Tonight, I'm having potatoes and my sink is full of dirty dishes. Now out of college and in my first apartment, food preparation takes up the majority of my free time, which I like, because there's not too much else to do.


Right now, at least.

Keeping my hands busy on dishes is a rhythm of patient values I hope to adopt all the way down to how I breathe. That said, I should finish the dishes right now, but I haven't written for a while.

These are some of the first days of living here out on my own, a pursuit of mine that's been in the making since day one, and it is wonderful. Not knowing anyone, however, this newfound independence is a strange, lonely landscape.

Most of this lonliness becomes energy for this purpose-seeking I do, and these are the best words for it I have yet found:

+I am a civil engineer in training with a special interest in water.

My passion is restoring watershed health, and I currently pursue that in the context of urban development.

My immediate work has been more or less the meticulous repositioning of lines for big digital construction drawings.
I liken it, thus far, to:
-editing a word document
-while playing the a game of "find the differences between these two pictures" from highlights magazine
-only everything's in French, and you took Spanish, so learn that, too

(I've been trying to keep global professional goals and continued studying in mind to stay motivated--- studying, reading, all the skills I developed as an academic...)

((I've also had more exciting days than that, so don't let me sell you on my cheap pity-grabbing; everyone has bad days and great days))

Most excitingly, being on the other side of a degree, I've stopped  "just getting through this" and have been taking every day as best I can to leave humanity with my genuine contribution.

Pursuant to achieving this, I've given up wifi to "find myself" and save a few bucks- my first phone data plan is much more versatile and gets me the text- and audio-based information I need. Still, I struggle to fill the micro-chasms of loneliness or boredom left in the wake of reducing internet. Unattended, my head swims and wrings all my immediate thoughts and surroundings into dreadfully unoriginal prose. Regularly sanitizing my restful hours with hypnotic glowy Netflix, however, leaves me feeling cheated of this creative brain-sap. Though I will be more tired tomorrow, I will have captured from a regular domicile brain rot into an unwilling and beautiful amber, my writing.

(however bug-filled it may be)
(#Jurassicpark)

In the meantime, I'm developing "homework" for myself to become more like who I want to be. Understanding finances, filling out paperwork for living, keeping track of the news, engaging creative pursuits, and continuing outside the classroom as an educated and learning and voting member of the public, and ever-struggling disciple of Christ.

Turning then to these whimsical and reflective practices betwixt the act of procrastinating chores, my full sink has certainly made this writing business more thrilling. As my kitchen cries out for eviction of its sloppy tenants, I depart.

And so it is so.
I'm here now.