Here I am sitting in the Calgary airport. I’m stuck in the middle. I spent hours awake last night, not wanting to go to sleep. To sleep means to wake. To wake means to face the next day. I did the same when I was flying West. It’s the fear of what I have to face on the other end. It turned out what I had to face in the cold North West was not as bad as I had imagined. I have this fear that it will not be so easy tomorrow. My arrival on the East coast tonight is not the problem. Tonight all I have to do is get home and go to sleep. Tomorrow I face the music.

I made the mistake last night of asking whether he would want to move into the guest room…this, for some strange reason, was found unacceptable. I find myself in a strange position. In the basement I feel cold and removed. Upstairs I feel like a guest in my own home. It’s not that I want to be in the basement, but rather that I am not moving my clothing upstairs. I thought that since he had never properly put his things away in the basement, even thought we had spent two full summers living there, it would make sense that he may want to move upstairs where he would have a bigger dresser and his own closet.

Mom moved her dresser into the spare room, and emptied it out. She brought back the beds that her mother had left her and got rid of the wretched, spring attack of a bed that was in our guest room. I guess that’s just it, it’s the guest room. I do not wish to be a guest in my own home. Not that it’s ever quite felt like my home. I will find my home.

I’ve been feeling these days that that could be part of my confusion. I need the freedom to find my own home; to find my own ground; to find my own path. I don’t know where it is that I am headed. That’s always been a challenge for me. Leaving high school, I knew only one thing: I was going to university. The process by which I chose my degree was frivolous. Do I enjoy literature? Not particularly. Do I enjoy writing? Not a bit. Do I enjoy the social sciences? Not as a career. Do I enjoy applied science? I can handle it. What about math? It’s not so bad either. And so I ended up in engineering, a little bit of science, a little bit of math, and a whole lot of confidence. Confidence…did I really have any of that?

Here I am five years later, working at my first “real” job. This “real” job has very little to do with what they teach you in school, but isn’t that just exactly what they teach you in school? Your job will not make use of your technical knowledge. Considering how I began this ridiculous trek, one should not be surprised that I am not at all bothered by the fact that I don’t use any of my technical knowledge. What I am bothered by is the thought that my next job very well could require me to think, and think hard.

Will I end up doing this as a career? Or as I have sometimes thought, will I use it only as a confidence booster in whatever it is that I do end up doing? I suppose there is no way to predict just what will happen, but only to wait and see. I think this is why a feeling of being tied down has me so frantic at the moment. The truth will show in the end, but for now it’s time to let life go its path. The big meaning of all this: tomorrow will happen, and tomorrow will pass. I will survive.