where did I go?

In the wake of Elly's departure, almost unwittingly, I became a hermit. I spend most of my waking hours online, none of them to communicate with anyone I hold dear -- or when I do, it's mostly about fixing this or doing that.

This past weekend I went camping with Sha at Fire Island. That was a merciful respite from days and nights of working on various websites for pay and not; it's about 50/50 these days, with not enough sleep thrown into the mix.

I haven't been calling. I have about 20 people to whom I must return calls; with the amount of time I spend thinking about how I should call people, I could've spoken with you already. Like, three times over. Being thirty means I recognize that this happens to me when I'm feeling down. I watch the process like a bean sprouting or my hoseumate leaving a dirty dish in the living room for days -- inevitable. I realize I'm not helpless to intervene. I will, eventually, but I'm not the fastest moving creature with regard to my feelings.

I've been biking and going to the gym, I've been off and on the wagon around drinking coffee, I eat. I write in my journal (not enough), I draw (not nearly enough). Mostly I work on websites and bike back and forth to my house, work, and Soho cafe. My housemates and I have taken to renting episodes of Six Feet Under which is a welcome diversion-- my brain needs to turn off at times. I write letters. I don't call people enough. I don't know where all the hours go or why there aren't enough of them, after all, I'm no longer working for USAS, right?

Being in DC full time makes me realize how hard a town this can be. Working downtown, dressing up every day, watching people care about protocol and rank and appearance in ways I was neither raised to understand nor rebel against -- it's weird. I only breathe when I get back towards Columbia Heights. It's hard to relax while biking.

The job is good. It's a wholly different section of my brain, the part which codes and decodes and knows where to put semicolons and how to query databases. Organizing data can be just as unweildy as organizing people, but this is a town that requires confusing the two -- data and people, that is. The extent to which it's forgotten that people are not their contact information is astounding. That's the crucial distinction between organizers who will change this mess and those who won't...

Anyhow, this is a melancholy post but I'm not in awful shape. There have been good times. If you've called, don't give up, and I will accept feelings of frustration at my absence, as they are perfectly warranted. If you haven't called, and have been meaning to, please do, it helps to remind me that the phone is not something to be avoided.