Thursday, August 18, 2005

when I said I'll take it, I meant as is

Greetings from the fence. I've been sitting here for, oh, I don't know, maybe two years now. How's it going?

Strangely, I am in no particular funk today. The world is not in good shape. I used to think I was contributing in some small way to its improvement, but I soon became disillusioned, and realized I work for just another corporation. And even though it is a corporation that does help people on some level, it still has to answer to that omnipresent bottom line. Fine. But today I am grateful nonetheless.

If I had never worked in the places I have for the past several bajillion years (okay, it just feels like that long), I would never have been able to think critically about the complexity of issues that are becoming increasingly important, many of which revolve around healthcare. If I had never worked in these places, doing what I've done, I might not have ever been so sure that what I wanted was really what I wanted. Wha? That made more sense in my head than it does in typed words. Still, I am not looking up a desolate incline, thinking the fertile land lies beyond the precipice. I just now finally know.

And knowing feels like how I imagine marriage to feel. It is about reality and commitment. And yet there is still the ethereal about it, the part that is not ruled by the will, but by desire.

So, even though I still feel a sense of unsteadiness, this sense that the path is still not perfectly cleared for my journey, I can feel the forward momentum again. No matter whether I decide to do the unthinkable (IAH, suckers) or to stay here, I will not be sedentary, wringing my hands with uncertainty, by the end of this month. Come September, I will be living in an altogether different universe. That is a comforting thought.

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