Aloha

I've been writing privately. Once in a while, as a sort of test.

1) Would I blog if I could?

I've passed the first test, and so, since Blogger is free, I am starting the second test.

2) Will I blog when I have one?

I've posted a few of my past writings from the last few months that I felt fit for public consumption, just to make sure there's some content.

If I pass this test, I get to have my own hosted, customized blog that's more full featured. But that's for the distant and uncertain future. We can plan for that just like everything else we do. Naturally, all plans work out perfectly.

For Grounding

We stayed up late last night entertaining a houseguest, and I’m horribly jet-lagged and possibly hung-over. I can’t tell which, or in what ratio.

My return to Honolulu has not been as triumphant and celebratory as I had imagined. On the contrary, I’ve felt disconnected and like I don’t belong here. My home doesn’t feel like home, welcomes have been scant and from people I needed them from the least.

It’s like I have been granted this overwhelming feeling of dread.

But I just saw something that grounded me for a fleeting moment. And you won’t believe what it was. A nametag. Yeah. Of a co-worker I really like and admire. She wasn’t even there, and I think that if she had been the effect wouldn’t have been as profound.

For that moment I felt like my head cleared, and I stopped walking and smiled. “Oh, wow,” I thought to myself. “Her.”

And then I started walking again, and these familiar but unwanted feelings returned.

What I’m Waiting For

I was sent off to Utah for 2 months, and I was furious. But I calmed down, as I do, and I got used to the idea that it was really just like an excruciatingly long workweek. With one day weekends every 11 days.

For a while, I tried to have a life here. I tried to make the best of the pitiful hotel gym facilities and to be interested in going out to dinner with these strangers that have become my co-castaways. But finally, there was no denying it. The gym is just unworkable and my fellow victims here in exile are not my friends, no matter how much I try. And it’s a shame, really, because they’re not my kind of people and they don’t seem to like one another very much, either.

So I found myself playing my video game, setting goals and being excited for the next milestone. And I knew the whole time that I was really just escaping. Just biding my time till I was permitted to return home.

Isn’t that funny? I’m an adult, but I have to ask for permission to go home.

But I’ve reached my in-game goal and I’m stymied on what to do with myself. I’m waiting to go home, to run a house and work in a yard. To have a dog stand with her nose less than an inch from mine as I intone her name in a sacred chant of praise.