Still Alive

It has taken me four months to motivate myself to blog about the happenings in my life. It is not from lack of content, rather lack of focus that has kept me from posting anything. My attention has been scattered in many directions since about May last year...last year, wow. Yesterday was the year anniversary of my moving to Chicago. What has happened in that year? Only my life changing inside out from the way it used to be, plunging me into everywhere but my comfort zone.

Aside from getting to know a whole new city with its inner social and transportation workings, I started from scratch in making friends, lived in three different roommate situations, worked two different jobs, and learned that the death of a professor/mentor I had known for just a few months here could still impact me traumatically. I have learned that establishing goals is easy for me, but planning for them, and therefore executing them, is something I absolutely need to work on. I have learned how little I can live on financially without feeling deprived. I have learned how important family truly is and how crippling extended solitude can be. I have learned how much I value the holidays, as I had to spend all three of them alone or at work...at the same time I learned how to see the magic in solitary experiences. I have learned that I can be generous with my services, if not with my money, and that people appreciate that so much more. I have discovered that love truly has no boundaries.

I have grown a lot. It has been very uncomfortable, but then, what kind of change isn't at some level? I was happy with the woman I had become up until moving here. Nevertheless, having survived the trials of the past year and learning from them instead of cursing my reactions to them, I have continued surprising myself. I thank God for the tests of my patience, strength, compassion, and my love for humanity. Even if during those tests I pleaded mercy, I realized their hidden benefits afterward. Yes, I have broken a few academic eggs in the process, but I am bouncing back with renewed determination for success. No more procrastination, no more crippling fear of failure, and no more abstinence from knitting in the middle of a stressful quarter - it really does maintain my sanity as a form of meditation...and I am making a lot of loved ones warmer with the things I make for them.

Speaking of which, I have some slippers to make for my father with the yarn I bought on sale today. I find great joy in maintaining a hobby I love while not breaking my checking account over it. It is nice to be easily pleased. It is cheaper too.

School starts up again in a week. I hope to post again sooner than April.

"If God is a DJ, Life is a dance floor; Love is the rhythm, You are the music." -Pink
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