Still Puzzled...

It's only been 24 hours here at home, and already the differences are staggering both in the actual physical structure that is Casa de Scott and in interacting with the Scott familia. What a bunch. Onward.

I think I'm going to miss my 106 and Dill coordinates at school more than I realized. Externally, that house was a veritable eyesore, but I called it home for nine months. Though outwardly it was indeed wasting away, I'd like to believe that inwardly it was being renewed daily, in more ways than one. I miss my room. Things happened there. No, not what some might be led to think. People danced, people talked, people confronted, people hugged, people argued, and people sang in there. Of the five rooms inhabited at the Dill house, mine was the smallest, affectionately dubbed "The Shanty" [thanks, SB]. Funny that in all actuality, my room at home is more of a box and even smaller than that room. But The Shanty in Muncie had that knot-infested wood paneling on the built-in closet and on the ceiling. There were also those two false columns slightly jutting out on the white-washed wall juxtaposed with the garage. I hung my ATO paddles from the bolts that protruded from those columns. The Shanty actually resembled a ship's cabin, and I loved it. My room at home is so structurally uninteresting.

I find it quite funny that at home I've already twice walked into the kitchen here and then stopped short, expecting the ghettofied motion light to blink on to note my entrance. Not so. I miss that light. I miss the weird comfort it provided when it clicked on as I scurried across the living room to or from the bathroom at 2 or 3am during the school year, as my room was on the other side of and detached from the actual house [again, The Shanty... a breezeway to the garage]. I also miss noting out loud to whoever was within hearing distance that "I feel so insignificant when this motion light turns off as I'm standing in the kitchen." I voiced that half-jokingly every time it happened. And every time, Jeremy would duly note that I had said it yet again. I miss him saying that.

Family-wise, after being home just this short time, I can already see all the trappings for another ho-hum month setting in. The trick is going to be not letting that happen, and not letting that be me. I am too reactive all too often. The doldrums of Warsaw and home life already seem to be presenting themselves. Some things never seem to change about this place, or about the people contained within it whom I love. This pains me to no end. Again, I've been gone for nine months. I feel I've grown, been stretched, lived a lot, struggled, overcome, learned a lot [15 percent of it from textbooks], won and lost, laughed and cried a lot. All these things have happened to me, and I feel hardly anything's changed on the homefront. Why, oh why do I always enter the next stage of existence, in this case the month of May spent at home, with such lofty expectations? They can never measure up, and my family can never seem to measure up. So many things seem to be on a pedestal in my life, and I just set them up for disappointment, chop the legs out from under them. Nothing ever seems to be good enough for me. I don't even know the untold joys and blessings I have forfeited or taken for granted in life and in the last week. Obviously, this needs to change in how I approach everything and everyone. It's okay to be skeptical, as all journalism professors will, well, profess, but being hypercritical sometimes is what throws me overboard.

I didn't get a 6am wakeup call this morning with the offer of a sub teaching job at Warsaw High, so I then awoke at 11am [no sorries there]. But I'm not sure where the next six hours went, and then they were gone. Solid gone. I am not good with managing time and resources. I used to think myself quite frugal. Not so much. I splurge. I get distracted. I'll do next to anything to not do the task at hand, easy as it might seem to be. I waste precious time and monetary resources. Someone once joked about wasting time, "Man, it's like going over to rearrange or fix the window blind, I'd almost do that instead." Well, I have been that guy. This needs to change. "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might..." [Ecclesiastes 9:10].

Maybe tomorrow morning I'll get that 6am wakeup call with the offer of a subbing gig, and maybe I won't. In any event, I think I'll make tomorrow the first day.