Update as of June 4, 2007

Update!

It's almost June. Less than three months and counting until I move to Mobile.

I alternate between wanting to be in Mobile-yesterday and wanting to put it off indefinitely. It's pretty much been this way since March/April.

I've met some amazing people in the last nine months, but Birmingham seems to be a place of transition for most of them as well. My hope is that I can keep in touch with them, so when we all end up moving again (as I know I will do within the next two years), we may cross paths while we do so.

It seems impossible for me to stay still. My restlessness has only gotten worse in the last twelve months, as I'm sure I've mentioned more than once already. Because of this inclination, I think I have become a more unreliable (or less dependable) person. This may explain why I have met so many amazing people, but to some extent either I have held them or been held by them at a distance. Perhaps these people are just as restless as I am and in as much a period of transition as I am and so we are all holding the world at a distance. Maybe I only wish it is so because I hope there are other people craving and fearing emotional intimacy, as I am. I envy those who can fall back on consistency. I miss being around people who know me and who I know but we are all so scattered now.

As some of you may know, in the last month or so, I had to make an emergency family trip to Dallas. My aunt went into a swift decline, after battling breast cancer on and off for 16 years, and passed on May 12, 2007. The sadness was tempered by a fight well fought; there is no one that could have fought harder and longer to stay with her family than my aunt did.

While I was in Texas, I had the opportunity to visit my sister and niece. My sister, for the first time since she was 19, is now Melissa Anne Smith again. I am proud of her for reclaiming her family name, I hope it will be a source of strength and pride for her. Gods know, she needs the strength right now. My niece, Michaela, is going into the second grade this August and she is amazingly smart.

I have a few trips coming up before I move to Mobile. I just booked my flight a few minutes ago. I will be in Boston July 12-16 to visit my friends Clayton and Jamie. Jamie and I became fast friends in seventh grade P.E. because we were both too smart for our own good (or at least we thought so) and feminists to boot. Clayton and I met rather strangely in eighth grade, and maybe it's because we had such an unusual friendship in middle and high school that we have been able to keep up the way we do. It never seems to matter that we sometimes go two-six months without speaking, I still feel like he gets it and is one of the few that do. So I'm extremely excited about July and Boston. I love the new friends I've made in Birmingham, but there's just something about being around people who have known you for more or less half of your life and these are the only two non-family members in my life who can say that.

Then in August, or perhaps also in July, I will probably be making a trip to Seattle to visit Chris. I need to sit down with him and talk about specific dates, but it will probably be right before my next move, after I've given notice at my job. Chris is one of those amazing people I've met in Birmingham in the last nine months, but unfortunately, he moved to Seattle a little over a month or so ago. Not that I will mind visiting him in Seattle at all. It sounds like a wonderful city and I might even be able to see my friends Kat and KrisTina while I'm there. I was able to see KrisTina briefly when she visited Andrew and Jane last fall, but I haven't seen Kat since I visited Southlake in December 2001.

I am incredibly excited about my move to Mobile. Finishing my master's degree has only become more important in my mind in the last year. I feel used up as a secretary. Having the graduate assistantship sounds immeasurably better. I've spoken with the professor I'll be assisting and the other T.A.'s for next year. They're a bunch of neat guys, though I think I might be the only female. It should make for an interesting year.

And getting to see Adam and Toni and Brannon and Eric again will be so great. I haven't been back to Mobile since I moved last August and I do miss them. James and I will be sharing a townhouse near my old apartment complex, which is right down the street from the YMCA, a Starbucks, the local Barnes & Noble, etc. My friend Natalie from Birmingham might/will probably be moving to Pensacola sometime this fall and she might not be the only member of the Birmingham crew moving down to the coast.

The future is still pretty murky right now and I'm not sure when it will clear. The unknowns in this equation definitely outweigh the knowns. I am staying as optimistic as I can be, knowing that when it doubt, books and hermitage are still fairly appealing to me.