Again, I Return. (Gonna have to knock this off...)
2005-05-08 � 4:47 p.m.

Again, an absence of considerable and noticeable length. I would apologize, but it seems silly. It's not that I don't know that people are curious, that they care, that somehow I have managed to forge relationships via this space that are valuable, lasting and important to me, but...well, absences happen. Quite especially absences by me. Should I apologize for behaving like myself? I don't think so...

But I can apologize for making people worry. Never my intention, as I hope you all know. So — my apologies. I am a bad internet friend.

—

My life is so significantly different right now than it has possibly ever been that I cannot even begin to describe the changes. Normally this in itself would be a cause of stress and worry, and the fact that it is not is the biggest indicator of these changes that I can possibly point out. I feel at once like I am speeding headlong down an empty highway towards a towering, brilliantly-lit cityscape (look ma! no hands!), and that I am standing perfectly still in the middle of a swirling kaleidoscope of images — all warmth, color and comfort.

I attribute these feelings, these changes, these shifts both subtle and profound, to several things. Firstly, and in a way the most frightening and startling of all, is my change of employment. I have switched fields entirely. My long quest for geeky, technically-oriented employment has ended, and I am now someone who puts on boots to go to work, and whose work depends entirely upon the weather.

Yes, I work outside. I do manual labor, something I haven't done for many years. I find, to my surprise and delight, that it suits me. The effort of it, the relative simplicity of it, the finite boundaries of the tasks and projects (there being a clear delineation between "before" and "after") — these things make such a difference to me (at least for right now) that it took me a long time to realize that I was actually enjoying my work.

There are other things about it as well — I work for my parents (which should not be taken as something that is always or even in totality a stress reducer), even though I very rarely work a "full" forty hours a week I am making decent money, and I believe that the sheer physicality of the work does good things for my body — but they all basically add up to me being pleased with what I do, even if sometimes only slightly pleased, and that is such a change from being burned out, stressed out, hateful, angry, depressed and just generally fucked up about my work that it (of course) bleeds over into all other aspects of my life.

I wonder why it took me so long to figure that out? Just slow, I suppose.

(As a note of interest, this departure from the inside, the "office," is one major factor in my decreased presence here. Not sitting in front of a computer all day makes me slightly less inclined to do certain things. Sorry about that, but I think it is largely for the best.)

I am rapidly approaching a whole year of this labor, and am seriously considering my parents' very generous offer to become more involved in the "family business," an offer that could result in me being the owner/operator of said business. Scary and exciting.

The second thing, the more obviously different thing, the thing I was sure would never happen to me, the thing I spent many days, months, and entries here bemoaning the lack of, the most amazing and delightful thing, is (of course, of course) my meeting of and subsequent involvement with She.

Sarah.

Can words describe how she makes me feel? No. Poets, writers and artists of much greater talent than I could ever dream of possessing have bemoaned the paucity of language when searching for the words to encompass the kinds of feelings engendered within me by this woman.

Suffice to say, she is fabulous. She looks at me in ways that make me feel so expandingly huge inside, and yet so vanishingly tiny in significance. She has opened me up, broken me free of self-imposed bonds and restraints, blockages in my life and personality that I was only dimly aware of.

I can only hope to measure up.

There are many other things going on, of course. But after those two things, their importance seems to fade somewhat.

I turned twenty-nine years old on Friday.

I love you all.

-t

Currently Aurally Inducing: Radio Birdman, "Hand of Law"
Selection of the Lyrical Vocabulary: "On the thrid day, of the seventh month, is when we'll ride the highway."

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