WE MUST REVIVE THE WICKED MOXIE REVOLUTION!! What happened to the Moxie that began all of this? A lot of things have changed since January -- go figure! It's been 9 months -- time enough to generate a new human life. Maybe that's what this blog needs: A New Life.

I think S and I have both mentally hit a wall of sorts. I think we both believed that once we got through school and got "real" jobs, everything would become clearer. As I can attest, through experience, such is not the truth. I've been in a state job for 6 months now -- my dream job in a state I had never even thought of, much less dreamed of living in. But things have worked out well, I love my job, I love the people, and I'm generally pretty happy. I got lucky, I guess. But my personal life stalled when my professional life moved forward. See, there was a Someone in my life when I was in school. We had discussed the possibility of not being together after school ended, but ignored the issue, more or less. That someone is now on the East coast, while I live at the geographic center of the North American continent. Suffice it to say that it takes an entire working day to get from his place to mine, or vice versa, by plane.

We thought that we could work things out that way, living apart, until our lives (read: careers) had taken off. I've worked for 7 years in higher education to get where I am today. I wasn't about to change that for a relationship that wasn't at a level about to reach "lifetime" committment. And it isn't working. I love him, and I care about him, but I cannot maintain a relationship at a distance of 1500 miles. Not that kind of relationship, anyway. It is keeping me from investing in my life here, mostly because I keep thinking of it (my current life) as Temporary. And I don't want to think of it that way. I love what I'm doing and where I am too much to give it up anytime soon. Six months has absolutely FLOWN by!

Life, rather than straightening out into an easily traveled road of reasonable straightness, keeps curving up and down the mountains, with turns and lifts managing to hide whatever comes next. I don't know if it ever gets easier. I doubt it. And it's been an interesting, if bumpy, ride.