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| Got an A+ on my Aging Psych research paper and presentation, which is good since combined they represented over 60 hours of work. The reason so much work went into them is important though: there was no good reason in a basic college course to read four complete books on your subject, no good reason to do a nine page paper, no good reason to do a custom edited movie in addition to my powerpoint for the presentation; unless you count really being passionate about the subject as a good reason.
I've never felt particularly engaged by any topic, any field of research or endeavor. I love all learning - thumb through a college catalog like a kid looking at toys, but I've never felt particularly drawn to any one thing. This research paper on death issues drew me in and I barely stopped with what I turned in. I found that I cared deeply about finding a way to present what I learned on the subject in a way that would engage my audience and help give them the tools to make a more informed decision. It felt important. It was important.
The field is called Bioethics. It is concerned with the philosophical, ethical and scientific questions of what it is to be human and I am utterly enraptured by the complexity of it. So much of what it means to be us is intensely personal that there are scarcely any real "answers" to be had, but that actually creates tremendous opportunity (in my mind) for finding novel ways of asking the questions.
I don't know how to get into this field, or if I have the talent to be a force within it. But when people ask what I want to be when I grow up I have an answer, and that's a very pleasant change.
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| I've put in for a transfer at my job so I can move to California and everything looks set for July to make that happen. I'll be moving in with Stacey. By that time we'll have been to Europe together for a two week trip and will be up to 5 months dating and 19 knowing each other.
We have an appointment to look at a house Saturday while I'm down. If we like it I'll start the financing process. I don't know that the housing market has bottomed, but I like where prices stand as a multiple of household incomes. Two years salary is a sustainable price point, but I'm not an economist I just play one in class. 
Happy times. Hope they are for you as well.........
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| Once there was Amy and she made me laugh, oh how we laughed. She said I flooded her with oxytocin and I knew what she meant and that she was capable of knowing it and meaning it and I flooded with oxytocin and it felt like my heart was melting. Then she went away and absence made the heart grow fonder until absence made the silences longer and finally absence made the heart question a little. Then there was Stacey and she is so beautiful and I hear from her 15 times a day and every time I hear from her it's like feeling a part of something again. Amy is fading away, Amy is being lost and I know there won't be any getting her back because she's the quiet sort that could never hold on to me and I will end up in Ireland all alone and wondering if I made the right decision....... And I did. But that won't make it hurt less. Not that day. | | |
| What's it like to skydive?
I could waste a lot of words on it, describe details of wind and view, paint emotional pictures that would vaguely describe what it was, but I've always felt that saying in a thousand words what could be said in four is the mark of a writer who loves themself more than communicating. So what is it like to skydive?
It is like dying.
The fear is all in the time leading up. There isn't the lurch that you expect, or the any desperate urge to reach impossibly back for what you have left behind. You are glad that you are done with the fear, that you've faced it; sorry that you can't talk to your friends about what you're going through; regretful that it will be over before you can really enjoy it, that there won't ever be another this time for you to experience without being so overwhelmed.
Perhaps four words isn't enough, or I love myself more than I thought, but let me add:
It is like dying - well.
or living that way...... | | |
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