dive in, well, as much as a scant 3-day weekly schedule can be considered *diving in.

I hit a wall last week. I think, and the idea has been corroborated by my friend David, that at some point during a transition like this, you just do hit a wall. Everything can still be great and amazing, looking forward to each new day, but. Everything feels a bit off, you're not really sure about the new surroundings, questioning, doubting, worrying about the pieces that haven't yet fallen into place after an entire week and a half... and then maybe things start to go wrong. I was having all the feelings last week, and then, during the 15 minutes I'd stopped in at the MDT building at day's end Friday, someone snagged my bike seat and seat post. That gets a big goddammit. Actually, I took it in stride when it happened. I knew better than not to lock down every removable piece of the machinery every time I walked away from it, but it was Friday, I was lazy, I didn't bother. So, I took on some of the responsibility, sucked it up, and walked around until I found a bike shop to replace the missing parts.

It was a rapid descent from there, nothing really wrong, per se, just that all the excitement and novelty of the planning and the journey and the settling in is all over, and now I get back to figuring out the day-to-day, which is not so fun or glamorous or scintillating or unnerving as all the rest has been. Now it's back to normal life, albeit in a most amazing locale. Sunday I reached my limit, and was feeling low, low down. I made a few phone calls, and hauled my ass to the beach to read. Instead of resisting the leisure, I forced myself to embrace it, while it's here, because certainly, soon enough, I'll have gotten myself involved in many too many things, and life will be insane. So I took a book to the beach, and laid there, and listened to the waves, and watched people frolicking, and soon felt much better.

It's funny though, when I lived in Minneapolis, I felt like everything was such a challenge, the daily and weekly tasks such a burden, so hard to fit everything in, friends, family, jobs. Here though, it's different. I don't mind having to run to Santa Cruz market to get food, and I don't mind that I have to go more frequently because my storage and refrigeration space is so small. I don't mind doing laundry, or tidying up, don't mind cooking or vacuuming. I'm not sure what the difference is, if it's because I'm not nearly as busy, or because I'm happy, or because I'm unemployed and don't have to go to hateful workplace anymore, but life seems much less of a burden here, now. My life is much simpler, I feel more focused, more balanced, less neurotic. As though I don't need to surround myself with so much because I have a pretty good idea of what I want, of what's ahead. Maybe it's the sunshine, or being so near the sea, or maybe it's just having chosen the unknown, rather than settling for the familiar.

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