A King of Infinite Space

Xmas went decently for me.  I had to work until 5pm the night before, then be in again at noon on Xmas, but I maximized the time and spent Xmas Eve with my dad's side of the family and Xmas morning with my mom.  I got a lot of things - money, a stereo for my ipod, a gas card, stuff for the apartment, clothes, shoes, a movie, etc.    Tricia's flight was delayed until the end of the week, so I didn't get to see her until that Friday.  I missed her!  She came by work later that night when I was working and brought me what she'd gotten me, which was an awesome zip-up sweater-jacket, a journal, a mix cd that she'd made me and a cd from her brother's band.  We ended up going back to my place, I ordered a bottle of wine, pizza and we watched Heroes (since she's never seen it). 

I've been working a lot.  I'm averaging around 50-55 or so hours a week.  I'm exhausted and burnt out, but at least the money is good.  I'm definitely ready for a vacation, though.  My goals for next year (along with a lot of other life changes) are to get my passport and travel Costa Rica by July, pay off a lot of my debt, have a few thousand in savings by the end of the year, have a lot of school taken care of, get into a job position where I don't have to work all the time just to pay for everything, and to own one of these by either March or April:   

I look back upon my life and see patterns of how horrible things lead to wonderful things.  How bad decisions yield good results.  It could be the ebb and flow of life, that the good and bad are inevitable and thus disconnected, but there are times when I wonder if certain things happen for a purpose.  How certain fights bring unseen opportunities to mend things.  How failing at one thing opens the door to succeed in something better.  Do certain failed relationships bring you to better ones, or do you just think like that because you're no longer on a sinking ship?  If I'd been more ambitious in high school, I would not have had so many life experiences.  I would either be at a state university or an ivy league school.  It would change the last six years of my life completely, which begs the question, would I be the person that I am now?  Systemic are also the questions where am I going with my life and am I fated for the direction that I'm headed in or  is it just a random collection of events. 

I feel that as 2008 approaches, I have a lot of serious questions that I need to ask myself about where I want to go with my life, how I'm going to get there and who I want to involve.  I feel that, tangled up in all three of those questions is the most important question, which is who am I or who do I want to be.  Simple answers have emerged.  I want to be more financially stable, so I'm budgeting better.  I want to be more athletic, so I'm working out more.  I want to be more intelligent, so I'm reading more.  More difficult answers are still left unrooted.  I have so much about myself that I still need to ask and think about.  I feel a lot of difficult change in the next few months; however, I think things will be drastically different a year from now.  I want to rebuild broken bridges.  I want to build myself back from the ground up, which will take a lot of patience, resolve and a fair amount of isolation and introspection.  It's 5:00am and I'm delirious by this point.  I just want my actions to speak louder than my words. 

An excerpt from a letter I wrote last night: "I don't dwell on choices as much as he does, though that's not to say that I don't spend a fair amount of time on them.  Choices that I've made with friends.  Choices that I've made in relationships.  In jobs.  At school.  You always wonder how different your life would have been had you made different choices. I hold most of these things close because I feel and think very deeply about things.  I allow things to burrow inside of me and nest.  On a long enough timeline, it doesn't matter to consider all of the choices you could have made, because so many new choices will have sprung from old ones, dismissing the importance of one good or bad decision.  Excelling in school would have prevented me from ever meeting you.  After long enough, the results of good and bad decisions are almost indescernable."

I know that it's true, but it still feels dismissive at times.  How many good things might I be giving up?  How do I know which opportunities to seize and which to let go of?  I make most decisions in the interest of bettering my life, but it's sometimes difficult to tell what actually will better things and what will later turn out to be a regret.  I wish heartache and happiness were better indicators in these decisions, but in the advent of these new directions and choices, some of the seemingly necessary ones are sometimes painful and difficult.  I guess a fair amount of it I have to leave up to life, hoping that things will even themselves out with enough time.  I've also been trying to draw on experience to navigate my decision-making, learning that I can't be dispassionate in all of my choices.  Also learning not to close doors and burn bridges.  In the end, what will be, will be.  I just want myself and the people that I care about to find contentment in their lives, which I know is a complicated and sometimes messy process.  I guess nothing good is ever simple to attain, so I can endure the hardships of my decisions in hopes of elevating my situation.  

I just have to be methodical in making them.