Who runs my life?

Sometimes I'm not sure if I am running my life, or if my life is running me. Did someone turn up the volume? I can't hear anymore. In the last two weeks so much has happened and changed that it makes my head spin. Even as I type the world is still changing. I can feel my life alter like I can feel gravity pull me back to earth. I can sense it, in the darkness of the night, still moving, still growing, still changing, still looming.

Where to begin?

I am once more home. And my sickness of being in a place that means nothing to me is now gone... and yet, the hole in me is not filled. The ache is gone, the pain is gone, but there is a sensation within me. Is it the fear of the old doldrums and old failings returning? Perhaps, or perhaps not. Every once in a while I get a weird feeling of deja-vu, as if I suddenly can remember being here a thousand times in the past. And yet it's all so different too. Did that much change in four months? No. But something is different. It must be within me that this change is. You can never go home again, and it is true. Because this house is not my home per se. It was. It was the home of me as a child, as a youth, as a young man. But it is not my home today. It is a place of shelter, a harbor, a home for all times, but not my home, and I understand now in a way that I never fully did before that I must some day find that on my own. But until then, this will always be a shelter to me, a sanctuary, a place to heal, to rest, to recover.

As I walk around this town of my youth, I feel above it now. It is not a matter of being too good for it. Hell, Chehalis is a pit compared to Tigard. But it's a matter of living with a different point of view, a different perspective. i have been to the mountain-top, and I have been to the lowest valleys yet of my life. I can never look at these things with the same eyes again. I feel infinitely older, and it seems that in the last two years I have lived and lost a lifetime.

And now time is closing in on me. I have so much to do! I seem, every day, to acquire some new responsibility or some new challenge or some new task. This is not to complain: most of these are paying propositions with great opportunities for advancement. But they are also crowding down on me, as if they have been waiting for years and years and now, BOOM, here they are. It will be a challenge to balance them all out over the next month or two. I'm looking forward to a breather. But the list so far includes my GCOR card -- including RWP which I had not expected; an offer to take photos of someone who I, shall we say, have always had a thing for; web site jobs coming out the kazoo; more writing for Choo than I can balance at this time; a track work contract that could get me some ready cash; and last but not least, skrool.

And then there are the bad things that happened, which I need not delve into now. However, my plan to simply fade away from a certain someone's life has been confounded by my own damn brain -- I left Eastbound, one of my larger and better paintings, up in Un-Holy-Oly, and so I'll have to contact him about getting it back. I think I'll do it next time I am in Chehalis, and take Josh with me. Geeze he's a dork and a pain in the ass at times, but he's damn cool too, and rescued me out of many uncomfortable situations these last few months. I owe him, big time. Almost as much as I owe a certain Devious type for just being himself. (Ack. 16x20 paper for a certain illo project. Must look for that tomorrow night. Eek!)

Oh yeah, had to visit the doctor today too. Ugh. Long story. Yes, i'll be fine. No, it didn't involve anything made of latex or battery powered. Or superglue.

Now I have got to go to bed, because I have to be up in 6 hours to go visit my boss and do some, um, yeah, um, work. Heh. Bri, if you read this, I may try calling you tonight... if I am still coherent.

Lastly, note to self: buy better cell plan soon. 400 minutes just ain't enough.