Later

Men who age. Women who strut their stuff. Young high school girls in skirts with hair on their legs. This is the sound of moving; this is the sound of coming home.

I made the decision to come back for good at the end of this year. It's not a hard decision because I don't sign my name to anything until February. But this thought has started a movement within me, slow gears of power in their steady acceleration. Just having an end date in sight has started this shift. I now have some kind of overall goal. Before I was just lackadaisically moving through time in Japan thinking "well, I'm going to be here again, I'm going to be here next year, I'm going to be here indefinitely" and that thinking gave me no spunk (oh no, Sarah Palin's vocabulary is filtering into mine...), no drive. But now, well now, I have things to do! I'm going to be home in 10 months! I gotta see the world! I gotta make friends! I have to appreciate each moment, never miss a weekend, never miss a day, never pass on a chance to see the ocean.

And I'm coming home over Christmas again. Yeah. It's good. I just paid for my plane ticket.

Sometimes I think these posts are really insufficient. Heck, I know they are. I should somehow be able to capture all of this into words, into a photograph, mold them into a living breathing thing and mail it home. (I'd poke holes in the box). What can hold this experience? Not even my own brain, I forget so much of it.

Thinking about coming home has made me understand that I am going to miss this place sooo much after I'm back. Even every crazy and awesome thing aside, I'm going to miss my ocean, my block, my neighborhood. My view. The chance to jog up into the hills and look over the vastness of the ocean and see how the world curves down over the horizon. There are so many things that are just uniquely here.

I'm moving along with a steady future now. That has made me a lot happier.

A couple of mandates to add:
-Invite often and invite early.
-Before you can be resentful you must first be unsatisfied with what you have.

I'm so tired. I gotta quit typing things.

Luther

.