It is National Bike Month, and for whatever reason that has prompted me to actually get back into the bike commuter routine. Motivation is a strange and fickle beast.

Between Sunday night and Tuesday morning, I slept for 26 hours. I have no idea why. I seem to have recovered, though.

Yep.

Today is Saturday.

Yesterday at work I officially accepted my offer, with a start date of January 9th.

Tomorrow Trish and I are going to look at a really lovely rental house in a pretty good neighborhood. We're also on the list go see a really fabulous town house in an excellent neighborhood kind of whenever the property managers there get their shit together. (Yes, rent in Portland is that high.)

On Wednesday I will take my last-ever final.

On Friday the term will end.

On Saturday I will commence my month-long nap, because I will have finally Done The Thing.

The benefit of having shitty things happen in your 20s is that when shitty things happen in your 30s, you have a rough map for how to proceed. It doesn't suck any less, but I've got my knapsack packed and I know how to navigate the path ahead.

I graduate in 30 days and then I will be ready to fuck shit up. And fuck shit up I shall.

Things that I am feeling really hard tonight: As an individual, there's only so far that you can get in terms of knowing other people. There's a certain amount of loneliness that you always have to live with.

This seems to be a topic of conversation lately, and I have a couple thoughts.

( Gross! )

So, it turns out the rainy season is still a thing, and it still definitely fucks with my ability to be a happy, functional human.

Nothing to see here, move along. 

It feels like Portland and I have turned a corner over the past couple weeks. It feels like I might actually have a home here.

After years of being intolerably lonesome in this place, I have finally uncovered connections that feel real. This is, I'm sure, due in no small part to being on medication. I now have the ability to see out of my misery hole and take actions to bail myself out. This includes the ability to contact people and get the fuck out of the house.

It's also summer (though Portland summer will be ending abruptly on Tuesday, according to the weather forecast), which always helps. I think we'll wait and see how this trajectory plays out through the early weeks of the rainy season. If it continues, I will very happily stay in Portland. I will buy my adorable bungalow in a cozy neighborhood and I will have friends over to drink wine in front of the fire, just like I imagined would happen when I moved here.

Considering this kind of future is such an abrupt change from the "throw it all in the fire" place that I was in just a few weeks ago. The idea of committing to this place no longer feels like literal suicide. In the corner of my mind I feel like this is probably a trap, but there's only one way to find out.

I'm done with school in 122 days, 22 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds.

Not that I'm counting.

According to Facebook, seven years ago I was starting my first shift at the Animal Emergency Clinic of Central Texas. I have so many feelings about this.

That job dramatically changed my life, almost exclusively for the better. It introduced me to some of the best people I'll ever know, and opened far stranger doors than I'd have ever thought possible. My coworkers there introduced me to the Austin bike community, drank margaritas with me on Monday mornings, and were the people I went to as my marriage was dissolving in painful, violent ways. They were the people I went to as the clinic was dissolving in painful, violent ways. Even after the clinic collapsed and I left Austin, the ripples continued outward; I moved to Portland and started a job at an emergency hospital here, which enabled me to live in my first ever solo apartment, and is where I met Trish, and is where I decided that job fucking sucked and it was time to go back to school.

So thank you, Dr. Christy, for the opportunity. I wish there was more sweet than bitter in my memories of that place, especially towards the end. But maybe in another seven years I'll get there.

Goddamn, I miss those people.

::looks at calendar for next six weeks::
::suddenly feels incredibly tired::