To tell it straight, I'm trying to build a wall

Change, change, change,
I want to get up out of my skin
tell you what if I can shake it
I'm 'a make this something worth dreaming of


So folks.... I am back from Hawaii for awhile and, much in the same vein as Eric, I have delayed far too long to post about it. I might do a post with some of the pictures I took later on. It was a good trip overall. Elaine has done me a service in posting a complete record. I was there one more day than she was. Good trip even though the family aspect can be hard at times. I never quite feel like I belong. I love my family but sometimes being with them, especially on long trips, I feel really alone. Anyway, since I returned I haven’t been up to that much.
The current status of my higher education is me preparing to take the GRE in August and apply for my masters program for the winter term. So there it is. It won’t happen in the fall. It is a relief in the sense that it gives me more time, but it also creates a huge gap. I intend to get to California in this gap.
It’s scary, honestly, pushing forward again. I don‘t feel ready for the GRE and things always seem to get so busy. I am now in a place where I have so much riding on it. I have been telling people my plans for such a long time, as if it were a sure thing - as a way of explaining why I don’t have a job in the field I spent so long studying for, as a way to justify not making enough money and even just so that I can still have a path to follow. It gets murkier each year and now with the next set of hurdles fast approaching all the anger and the eloquence are bleeding into fear. I am pursuing this goal, even though it seems that I never get closer, because it is the only thing with vocational applications in life that I am really passionate about. If you have to work you might as well do what you love, what’s the point in anything else?
It’s weird how foreign the idea of pursuing your great loves and personal fascinations vocationally is to so many of the people I know. They all have this idea that the goal is to maximize income doing whatever job has the best and easiest opportunities, and so it seems wasteful that I would give so much to this quest.
God built me in such a way that I see him most clearly in nature; I was born for this in a way. Granted, I am not the smartest person and many other people will be better in this field than I will. But for me anything less than seeing this through would be settling, not because it was right but because it was easier.
In the meantime I am working two jobs as a way to ease our finances and do my part, so it’s not all on Elaine. I work at our church as a glorified janitor. And now I am also be a nanny for the rest of this month as well as the next. I am watching two boys for a friend’s brother while he’s at work during the day until school starts. The boys are 7 and 8, good natured and well behaved. I feel burnt out after a day watching them, but not because of them acting crazy. It has even, so far, been an interesting experience and I will probably post more on it later.
The jobs are both ok but sometimes I catch myself wondering what the hell I am doing with my life and begin to feel like a failure. Soon enough I will move on and I know I can accomplish good in these positions. It’s just that some nights I can hear the old voices and mocking laughter on the wind and see the raised eyebrows in my mind’s eye. Aren’t we all just so wonderfully haunted?