It is almost half a year since we embarked upon the journey that is 2007! What a year it has (and hasn’t) been so far.

New expectations:

1. I must get an actual job! I must work more and work towards a mini-career + stability before I make my cast-iron plans for moving west.
2. New (used) car??  I want a Volvo wagon… they seduce me.
3. Moving out!  August 16th is the great date…
4. Pitchfork Music Festival (heat, bands, more heat, and good friends a plenty + heat)
5. Living on the ocean in Maine (right before returning home for the big move!)
6. Annapolis Labor Day Weekend??
7. Co-ed Bible study… stick with it and see it grow into something beautiful

New resolutions:

1. No more soda pop!  I make exceptions for ginger ale (if I get sick), and root beer… otherwise… it’s the sugar-free straight and narrow for me…
2. No coffee!  The big one!  So far, so good… only two cups in six weeks
3. Quiet time in the morning (this means I get to bed on time), so far… pretty decent track record with actual bible readings getting done regularly!
4. Journaling furiously (something I have not done in a sustained fashion for quite some time…)
5. Dissatisfaction!   The difficult one!  Learning to not be satisfied with any paltry thing… going to grab life by the horns and hopefully gain some new ground in those various arenas God puts me in.
6. Writing with Jeremy Cordy… truly an enterprise that could bear many kinds of strange fruits.

Top songs so far:

• Fake Empire - The National
• Muscle’n Flo - Menomena
• Share the Land - The Guess Who
• On the Radio - Regina Spektor
• You Broke My Heart - Lavender Diamond
• God, Make Up Your Mind - Cold War Kids
• Either Way - Wilco
• Flyin’ Shoes - Townes Van Zandt
• Santa Clara - The National
• Fields of Gold - Sting
• Loretta - Josh Ritter
• We Were Sparkling - My Brightest Diamond
• The Park - Feist
• Can’t Exist - Joseph Arthur
• West Falls - Okkervil River
• Take It From Me - The Weepies
• Little Motel - Modest Mouse
• The Killer - The Twilight Singers

It’s difficult to encapsulate this year so far.  I never actually published my review of 2006!  I must remedy that.  I came into this year as a wick with no wax left.  I literally torched out on school 2 years without a let up.  I crashed and burned, settled in and returned to the life of mindless, menial work.  In other words… exactly the kind of work I was not made for.  Now… fire ants have invaded my soul and caused an increasingly violent reaction.   Change is blowing in the winds… and my foresight has grown back a bit.  Now… plans that were once just ‘plans’, have become serious PLANS.  The future seems distant and impossible at times… but somehow… also more real and tangible.  I can taste and feel things coming… I just don’t know when.  That’s the real test.  Patience for the good things.  I just want to churn my way through the forest to the goal… without picking my way with care and looking for the signs of a trail marked for me.

More than half of my 24th year on the planet has elapsed.   I look forward to the 1/4 century year of my life as another one in which I will be tested, watered, grown, pruned, and made more human than I was before.

Oceans.