Updates from a Busy Bird

Today I sit in a little café as I have done so every other Saturday for the past month and a half. I am joined by one of my old college-mates, held firm to a silly pact we made to come here and write. Dear reader, I have not written! Instead I fill the time with client work, answering emails, working my planner. So today, with still so much brimming at my plate, I greet you once again.

In exactly one month from now, I will not be at my current job. I will be preparing to see my grandparents, and we will fly together to India. This is the first time I am visiting India, and I have so many feelings fluttering around me like papers in wind. This has been a daydream for years, a silly idea, that now comes to reality. I have been practicing my grandparents' language (not nearly enough), I have clothes to withstand the burning heat, and I am as ready as I'm going to be.

Dear reader, I do not live at my parents' house anymore. I live with another college-mate, and we exist peacefully in a tiny apartment. I wake up when she leaves for work, I leave just before she comes back, and then we regroup in the evening to debrief about our day. Time is as fleeting as ever, and I'm trying not to waste it.

I have met someone who excites me, and we've started a band. We just did our first proper performance, and got paid! Almost half of the songs we played were mine, and I sang as best I could. I played guitar, and keys, and bass. We switched around our instruments so much we might have been playing musical chairs.

When I was younger, I used to worry that something was wrong with me. I had no dreams, no goals. Yes, I imagined, but these ideas revolved around characters, around stories, about fake fights and plots that I spun as fast as my ink would flow. Others would talk about their dreams for their future and I felt confused. There was no future here, only what someone would tell me. As long as I placated that someone for long enough, I could go back to my stories.

Now that I'm here, now that half of my job is at a music school and half is freelance studio assistance, now that I have a little apartment with a friend, a cat, and rats, now that I have a lover who challenges me, now that I have a band that matches me, now that my friend and I work on a graphic novel, now that I'm writing, I know now that these were my goals. I feel sated in a way that I've not felt before. I feel like I can coast for a moment. I am no longer just treading water -- I am bathing in the sun above it!

This will not last forever. It cannot. My goals will form anew, but perhaps this time I will recognize them. Perhaps this time I will find a more acute path that sends me running towards my future. I feel excited, dear reader. I feel optimistic. This is newer than anything else. I have suffered in defeatism, in resignation, and I have chiseled my reward from my plights. Despite everything, I have become hopeful.