my time is at hand...

Eventually there comes a day where you stop waiting for inspiration to hit and just write something, anything, to put on your blog. Of course, having a slow-paced job helps quite a bit, but even that has not been enough to get me blogging lately. I did write something last week about the new computer game I've been playing, but it was really nerdy and I thought that we've had enough of my nerdity (its a word if I say it is) for one month.

I've not been up to much in the last ten days. My life is very simple and surreal at the moment. I perform regularly in my play at the local community theater, spend the days sitting here at this desk in this office, go to the gym on occasion, relax at home, and generally avoid thinking too much about all the stuff I have to do soon. These activities are accompanied by the constant pressure to stay out of the insufferable heat we've been subjected lately. Its the kind of heat that leaves you a lifeless, sweaty husk. Seriously, I don't think I'm meant for warm climates. Yet another reason why the upcoming move to South Carolina seems so ironic.

I'm in a period of transition, and its difficult to explain what it is like. It's happened to me a few times before, and so it feels kind of familiar, in a way, but no less scary. Everything is up in the air and I don't know where its going to come down, and there's this tingly feeling in the pit of my stomach at the thought that just a few weeks from now my life will be completely different in every way. With the possible exception of leaving the country to live in the Philippines for two years, I've never embarked on a change quite so dramatic and complete as the one now rapidly approaching.

I'm leaving in two weeks and three days. It hardly seems real. What will my life be like there? Will I be happy? Will I have friends? Will I still be me, or will I change in a new environment? Will I fit in? There's honestly no way of knowing until I get there.

Shakespeare was a genius. I know that was random, but bear with me. I've thought a lot about one of his famous lines lately, and I think represents an important reality for us human beings. It's in our nature to, as Hamlet says, “rather bear those ills we have than fly to others we know not of.” Six months ago I was excited and ready for a change, and I think that I still am. But the fear of the unknown future creeps in and you start thinking.... you know, this isn't so bad. My life's not so bad here. Yeah, I hate my job, but its a reliable source of income for now, and I have lots of friends, and people who I can't imagine living without, and maybe I'd be better off staying here.

This line of thinking is safe and comfortable, and it is bad. It is anathema to personal growth and development. It's the kind of thinking that keeps people stuck in crappy jobs in crappy towns feeling miserable about their lives because they never had the courage to strike out into the darkness and make something better. It's the thinking of the servant who would bury his talent to keep it safe rather than working and risking to improve his lot. It is stagnancy. And I for one would rather try and fail than sit around wondering my whole life. That has been the driving rhetoric for my whole new approach to life. I no longer pretend to have ultimate answers, or to express confidence in things which I cannot know for sure. I only know that I must go where my heart directs me, no matter how terrifying, and do my best to be happy. I'd rather be free and wrong than in chains. But I wax metaphorical...

One phase of my life is over forever, and another opens. Such is the way of things. I'll miss you all. But I have to go. It's my time.