Checking in

I might as well mention: optimism has, once again, led nowhere.

Since my last inventory, I've reached a half-dozen disappointing conclusions. Nothing terrible, nothing that'll haunt me indefinitely . . . but where's the turning-point? When will things start getting better?

I invoke the word again: I see this year as a cascade. It keeps pouring over me, drowning me with woe, except for a handful of moments (that are never easier) where I'm able to step closer to the window and look outside. This year hasn't been all hell-fire, but every blessing has demanded heavy sacrifice. As I get older, it seems like this is the way it's going to be; it'll just keep getting worse, until at last I die and explore, if there is anything to explore, something I can never know in this world.

It makes me hope, for the first time, that Scott's right: that great art, necessarily, comes from great suffering. Then, I'm on the right path to pursue what I really want--and how I feel is right, as often as it leaves me beaten and breathless.

Right now, I can only think of one thing that'd be worth all of the negative this year has sent me--and if it comes to pass, then all is forgiven . . . that is, of course, if I make it into one the grad programs at the very top of my list. If, a year from now, I'm in Austin, Madison, or California, it's all good.