The day after seeing family is always the worst for me - I feel lonely, as if my own life has interrupted a precious dream. I have a slight cold on top of it, and stay home from work. I make ginger-honey-lemon tea, like my mom did when I had a sore throat at home, and let Cindy cuddle me in bed.
Last Saturday I finally cleaned after my summer roommate left. Rearranged my bedroom. Reclaiming my space. I have it all to myself until September 1, when a more permanent roommate moves in.
I often feel, these days, that my life is not mine to command. Perhaps it is simply that the true nature of life is finally reflected in my awareness. I have been at Detectica for over a year now, and I feel a deep sense of loyalty and responsibility for the work lives of my coworkers. Each day challenges me, and the product and our work has become intensely complex. It is difficult to hold all the pieces in my head at once, but I use my MBA training and my life training every day to try to make the most thoughtful decisions I can in the time that I am given. Sometimes I realize, months later, I ought to have done something else. And so I learn and work harder, and learn.
Despite this, life is simple. I wake, get dressed, walk Cindy, go to work. Sometimes I dance after work, sometimes I come home for dinner. I read books about strategy and products and I fall back asleep. There is a rhythm and a routine to the days that I have not had since I left Google. I am still trying to get used to it.
I have not written in so long that much has passed. We lost my grandfather in the spring, after his long and happy life. I went home for ten days, overwhelmed with sadness and love. In the end we didn't know if he recognized any of us, and yet he was always beaming. The longer we live, the more full of loss our memories become. It seems to me that one reason for happiness is that we must balance such sorrows out with equal amounts of joy.
I dread the days growing shorter and the cold that will come. I fear my own lack of writing in the past months, and how hard it is to draw them out even now, how hard it is to use these words to express the sensations in my heart. I was thinking the other day about how photographs, despite their beauty, provide only one view on how the photographer sees the world. It is an external show, a representation of place and thing seen and experienced. For me, they are easy. It's only words that reveal the heart of a person, their thoughts across some span of time. It takes all my energy to put my feelings into these words. And then, even then, I fall short. There is a change coming on these late summer winds; I fear it, I wonder where it will take me next.
