I wouldn't be surprised if I've lost anyone who might wander here. It's been a while. I'd say it's been a busy summer, but that wouldn't exactly be the right way to put it. Yes, there have been busy things. There were visits from nieces and nephews, the endless tedium of the work place, and trips around all the little villages and cemeteries that populate this corner of Idaho and Washington. But there hasn't been anything big. Nothing pressing. Nothing of the sort to call big news, or to blame my absence on.
I just haven't been around. I haven't had the moments to sort my head and get things out. Yesterday I had the day off and was able to force in some journal time. I was almost a month behind! Not even funny. It's just that nothing seems to get done the way I'd like it to.
Things I'd love to be doing:
1)Writing - this includes both literary as well as personal. Journals, blogs, books and poetry.
2)Learning Czech - this is one of those things that seems to escape me most of the time. I'll spend a few minutes going over word lists from Byki, and then I'll lose the time somehow. I know the kind of motivation I need to really study and get down to it, but there just aren't classes on Czech at U of I to immerse myself in.
3)Reading - This summer I've managed to acquire quite a few great books via Goodwill, yard sales, and even an antique store. But do I have time to read said books? Well, not nearly as much as I'd like.
4)Quality time with God - Yeah, I try to get in some spiritual reading in the mornings, and I make it to church most Sundays, but I feel the strain of living a life less passionate than I would like it to be. It's always hard when I find myself in situations where I feel so little purpose. It's in these times that I long to really life, but instead find myself waiting.
The truth is, I've done to much of that in recent years. Waiting for "real" life to start. Whether it was waiting on paperwork to come to the US, or paperwork to make it possible to leave, it seems we've been putting life on hold for a long time. A constant sense of delay before we get into something that matters, something we can call worthwhile. I took a temporary sort of job thinking it'd be a month or two. Now it's been four months, and counting.
5)Transition - I guess this sorta goes with that last thought as well. I've lived a transient life for so many years you'd think this would just be old hat. One year at a time has been the model. Free summers to visit people and have fun. Jobs that follow school years and take me to different locations. This is the last week for all the summer holiday students to be at work. They're getting ready to get back into their studies and I find myself oddly jealous. I was so happy to be done with school, and have often worried that I would have no idea what to do with myself if I went back to school again. But now I find myself missing the thrill of spiral notebooks, colorful folders and pens filled with fresh black ink. I miss the thought of entering new classrooms, trying to figure out what style will best impress the teacher and make the grade, searching for the students that connect with my way of thinking, and those that will irritate me to no end. Yeah, oddly enough, I even miss those types.
Then there's also a girl who is heading to Spain for a semester and the travel bug starts to wiggle and squirm inside my stomach. Even though I know it will happen again, I'll get on a plane and see both old familiar places and new, it's hard to watch other people starting their new adventures while I'm floundering to make it from one lousy paycheck to the next.
Living is such an important thing to do. Vital. To breath in the moments of this life. To suck the marrow out of each day as those Dead Poet's Society members would chant. Just have to figure out how to get it all done, and how to keep on living life to the fullest while I'm at it. The time is just too short to put it all off and wait for tomorrow for things to be more interesting.
I read a blog about living an authentic life. I think it's very true that we need to learn how to be true to who we really are, how to live out what you believe, and to me, a part of that is learning how to really live. It's so easy for me to get caught up in routine that I forget to enjoy, to look deeply at the things and the people that I've been blessed to experience life with, and to be thankful for them.
I noted one of the comments on that blog in which someone said that in order to be true to themselves they wanted to do things just only for them. While I believe that we shouldn't allow ourselves to be overly influenced by the opinions of others, to be truly authentic I want to be able to live in such a way that I make life better for others. Working at Mother's Choice in Hong Kong, teaching English in the Czech Republic, helping to work on a church in Italy, Bible Schools in the Pacific Northwest, these are the sort of things I've been blessed to do, the moments in time when I've been able to impact the world in my own quiet behind the scenes sort of way. I know that, when life is somehow properly lived, I can have an impact on the people around me whatever my job or locale. It isn't always so easy to see, but I know it can be done. And I honestly believe that writing here can be a part of that. I have no notions about having a massive following list or anything like that, but I hope the little bits of my life, the little deviations and thoughts and diatribes that I go off on here, will touch people in some way, make them think about their own lives differently.
I'm hoping that, as summer winds down and we're trying to save money and travel less in order to afford a Christmas trip back to the Czech Republic, that I'll have more time to keep up here. I'm hoping I'll stay caught up in my journal (once I manage to get caught up that is), and that I'll be able to solidify a few more Czech phrases in my life. I don't know if the people I hang clothes with will remember me a few years from now, but I hope that in my quality of work and the way I speak, that I will have a positive impact on them, maybe even help them to see the world in a fresh new light. This is where I am for the moment, and I want to live...
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