Saturday, August 20, 2005
Late-night musings
This is the second time recently that I've laid down and just known that I wasn't going to be getting to sleep any time soon. I've never been one for insomnia, but it's never too late to start.
I was recommended Grapes of Wraths, the only book in my Steinbeck collection that I haven't finished and so I thought I'd get back to it. It turns out I was in chapter 10 which is about the family packing up and leaving Oklahoma. It was about saying goodbye and Steinbeck writes about anything so tragic better than anyone I can think of. They'll be going to California soon, as perhaps I shall. I may be in school in San Francisco a year from today and that's an exciting thought, but it's just one more chance to pick up and leave everything and everyone I know. Reading Steinbeck makes me want to be discontent with something or everything, or maybe I'm just discontent. Perhaps that's why I read discontent into the world around me in my previous post. Beg pardon if that was the case and I mistook personal feelings for universal human condition.
I am discontent right now and I think it's mostly due to slight inactivity. Not enough to do since I had to wait in town this week to make sure the Witts didn't need any extra help, and then with the power out for 3 days.... But I do have a lot, too much, really, on my mind. In fewer than three months I'll be home. My time here is coming to a close. This worries me because I don't feel like I've accomplished what I came to do, but since I don't know what I came to do, I think that is more the point. If I never set goals, I'll never reach them. So, instead of doing something, I worry in inactivity that I'm not doing anything. Pathetic.
Going home means I'll see family and friends, although I know they aren't the same as I left them, much as I am not the same. And how many friends will I really have the chance to run into? My friends have been scattered across the US and my hopes of running into them depend greatly on how much free time I have and how much of it can be taken up with travel with the sole purpose of visiting. I'll have to deal with the expectations of my parents, my culture, and my bosses in whatever jobs I acquire. I don't suppose the US is ready to accept that in my culture for the last two years 9am means before 10am and that running into a friend who needed some help is a good reason to be late for some things. I am between cultures now and it may take some time if I can ever feel fully part of my home culture again. Freaky. I will be moving back in with my parents for a little while and I'm sure this isn't going to be the Christmas homecoming I picture it to be in my mind. We'll all survive and I won't stop loving them, but we'll see what's in store.
The thought of settling down, if not in a location, at least with someone is becoming always more prominant in my mind. It really has been a lonely two years and i don't want to be alone anymore. I'm sure that being around my parents, at least having someone else in the house will be helpful in that regard, but there's an obvious desire for a mate. This is rather difficult because I've essentially been off the market for 2 years and while I know some gals here that are my age (gringa and nica), none of them are the one. That's the negative end, of course. The positive end is that I would love to just go out on a date, take a girl to a coffee house and just talk. I would love that.
I feel like no one ever told me how to be a man. I think that's what I always expected: "here son, this is how you gotta be a man." But growing up, I was not interested in spending time trying to become a man, I was busy being a kid. And I stayed being a kid until the summer after my sophomore year of college when suddenly I decided I wanted to be a man, after all. And now I feel like there were things I should've been paying attention to as a teenager that I didn't pay attention to and now I'm having to learn them on my own. Reading about the men slaughtering the pigs and loading up the trucks all night long, cause it had to be done validated to me that getting 7 hours of sleep a night isn't necessary, just preferable. I wish I had known that years ago; I wouldn't have been such a prick about getting to sleep sometimes.
Well maybe that'll put me to sleep. Goodnight.
I was recommended Grapes of Wraths, the only book in my Steinbeck collection that I haven't finished and so I thought I'd get back to it. It turns out I was in chapter 10 which is about the family packing up and leaving Oklahoma. It was about saying goodbye and Steinbeck writes about anything so tragic better than anyone I can think of. They'll be going to California soon, as perhaps I shall. I may be in school in San Francisco a year from today and that's an exciting thought, but it's just one more chance to pick up and leave everything and everyone I know. Reading Steinbeck makes me want to be discontent with something or everything, or maybe I'm just discontent. Perhaps that's why I read discontent into the world around me in my previous post. Beg pardon if that was the case and I mistook personal feelings for universal human condition.
I am discontent right now and I think it's mostly due to slight inactivity. Not enough to do since I had to wait in town this week to make sure the Witts didn't need any extra help, and then with the power out for 3 days.... But I do have a lot, too much, really, on my mind. In fewer than three months I'll be home. My time here is coming to a close. This worries me because I don't feel like I've accomplished what I came to do, but since I don't know what I came to do, I think that is more the point. If I never set goals, I'll never reach them. So, instead of doing something, I worry in inactivity that I'm not doing anything. Pathetic.
Going home means I'll see family and friends, although I know they aren't the same as I left them, much as I am not the same. And how many friends will I really have the chance to run into? My friends have been scattered across the US and my hopes of running into them depend greatly on how much free time I have and how much of it can be taken up with travel with the sole purpose of visiting. I'll have to deal with the expectations of my parents, my culture, and my bosses in whatever jobs I acquire. I don't suppose the US is ready to accept that in my culture for the last two years 9am means before 10am and that running into a friend who needed some help is a good reason to be late for some things. I am between cultures now and it may take some time if I can ever feel fully part of my home culture again. Freaky. I will be moving back in with my parents for a little while and I'm sure this isn't going to be the Christmas homecoming I picture it to be in my mind. We'll all survive and I won't stop loving them, but we'll see what's in store.
The thought of settling down, if not in a location, at least with someone is becoming always more prominant in my mind. It really has been a lonely two years and i don't want to be alone anymore. I'm sure that being around my parents, at least having someone else in the house will be helpful in that regard, but there's an obvious desire for a mate. This is rather difficult because I've essentially been off the market for 2 years and while I know some gals here that are my age (gringa and nica), none of them are the one. That's the negative end, of course. The positive end is that I would love to just go out on a date, take a girl to a coffee house and just talk. I would love that.
I feel like no one ever told me how to be a man. I think that's what I always expected: "here son, this is how you gotta be a man." But growing up, I was not interested in spending time trying to become a man, I was busy being a kid. And I stayed being a kid until the summer after my sophomore year of college when suddenly I decided I wanted to be a man, after all. And now I feel like there were things I should've been paying attention to as a teenager that I didn't pay attention to and now I'm having to learn them on my own. Reading about the men slaughtering the pigs and loading up the trucks all night long, cause it had to be done validated to me that getting 7 hours of sleep a night isn't necessary, just preferable. I wish I had known that years ago; I wouldn't have been such a prick about getting to sleep sometimes.
Well maybe that'll put me to sleep. Goodnight.
# posted by Adam @ 11:06 PM 
