On Return and Disruption

I thought I was going to sit down and write a post about my last days at my proofreading job: the sensation of packing up my desk, the oddity of shaking hands and speaking words for the last or the nearly-last time.

Then I thought I was going to write an entry about being up in Fort Bragg again, and the joys of seeing my parents for a little while.

Then I thought I was going to write something about being home again around the time I actually got home.

Sorry, everybody. I've been busy.

As the above suggested, the day after my last day at the marketing company, I stuffed six days' worth of clothing and three books into a duffel bag, and rode the train up to my aunt's place up in San Francisco, where we had the first and largest celebration from my father's 60th birthday. From there, it was off to my vacation in Fort Bragg, and that is where I was until yesterday, when I rode down in the company of friends. Now I am in my house, and have done a little cleaning, and am about to go sit down with a movie and get some laundry folded, like the domestic creature I am.

Unfortunately, I feel a great deal of things about this past week, but I don't know how to codify them. A trip home to Fort Bragg is all at once revitalizing and melancholy; like I love my time there, but know that I can't stay there and be consistently happy in perpetuity. It's a place I might love to come back to once I'm older and more established; it has an energy like nowhere else I've ever been, except possibly Santa Cruz—though the shared factor there may just be a nostalgia for a time in my life when I had less rigid scheduling and less non-academic responsibility. (Here's hoping the copy editing for the new company will give me a bit more satisfaction on that front.)

I am happy to have been able to spend my dad's sixtieth birthday with him and my mother, there in the home he helped build for us; and I'm happy I got to be home for a bit and just focus on relaxing, with a side business in studying the Chicago Manual of Style a little for new job purposes; and I'm happy to have come home to friends who missed me and were missed in return, with a feeling of having pushed my reset button before a major and somewhat intimidating venture.

That is all I can say for certain; anything further would risk turning into that turgid stuff that happens when I push my muse too far. So for now I'm going to go have a glass of champagne, and watch the final leg of a movie; and be grateful for the sense of a home in two places, and for having so many friends and loved ones in both. I promise tomorrow I'll put the smarm back in full effect.

Maybe I'll even blog about it.