Sittin' by my lonesome in the light.

Finally back to life. It was good to spend a few days removed from everything and just relax and refuel for the next semester. Life sometimes is best left unattended for a while. Made a few resolutions and am starting to put one foot in front of another. Ambitious goals. Big plans, small expectations. I like the sound of that.

It felt good to come back to life after taking a break. I feel ready to take on challenges and eager to find and make opportunity. Yet, I find myself coming home to my thoughts. It will be nice to one day have someone to come home to, to have someone call home.

I have this corner of the earth that I can call my own. It is a small corner of a shared room on the second floor apartment building. This space is mine and mine alone. The walls are there to hear my thoughts and no one else's and I often stay up at night scribbling the incessant ponderings that set the landscape for the coming night's dreams and nightmares. In this corner I am my most kind supporter and my harshest critic, depending on the minute and what thought has taken place. I sit and stare and just wish sometimes that this ceiling will talk back.

I seem to keep coming back to this idea of home. I want it, I feel I have it at times, but I know it isn't complete yet. It can't be, there is only me in the picture. I come home at night to just this corner of the world. I come home to only my thoughts waiting for me. That's all I have for the moment. My thoughts.

And it suits me for now. It's not that I don't have a good life. I do. I don't want anyone else's life but my own. I am happy. Life is good. However, I don't ever want to be complacent. My life is good, I do believe it can be enriched though, refined.

And I know there have been many things that haven't worked out. I made my mistakes and continue to stumble in my humanity, but I hope I am at least stumbling forward.

Truth be told, the hopeless romantic I so many times repress and disregard gets the best of me when the quiet of the night is too significant to take. It comes when I come home to an empty apt, the roommates busy with life. It hits when I am reading a book and something profound rises from the page and I wish there was someone I could share this thought with, to discuss with, to internalize with. Maybe it hits the most when I come home after a long vacation and I am so excited to go home and see someone, the only problem is that I don't know who that someone is yet. All I know is the anticipation and excitement.

So goes hope. I hope for the complete picture that is missing from the night stand. One day I will come home to someone, or maybe my own family. The kids running around, I hope they will be excited for dad to be coming home from what seemed like the longest day at work. And I will go up and wrap my arms around my wife and ask how her day was. And then she will proceed to ask me to set the table, which I will do so gladly, because the highlight of my day will be sitting down and asking all the kids about their day. Then a little while after dinner the kids will go to bed and it will just be me and her. Maybe we will watch a favorite show or just talk. In our own little corner of the world, that is just ours and no one else's. You see I don't want some romance, I just want a complete life that's all

But for now, I am by my lonesome in the light and I am ok with that. The picture is a process and while some days it may not seem like it, it is slowly developing. So I continue to live my life to the fullest I know how and continue to make my own story. So when those dinner table discussions I can tell start it off by saying "Did I ever tell you the time your dad... "

At the dinner table,

The future of whoever I am supposed to be.