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I am starting to wonder whether our generation of 20 and 30 year olds are on the right track.. Or at least whether my "category" of 20 and 30 year olds… The career people, the professionals… We're single or married or "partnered" or not, but we are all living the same lifestyle. For ourselves. Most of my extended family in my generation are living a similar life… Wandering, wondering, working, traveling, moving around, unsettled.. Only 4 of my cousins have had kids, and I'm 29 years old. And I have 25 cousins. 7 of them are married… Granted, many of them are much younger than me, but the precedent has been set. Almost all of the married cousins were well-established into their careers and older (25+) by the time they settled down. By my age, most of my parents, aunts, and uncles were married and done having kids. Yet here we are..  So what does it mean? Are we "liberated" because of the freedoms we have via ease of traveling, improvement of o...

Continued from May 2011... 1. My job causes time to pass in half-time, so it actually feels like it's only been 5.5 months since I started this job instead of almost a year. And therefore, I will not be turning 30 years old anytime soon. Or, does it mean I will be turning 30 in the very imminent future..?  2. Apparently, long-term relationships are even more complicated than I previously imagined, in that they involve working out not only all of the details of the relationship itself, but also many conflicting external forces. It makes me wonder how so many people make it work?  3. Seattle is a very nice place, but it's entirely too far away from the Center of the Universe, New Orleans.  4. I'm starting to enjoy distance cycling almost as much as distance running, which confirms the suspicion I have that I am really just a bit compulsive and/or masochistic.  5. I'm incredibly addicted to the cult of Cross Fit. I think about the WOD's during the da...

I've been listening to NPR on my commute, and they've been talking about the Washington state school system "crisis" regarding their soaring budget needs while admitting poor results... I'm hearing this stuff on the radio at the same time as reading the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson… All of it really makes me wonder. Wonder about a lot of things, but primarily… what is it that makes people great? First and foremost, it makes me think that nothing ever got better by hucking a bunch of money at it. There has to be a vision. A plan. And maybe even something that could be realized with less or no money if the idea is great enough. Secondly, we have to start taking ownership of our jobs and roles in society again. Great teachers are great teachers because they have decided to become great. Same as most professions. No doubt, money and equipment and a good support system help, but one of my best teachers was paid probably $35,000 a year and worked in t...

Here I am again, looking Forward, Backward, but never down at my feet. I have been sooooo nostalgic this week. I think watching HBO's Treme series is doing it to me. And then, of course I went and watched Warren Miller's annual ski film and Utah is all over it… What about here and now? The problem has been, and continues to be, I don't much care about the here and now. I'm perpetually unimpressed with my surroundings.. And why? It feels like nothing is ever as good as it "was." It's an age-old problem, right? This is not a new story or concept. My problem is… sometimes it really "is" as good as it gets. I think the times I am reminiscing about in New Orleans are really what life is all about. They are real. It was such a great time and place when I lived there. And the same thing with Utah. The thing about Utah was.. Residency was so horrible, and I missed New Orleans so much… but sometimes Utah really was "the best." Being up on a m...

I finally decided to brave the bumper-to-bumper traffic I've resigned myself to since moving to Seattle and persuaded myself that it's time to get out. I moved here, time to see some of it. After browsing various websites with event and music listings and coming up relatively devoid of any interest in anything, I decided to go out with a friend out to the "Neptune Theater" to listen to a band. It's a college scene, decent band, great people watching. After paying the exorbitant "$15 cover" that is so standard for crappy live music out West, I entered a pretty cool setup for a show. It's an old theater that that has an interesting history, http://stgpresents.org/neptune/history.asp. The walls and bathrooms have stained glass depictions of Neptune. It's a great space. My friend and I settle in to my standard behavior at this point… which is, establish a vantage point in an inconspicuous place and watch. Instantaneously, I felt like an alien to...

1. "I love old people and people who are dying because they practice total sincerity and total honesty, like you." -s 2. I always wondered why anyone would ever go into psychiatry… Then I had a recent rotation. Rounds lasted 2 hours. Total. And they were fascinating. And they help people. On their schedule. Then they called it a day about an hour before lunch. 3. Hacer pinta = to play hookie. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=play+hookie . A day in which liberty is taken upon oneself to exclude themself from school or work obligations while, most likely, pretending to be sick or having a death in the family. Usually this time is spent with a significant other (i.e. hookie for nookie ), a sports activity (i.e. golf or play station), or just plain sitting on ones ass all day editing & writing definitions for modern slang words over the internet. Commonly referred to as " play ing hookie ". 4. After 18 months, I think I can adjust to living anywhe...

I got to thinking about the concept of finality this week for an odd reason. I was talking to my grandma on the phone to wish her a Happy Mother's Day. She's doing well and we were just catching up, but the conversation pulled with an irresistible magnetism toward Paw.. I didn't want to talk about him, so I was frustrated with myself, but it's so hard not to. She mentioned that she's doing OK, but gets sad. "It's just so final," she says. For some reason, that sentence really resonated with me. It's so true, but I haven't really processed it in that sense. It's easy for me to mourn and then live on, because I rarely saw Paw Paw in his last year of life. But it's much harder for me to really let go. It's been sort of interesting as I've moved away from home to fully grasp how my relationship to home has changed and morphed. In some ways, my relationships and places and people have been and will remain more or less the same, bu...