Hold Onto Sixteen as Long as You Can

I still love listening to it rain. 

I love when it rains in the south though. NY ruined me for rain. In the south, you have sweet afternoon rainstorms, and you can walk outside and the wet concrete is still warm under your feet, and everything is just sort of dripping, and it's a southland paridise. Not like the rainforest, there isn't enough vegitation down here, and it smells like woods, not like forest. I think there is a difference. I've missed the South. Everything about it.

Especially the rain.

Makin words

It still surprises me when I cook something and it ends up being wonderful. I made some taco cassarole today, and it ended up being rockin. Granted, not the hardest thing in the world to do (and that's kinda why I picked it) but it turned out fantastic, and looks like it's going to reheat like a champ.

I'm trying to keep myself from being stressed, but that's not really happening, with having to figure out my entire life....RIGHT NOW....and not really being able to do a whole lot because I'm more or less on lock down. Do I find a job, because I don't know if I'm going to be here more than a month? Do I wait and put some effort into my portfolio, even though I'm stressed out?

Adam was going to Airborne then ARC school, which means that he would be in GA until the end of August, and I need to be down in TX by 27 AUG, which means that I would have to leave without him and get established, without a car, or a license, or even more than a few hundred dollars in the bank, and get enrolled in school right off the bat. Which I'm sure I could do, and eventually figure out. It would just take some working. But now it looks like both of us are leaving by the end of the month, because he doesn't NEED Airborne, so why should we wait here for another two months? But then, thats the Army. The plan is what you deviate from.

But that also take a lot of stress off of me, which is giving me a little bit of leeway to get a little more creative. I'm not saying that I'm some prima donna who needs perfect conditions to write. In fact, isn't it the emotional moments that drag the best writing out of any writer? But this is that different sort of stress. Less emotion, just stress.

I just want to be in a place, mentally where I can just write. I want to have the time to sit down and do it. I hate when I have one of those things, and not the other. I want to have the need to have my notebook close by, and just spend hours alone with it, having my love affair with ragging my pen across paper, making some beautiful words.

Leftovers and Home

I tried cooking today. I say 'cooking'  as a loosely defined word.

I make some refrigerator oatmeal for the boys, off theyummylife.com, this woman is a genius, you should browse this woman's recipes, healthy and delicious, anyway, I modified a couple of the flavors. Adam has some blackberry-vanilla, cherry-almond, strawberry-nutella.... he's an oatmeal kinda guy, I hope he enjoys it.

I also put some salsa in the fridge. Though, without the cilantro, it's probably a little more like pico de gallo...but it should still be good. I went a little heavy on the jalapeno...I'm not going to tell Adam til he tries it...

Speaking of Adam, he's starting Airborne today. He usually goes to work around 730 and is home around lunchtime, because he's sort of snowbirding, but it looks like for the next three weeks, he won't be home until  dinnerish every night. But the fact that I get to see him every night...Thats all I need.

Almost done with my Patricia Briggs kick. I've got 3 1/2 books left of hers to finish. I think I'm going to sit down and do comprehensive reviews on them, maybe chronologically, so I can watch the way her writing changes? That and have a couple sample pieces for getting into the review business, so that I can get paid for things that I already love doing. I really enjoy the way that she writes. I've read some of the reviews already written on some of her books, the earlier ones, and they're not flattering. Granted, some of her characters have foggy motivations, but there are usually some fun plot twists, and the characters are always entertaining. Thats the sort of fiction that I want to write. I want to be able to do that, to entertain and surprise.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

It's amazing how radically things can change in a month, a week, a weekend. I made one decision that changed the trajectory of my entire life, and now I'm trying to figure out how to make my new life. I've gone from something that has been planned to a T, heavily controlled, and incredibly predictable, to something that is risky and I couldn't tell you where my next paycheck is coming from. I went from something stable and financially secure to something that probably won't pay well or have health care benefits. But I think I'll be happy. I hope I'll be happy.


In the mean time, I'm with the guy of my dreams, and hopefully we can build some sort of life with each other.

Moving Day

Days like this remind me why I'm so glad that I'm leaving. The complete lack of efficiency and effectiveness by those around me continues to astonish. Granted, moving usually makes me cranky, so we can just chalk it up to that.

But after a day of being incredibly busy since 7 in the morning, hauling things, being rained on, hauling more things, sweating, getting rained on, chasing elevators, hauling things, braving hills....I look like this

Its not pretty, is it? Granted, the sweat has since dried in my hair, so it's just a little stiff. It's my stench that is more disconcerting. But I have formation in a half hour...so showering at this point would be counter productive.

It's also disconcerting how much stuff I have. Most people are moving a single laundry cart. Between my roommate and I, we have two carts, a floor dolly and a long dolly. It's impressive that we can fit everything that goes into those boxes into a single barracks room. But there you have it.

Anyway, I need to set aside time to write some letters, write some poetry....write SOMEthing. I'll be sitting in this room, door open til 1600, for the next two days. Room restriction, apparently, because I'm outprocessing, and therefore not to be trusted. 

I love this feeling.

Prologue

I think they make the S1 department on the 4th floor so that you have to go down a long hallway, with no one but yourself to think about what it is that you're about to do. That's when I have most of my second thoughts about things.

I mean, most people would think that I'm crazy. Throwing away a steady job, a shot at being great at something, a college education... because...because.....because......I don't like it here?

It's a flimsy excuse. I'm not going to lie. I wish that I had a better 'reason' to explain it. But the fact is, that I'm leaving the United States Military Academy

 to finish my degree in Texas,

with my boyfriend, 

hopefully a dog, 

maybe teach some yoga classes, 

and one day become a published author, instead of just a half cocked dreamer or part time poet.

 Could I have taken  more of a 180 with my life?

Going from dress-right-dress and strack lines and mess halls....to spandex pants and homecooked meals, empty notebooks and new dreams? It's like something out of a faery tale, like a happy ending that I got without working for it.

I just don't know that this is the place that I want to be right now. I'm angry all the time. No one wants to be accountable for their actions, people would rather stab someone else in the back than help out a classmate. I'm the bad guy for wanting to do the right thing, or for getting worked up about just doing the right thing. It's so, ridiculously easy, to just do the right thing. Maybe that's why I can hardly make it through the day without losing my mind at someone, or can go almost an entire day without speaking to a single soul... Or maybe it's the first 19 years of my life that are holding me back. Not something I want to blame it on, but there you have it. But either way, there is no way that I can make my junior year commitment for the next 10 years of my life knowing that I'm this angry. Whether I go back or not, I have to excise...whatever it is that I'm dealing with before I can be an officer. Before I can be a leader. Before I can stand in front of a platoon, and give them all of my attentions and all of my energy, when none of it is being diverted into being angry or upset.

But until then, I have the love of my life and a life I want to live, the perfect setting to figure things out.