A lots-a things a-running through my mind

And some of them I don't want to say in an open blog. So here's one that only hurts me:

I miss community.

It happens to everyone, and I guess it was finally my turn. For the first time in life, discounting a few limited summers with not much to do, I am living for an indefinite amount of time without a built-in community.

Growing up and all through high school, you can't avoid it. You're stuck in that school with hundreds if not thousands of children every bit as sickly and cruel and scared and stupid as you, and probably more. On the other hand, you learn how deal with sickly, cruel, scared, stupid people, who happen to form most of the population in one combination or another. It is the life skill, and why I'm against home-schooling. In college, it's another step further -- you have to live with those assholes, a whole new step in bacteria and mankind, and why I'm against getting a private place your first year.

Lingering around UNL, I found a new community -- working at the DN. And for all the needless interpersonal drama and insanity brought forth by working 60 hours a week in a cave, at least people were always there, and usually pretty cool people at that. I didn't even notice I lived by myself, excluding empty Saturdays. Then, on a whim, I went to Sweden and dwelt among the messy Junior EU, never lacking in intruige.

Now, though, I'm alone. Ok, that's an overstatement. Alex and I live in a sweet apartment, and it really helps having him there, as we both struggle now relating to people who have never lived abroad (or are at least intelligent enough to have yearned to). I have friends around and an antiquated cell full of numbers. But I feel this void, I think from having no framework of community around me other than that. I'm climbing aboard the American grown-up train, whose last stop is waking up middle age and having no friends to speak of other than your spouse. Perhaps this is not so bad, and I, not long on actual serious relationships, ought not judge. But looking down the tracks, it scares me. Maybe it's just that in my case, a large part of the trip might be alone.

I wish our country didn't operate this way. That's a stupid sentence -- I could reasonably utter it in about every conversation I have in a day. Still, though, it's weird to just be off on your own, and I don't really like it so much. Where are the loud, unreasonably tardy Spainards when you need them? Oh, right, I just kind of answered that question.

Mostly, I see an end approaching, the end to the thing in life I've really enjoyed, and what really bothers me is that I'm not jumping into something right away. I'm toying with doing peace corps, but the earliest I could go would be September, maybe January. I wouldn't be able to start grad school until maybe next August. For someone accustomed to hopping from thing to thing (I'm a to-do lister, after all), the prospect of open-ended waiting scares the fucking shit out of me, like I'll spend too much time waiting and just get stuck.