Day: April 8, 2024

Sitting in Village Inn after over a year away feels like stepping into. time machine or visiting a museum display of the past. This space is unmoving. Even the people are still here. To give you context, I started coming to Village Inn by my campus about a decade ago. I came so often that I was deemed a regular. I’d sit and write and grade and prep for class and then go off to do what I do. I came less and less over the years and haven’t been here in a very long time. However, all the people I remember from day 1 are still here. The place looks and feels exactly the same. The food tastes exactly the same. I don’t know how to feel about it. I don’t know what I expect–comfort? familiarity? growth? I cannot tell you what I thought would be different. I’m different, so I thought they’d be too.

There is new tech. They’ve gone to the handheld registers for payment. That doesn’t change a single thing about the feel of the place; about the distance I’ve come from when I first started coming and the distance they haven’t. I see that more and more in my life. The people around me are entirely stagnant. It feels like if I don’t move forward, I’ll get stuck like they are. That is just the culture here, and I don’t come from this culture. Yet here I am, back where I started a decade ago, still writing and grading in this space that is largely unaffected by time. Still here with these same people who have not moved on because they have nothing to move on to.

I don’t want to be trapped here for the remainder of my existence. I want to grow. I want to feel new things. I want to experience new places. More than anything I want to believe that there is more out there for Lady Talis and I.

Some Thoughts:

1. Witnessed my first rocket launch over AZ. It looks like this. Crazy. I followed it across the night sky and wondered what it was. Research (read: Google) helped me learn more.

Whenever I have chips and wine I think of my mother. It remains one of the staples of her chill. Whenever I think about my mom I think about my fears of becoming her, which isn’t great. She will be here soon to witness the graduation of yet another son. I’m excited about the graduation part of that scenario. It is a well earned achievement–one she continues to take full credit for. I suppose I have entered into that mental space of realizing that the people around me are generally attuned to a reality and reason that is not in tune with the world as I see it. And with that I bring you…

Some Thoughts:

1. The other day I disengaged from a conversation with one of my boys because I recognized the futility of the talk. That doesn’t mean it didn’t bug the crap out of me to the point that I’m writing about it now. It started when I said that I didn’t want to hear life advice from Mr. Beast because we are in a different stratas. My kid responded with ‘what are you talking about?’ I suppose that was the moment I actually chose to disengage but my voice carried through one more statement. I said He’s a millionaire and comes from money. That was the wrong thing to say because he promptly shot into the narrative of Mr. Beast as a self made man who came from nothing. That isn’t the point I was making and… it isn’t entirely true. The point I was making was about where I am in life and where that man is. I cannot drop out of society and study a subject for years. I need to pay bills to keep a roof over his head. My situation–my strata is different. The story he told about Mr. Beast is another example of how filtered reality is for this kids… and how insanely false.
2. There are six of us in the household as of now. When we use the cook in bag rice it generally means one bag of rice per person. When there are six people and someone decides to randomly cook a bag a rice, it impacts the coming meal. Now we don’t have enough rice for everyone. It doesn’t matter to them because it doesn’t impact them. They aren’t going to buy another bag of rice to make sure everyone is fed. We are and they’ll act like nothing ever happened in spite of the extra time and effort that defined the experience of having to go back to the store in order to prepare a meal we already had ingredients for. It is always like this. This is life when living with grown children.