Every summer, I go through this state of transition between the years. Every time its a bit different. 8th grade I said goodbye to everyone I'd known for the previous 9 years and prepared for a new life. Freshman summer I met a new crowd, what would become the best friends I'd ever known. Sophomore summer was growing up, learning to dicipline myself in workouts and prepare for something, namedly a football season I would mostly watch from the sidelines. Junior summer was the base for my entire senior year. I let myself become idealistic again, throwing caution and decorum to the wind while feeling I was being noble for letting one go while trying to save another. Funny how that all turned out...Senior year qualifies as the strangest of my life, with things going from the worst feelings of failure and disapointment, to pure righteous rage at being so horribly betrayed and conned, to so amazingly beautiful as I grew to understand the meaning of "being in love", or rather, of loving.
But that's not what's on my mind.
Senior summer, the time that is now upon us, is 1/5th done for me. I figure that because I'm working a 10 week internship and two weeks are over. That fast. But what I find stranger is how the people I've known throughout highschool are changing. Some are remaining close to me, and I get the strong impression we will remain good friends even though we will be separated by great distances. Some, though, seem to be fading away like the shadows we cast in the burning noontime sun. Great metaphore, isn't it? I realized tonight that there were some people I hadn't seen in several weeks. I have no idea when I will see them again. And some, I feel confident, will not miss the time we've had together. Its not a negative thing by any means. Some friends are such merely because of the circumstances. You may get along well enough, but there never seems to be that spark of "true friendship".
Therein lies the brutal truth of graduation. How many "friends" will you still hang out with in a month? A year? Ten years? Time washes away the castles we so carefully built upon its shores, we foolish children thinking we can hold back the massive weight of the sea with sand and shells. I had an idea for a short story, but I doubt I'll ever write it. Who knows.
Yeah, I'm pretty spaced out. I looked around tonight and saw the familiar faces of those I loved, and spent time talking with adults who envied our moment in life, our chance to shine -- but I found myself enving them. For they have lived, and chased dreams, and survived it all with stories to tell. They have done enough to have regrets, surely, but their regrets are over and past. They stand in the middle of life, with the experience and wisdom to advise the younger generation. What they fail to see is they should be advising themselves, for they know what it is they must do to make their lives complete. We young, we the future -- all our mistakes lie before us. Our unrealized potential springs eternal, but only so long as we strive to use it can we find success in life. I look ahead and I see the opportunities we will miss, the places we will stumble, and I wonder how long this feeling of invincibility that permeates our very beings will manage to fight off the mortality that has overtaken those many who came before us. I see not what we could become, but what those we follow failed to be. I see them thinking back on past glories and morn that we shall someday call these moments the best of our lives. I for one do not wish to succomb to this fate, this submission to the past and abandonment of the future. Dreams are all we have to separate us from death, no man lives who does not pursue them. When you no longer think of what's ahead, but instead revel in what came before -- this is the spiritual death that scares me more than any power of hell. We have not wisdom, nor experience, nor power, nor wealth -- nay, but we have what all those possessing these advantages lack. We have a vision of the future and the beleif that we can, we will succeed in changing the world. We see death as a joke, we rush the lines knowing whatever our enemies through at us, we shall walk away from the fight. For death only comes for the other guy, and when it does, surely he deserved it. He'd lived life, he brought it upon himself, his fortune was surely within his grasp and he willfully let it slip away. For what else do we know but that immortal power of controling one's destiny? We always walk away from the crashes, or avoid them all together. Fate is one step behind, always forced to follow where we lead.
I implore you, use this power. Act while you still beleive in man's ability to change. Dream while the future still stretches on to the unreachable horizon. But above all, live while life is still in you. The world is ours, so long as we reach out to take it. We shall suceed where all before us failed.
That is the hope of the young, the spark that may one day ignite the fire of change to consume our world. Our destiny is our own, so long as we will have it. What will you do?
Yeah...I get very contemplative when sleepy...
I love you!
I found my cell phone under my bed tonight. That explains a lot, really.
But for those of you I should have called to day, in particular Doug, I sincerely apologize. I've been tied up with sleeping and chores and long family dinners. I hope to make it to Pat's tomorrow but I can't promise anything. Keep in mind today was my first "real" day off in 10 days. Saturday doesn't count cause I went to bed early and got up late.
I love you!
Amazing how when you're doing something instead of just reading manuals and crap all day, you feel good about how your time was spent.
I will probably be busy now on thursday with family things/errends/cleaning and will have no car on most of friday, as it needs to get its AC fixed.
Batman is calling out to me and I need to answer, but I'm not sure when.
This is summer but I have less free time than during school. Contemplate.
I love you!
Well, now that I've been signed into confidentiality, I don't know what all I can say. I'm not allowed to take, much less post pictures of anything, nor can I talk of much of what I've learned. So to ensure I don't violate any corporate policies or my own sworn legal statements, I shall refrain from any comments as to work. All I will say is that I work in manufacturing, I get the title of "Tech" (and man, I thought I was done with that when the year ended... ) and I've done more paperwork in three days than in the rest of my life to date. Yeah.
However, most other people there (in my training group) have at least two years of college and some job experience in manufacturing. I think.
Hours, however, are weird. I keep staying later than I should simply to mess around on the computers and I'll be staying even later when I can use the fitness room. These are (obviously) unpaid hours, but its still fun. Who knows how I'll manage with a 12 hour shift.
I love you!
I'll be back Sunday. Hope y'all have a great week!
I love you!
So, I'm a highschool graduate now. My desk chair is upstairs, I'm kneeling to type this, so it will be pretty short. Still isn't real that I'm done with j-high, I'm going back tomorrow to turn in a sheet or two and try and get some tapes from Wasson. We'll see how that goes.
My schedule at Intel is 7-7, Sunday-Tuesday and every other Wednesday. Please take note I'm more or less out of it socially on those days. And no late Saturday nights, yet. The exception to this schedule is next week, when I work Monday-Friday. Yeah.
I'm in Sunriver from Thursday the 9th through Sunday.
Uhm...free tickets tomorrow. That should rock.
It's officially summer, and I'm a working stiff. Gotta love it.
I love you!