It's late and the Sox are on, inning seven and the score is getting closer all the time. A four-run game, they keep saying. Two more innings could take all night.
I feel swamped, like I have a million things I want to do and a hundred I need to do and about ten minutes to do it all. I wish I could be more nocturnal, could stay awake and use some of these night hours for good. Instead, I am a creature needing more sleep than maybe anyone. Eight hours is just barely enough.
Here's an update, because things are changing inside my brain. Grad school is the best decision I've made since leaving school three years ago, but I believe I wasn't ready until I was just was. Over time I'm beginning to think about patterns and hints, how maybe I really was heading here all this time. Now that I'm doing it, I feel almost sure.
Every day, it's something new to stretch my brain. But what's more, it's a question only I can answer about what I believe and where I want to go. I am required, by semester's end, to deliver my own environmental philosophy statement and somehow, as if by magic, I'm almost there. I almost know what I believe, and am finding that I've known it all along. I feel strongly about environmental education being done in a particular way. I care that it's political and inclusive and working toward making things better on an institutional scale. Forget the nature centers. That is not where you'll find me.
Meanwhile, Halloween has gone the way of the dogs this year. Too many other things pulling at us and a little bit of freedom in opting out. We're looking ahead, looking forward to other Halloweens, other years when maybe we won't have more pressing things to do. But this year, these things are important to us, so we're doing them first.
And in my head, I'm making a list of the things I want to do when I have the time. After graduation, maybe. Things like Read more David Sedaris, Put as much into getting fit as I do into getting smart, Visit Seattle, Jeremy and the Southeast.
And in my head, music and poetry. Mary Oliver is everywhere lately, in coffee houses and online and I am realizing: I missed her, somewhere along the way.
The leaves are deepest orange and brown, falling and blowing in squalls across country roads and soon, oh soon, it will snow.
I feel swamped, like I have a million things I want to do and a hundred I need to do and about ten minutes to do it all. I wish I could be more nocturnal, could stay awake and use some of these night hours for good. Instead, I am a creature needing more sleep than maybe anyone. Eight hours is just barely enough.
Here's an update, because things are changing inside my brain. Grad school is the best decision I've made since leaving school three years ago, but I believe I wasn't ready until I was just was. Over time I'm beginning to think about patterns and hints, how maybe I really was heading here all this time. Now that I'm doing it, I feel almost sure.
Every day, it's something new to stretch my brain. But what's more, it's a question only I can answer about what I believe and where I want to go. I am required, by semester's end, to deliver my own environmental philosophy statement and somehow, as if by magic, I'm almost there. I almost know what I believe, and am finding that I've known it all along. I feel strongly about environmental education being done in a particular way. I care that it's political and inclusive and working toward making things better on an institutional scale. Forget the nature centers. That is not where you'll find me.
Meanwhile, Halloween has gone the way of the dogs this year. Too many other things pulling at us and a little bit of freedom in opting out. We're looking ahead, looking forward to other Halloweens, other years when maybe we won't have more pressing things to do. But this year, these things are important to us, so we're doing them first.
And in my head, I'm making a list of the things I want to do when I have the time. After graduation, maybe. Things like Read more David Sedaris, Put as much into getting fit as I do into getting smart, Visit Seattle, Jeremy and the Southeast.
And in my head, music and poetry. Mary Oliver is everywhere lately, in coffee houses and online and I am realizing: I missed her, somewhere along the way.
The leaves are deepest orange and brown, falling and blowing in squalls across country roads and soon, oh soon, it will snow.
