Dum spiro spero
My absence from blogging has not been about carelessness or forgetfulness. Like most things that I avoid, it was a combination of purposeful neglect (I should be finding a job instead) and insecure hesitation (I have nothing important to say right now, anyway.) I put it off, figuring that once I found a job, I could start writing again and not feel guilty.
I mean, before I left for Jubilee, I basically wrote about my interests or hobbies. But now, jobless, it seems like writing about what I like to do in my “free time” is actually writing about my life, and something about that seems so… shallow. (Side note: I always disliked using “jobless” over “unemployed/unemployment” when I was writing headlines for the newspaper, but it was shorter and didn’t make sense not to use. But, now that I actually am those things, “jobless” really has less of a sting than “unemployed.”)
So, what have I done in January?
+ Made up for some lost gym time by working out. A lot. I keep figuring that eventually, I’ll get a job and it won’t be feasible to be at the gym all day. And for someone who isn’t very in shape, I’ve always really loved and preferred the exercise element of fitness.
mmm organic collards.
+ Begun to indoctrinate my family into eating more plants and less “food-like products.” I even have my Dad drinking almond milk and eating parsnips, daikons, collards, hubbard squash, etc. without complaint. I’ll be glad when it is summer and there is more local fresh produce. And since my time at Jubilee showed me that it is possible to raise your own food and not die of fire ant stings, I’m actually going to continue the Benfield family tradition of gardening (with help, of course.)
+/- Caught up on a lot of movies and television shows I didn’t have (or miss much) during the fall media-almost-blackout. It is positive in someways because I missed the news and True Blood and I was feeling really left out of the “Jersey Shore” phenomenon. However, I tend to watch shows that are brain rotting (uh, again re: “Jersey Shore.”) And it makes me embarrassed that my days closely resemble low-budget, less plastic versions of the Real Housewives and the JS’s GTL (gym, tan, laundry.. except twittering instead of tanning.)
+/- Read more books. I didn’t read as much in Georgia because there were so many people around. And, I realized there that I actually like people more than books.
+/- Applied for a lot of jobs and waited impatiently for my grad school application to be processed and sent to USC. I knew finding a job when I got back wouldn’t be easy, but I didn’t think it would take this long, if only for how low my standards are when it comes to work.
+ Went to church with Katie at Watershed. I’ve always been really wary of new churches. The church I grew up in was pretty traditional, and I liked that. Then I went to Jubilee and realized that I like non-traditional services too. I didn’t go to church during most of my college/working years because I have been so picky, and so it was really surprising to find Watershed so quickly. I think the two elements I was looking for were purposefulness and genuineness, and from what I’ve seen, they have both of those.
So, I guess in retrospect, despite having no job and an extremely unclear picture of what 2010 has in store for me, January wasn’t so bad. And, I probably should blog more, because wordpress doesn’t roll its eyes at me the way friends and family do when I go off on weird tangents.
“Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.” – goethe
