June 3, 1997


I sliced my thumb pretty badly last night.

I've been peeling back the bandaid every now and then to check the cut with a sort of morbid fascination. It's a pretty bad cut. It's not bleeding anymore, but if I push at it the scab breaks and fresh blood oozes out around the edges.

If I'd just leave it alone it'd probably get better a lot faster, so I'm studiously trying to ignore the mild twinge in my thumb every time I hit the space bar with it.

This morning was gray, wet and rainy. Uncharacteristically cold for Washington D.C. at this time of year.

Today marks my one year anniversary of residence in this area. A year ago I moved into a damp basement apartment on Capitol Hill and suffered through 6 months of smelly dampness, bugginess, loud upstairs neighbors with a propensity for getting drunk and making loud noises very early/late (however you look at it) on Thursdays and days when the trash guys didn't pick up the trash even though it was dutifully stacked out on the curb. Moving with Sabs, to our nice DRY, spacious and airy apartment in Alexandria, was a blessed relief and gave me a sense of homecoming which I hadn't felt in a while.

I've now been employed at The Chronicle of Higher Education for a year, as of tomorrow and I keep looking around waiting for the sky to fall. I keep wondering what happened to all of the goals I set for myself when I moved out of my parents' home, and checking to see if I really am further along than I was a year ago.

If anything, I feel a lot stronger than I did last June, when I was still reeling from the fact that I'd managed to graduate from college, get a job and was now on my own out there in the Real World. In other ways I'm not much father along than I was, I'm still swimming in a sea of post-college debt and I feel very restless. I don't want to get stuck here. Every day I think about going back to school, continuing my educaton, expanding on it so that I, in turn can expand into other things.

However, I am no longer fearful that I will not manage the sheer act of survival. In the most general terms, everything is fine. The bills are getting paid, on time and on schedule. And there is a sort of comfortable daily pattern developing.

The one great wish, that I still have and probably always will is for more SLEEP. I am constantly over-tired, though my energy level is much higher than it has been in the past 3 years. I'm actually feeling closer to the Beth I was at 18, striding off to college, than the person I was in-between. Hopefully I'll be able to harness this into productive action: weight-loss inducing excercise, taking a class, getting all of the housecleaning done etc. etc. And maybe if I tire myself out enough I'll get some real sleep ...

The most I can say, is that I'm not stagnating yet. Though I often feel stuck and wish to push at the envelope, I really AM in control of my own destiny, it's just up to me to make the first move.