Tuesday, September 13, 2005

What have I got myself into?

The question pops in my mind often these days and is often followed by the response "well, you're an idiot, Matt," which is then quickly denounced by the retort "but at least I'm having fun with what I'm doing." I then stop and ask myself if normal people really spend this much talking to themselves, audible or in their head, I decide they don't and that I need more rest. Where will that rest come from? I've got this and that and that and this to do...what did I get myself into?...You're an idiot.......

I'm not really crazy. Well, not yet.

Gone are the days of Dayton Duplexities and with it the simplicity of living in my two-bedroom, brick wall duplex nestled in the obscurity of a small-town "closest to urban you get in Dayton" neighborhood where I used to cut my grass every 10 days (weekly during the summer months), committed bug homicide in my kitchen on an almost nightly basis and spied on my neighbors like they were Communists (you never know). So I figured I owed an update, if for nothing else to myself for posterity's sake. Plus, Ben is a good looking guy, but I worry that he's grown into a narcissist since his picture has taken center stage here for the last three months or so.

I now live the double life of a sports editor and resident director. I started talking to Bryan about a possibility position last February, the deal died around April, then resurfaced late in May. I interviewed for the job in late June and then was offered the position two days later while at Myrtle Beach (which can I mention is one of the most disturbing beaches I've been to. Rows of people eight and nine deep on a beach just isn't my cup o' tea.).

I moved in to the Rhea House, a unique dorm housing 17 of Bryan's upperclassmen, around the second week in August, just as my regular work at the Herald began to heat up. Honestly, the rest of the time since then has been a blur. Retreats and football games. Student life shirt days and corporate office stiff-shirts. BC Staff meetings and...well, Herald-News staff meetings. I've only had two real breakdowns of sorts, where I really started asking myself who I am and uncomfortable questions of that sort that need not be pondered on past 9 p.m. Often I shake the thoughts off with the awareness that I'm most likely a target of Satan and that these thoughts are not from God, but it's hard to leave them sometimes. Despite the weariness, I do enjoy this double life. I expect it will be a time of refining and defining that I'll appreciate a lot more later down the road.

I can boast some of the easiest guys to live with. It's been a hard adjustment, getting used to living with people again after a two-year stint as a complete bachelor, but I can't say that the guys that live upstairs have made it any harder on me. It's hard to know whether I'm doing a good job as their r.d., since there isn't a diagram for being a successful resident director. No one gave me a manual when I started that said "this is how to do your job." I guess that's been one of the hardest things about this double life: one job is very much an occupation where visible results equals success, while results can't necessarily be measured tangible in the other, at least not in the present. It's also been difficult shifting between the "non-relational" aspect of interviewing and writing and maintaining certain boundaries of professionalism in one position and then coming home 15 minutes later and shifting gears into the "highly relational" world of student life. Of the two, I prefer the "highly relational." It's just an awkward transition I'm trying to figure out still.

A former BC student and former boyfriend of Kalani, Kati's younger sister, committed suicide Friday night, making for a very late night/early morning and a rather strange weekend overall, both with the family and on the BC campus. The funeral went really well today though, so there's hope that healing can continue to take place in the midst of such a horrible tragedy. But it strikes me as odd that some of the questions I've struggled with in relation to this accident were some of the same questions that plagued me this time last year when I covered the Hawkins triple-homicide in Morgantown. It was exactly 53 weeks ago. How can we go on without the resting in the hands of a sovereign God? He is good.

Oh, and did I mention that Kati and I have been dating for somewhere around five months or so? I can't remember the exact date, and thankfully she doesn't require me to since she doesn't remember things like that either. It's been a weird ride trying to juggle us with three occupations and masters classes between us, but I think we're doing better than most.

I've discovered that I need outlets like blogging, a place where I can mentally hurl up the ideas, fears and uncertainties that roll around in my head and rarely work themselves out because I haven't stopped long enough to at least stroll for a bit and smell the roses. With little personal time, these things just seem to grow, especially late at night. With a little luck though, maybe there'll be another post here within the next month.