Going out of town, again. I probably won't get to see a hockey game while I'm gone this time, though.

I think I'm the better for having taken a few days away. I used to travel so much more, especially when I was playing hockey, and I'd forgotten how useful it is to just leave everything behind for a bit. I'm going away again on Thursday for four days, and I think that, too, will be nice.

One thing I realized this weekend is how much my confidence is being eroded and undermined by my current job. I was completely blown away on Friday when the people with whom I interviewed took me absolutely seriously. I'm so used to being talked to as if I was a pre-schooler that being addressed as a presumably intelligent adult knocked me back on my heels in surprise. I talked to six different people on Friday, and I never felt as if they were merely indulging me, but that they actually wanted to hear what I had to say. That hasn't happened in awhile and as I thinking about it afterward, I decided it should happen a lot more often. Really, it should.

Where I was Friday at 2 p.m.:

http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/04/1006humanities.html

Maybe I'll say more later, but my opinion can really be summed up in a short sentence: I was convinced NOT AT ALL that Stanley Fish had any sort of remedy for the (alleged) crisis of the Humanities.

In the interest of spending even more time alone, and possibly rendering myself completely mute, I'm going out of town this weekend. Leaving Thursday, coming back...well, we'll see. By the end of the weekend, I'm sure. Certainly in time to go out of town again next weekend.

Silence is habit-forming, isn't it? If your daily routine requires--or at least results in--isolation, and in addition you spend the majority of your free time alone, you lose not just the opportunity, but also the desire to share your thoughts with other people. All communication is inwardly focused, and the external world ceases to exist after awhile. It's a subtle but possibly irreversible slide into reclusivity.

I used to think that becoming a hermit would take work, or that at least I would feel some level of sacrifice, giving up social interaction and stimulation. But it's the exact opposite: becoming and staying alone is easy. The effort comes in remaining connected to the people I (used to) know. It's so simple to postpone speaking, hoarding my thoughts and forgetting--refusing--to share them later. It's easy to be lulled into a state of complacency, reading my own mind and keeping my own counsel. Participating in public discourse takes on the form of self-betrayal, and in the end, it's more rewarding to pull away entirely, and refuse to answer when people stand at the mouth of your cave and demand that you come out and play.

What I'm trying to remember is that eventually I'll feel better. At some point the pendulum will swing itself out of this trough and I'll hit some high days, days when I won't have to carry this exhaustion with me everywhere I go. How can a person spend twelve and a half hours in bed and still wake up tired and spent? I wish I knew.

Lately, I've been thinking about how nice it would have been to actually realize the future my parents envisioned for me when I was young. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, I managed to stray so far from their chosen path that I'm not sure they're able to recognize me now, what with the haze and distortion of the long distances between us.

When I was a child, it was pretty much assumed that I would attend a Christian college. In junior high, it looked certain that I would be going to Western Baptist in Salem. But when I was really young, the plan was always to have me go off to Oral Roberts University and become a gospel singer. My mom eventually changed her mind on that (thanks, Patti Roberts), but still, it probably puzzled everyone when I chose Western Washington over Western Baptist. I even gave up on music in the end, possible a bigger surprise than giving up on Christianity.

I don't think it's really the "in" thing for atheists to do, but if someone called me up tomorrow and offered me a job as a gospel singer, I'd probably take the gig.

I guess the best that can be said for the situation is that my boss didn't fire me, and I didn't quit. That probably means that we both exercised at least a bit of restraint, although I'd argue that I exercised a lot more. A *lot* more.

Well, Catherine kicked my ass again in today's 5k. I kept telling myself I would catch up with her, even if it meant puking afterward. I didn't catch her up--she beat me by 5-8 seconds--but I did throw up in the end. Unfortunately, I wasn't the first person to use that particular trash barrel to vomit, and that discovery made me upchuck a second time. And yet still, we went out to lunch with our neighbor afterward and planned our next race schedule.

This morning I had a few applying-to-graduate-school errands to accomplish, so I took a few hours off from work. I think my quality of life improved from being able to get an extra hour of sleep, even if I have to skip lunch a couple of times to make the hours up.

If anyone wants me, I'll be down by the river, sitting under an osage orange tree and reading a book.