Update

Has it really been seven years since I started this blog? It's the future 2011! I'm old now!

I arrived home from a 2 and half year stay in Korea, hopeful about the future with big plans to go back to school and earn a teaching certificate and settle down. What ended up happening was a year of working in my apartment 10-12 hours a day. In the past, the jobs I've had were in my own community. I would wake up in the morning to an alarm, make a pot of coffee, fill up the thermos and commute to work. The people in the lanes beside me on the highway had that same morning look that I had: slightly damp hair and muscles in their face that hadn't quite warmed up. And seeing those people made me feel connected,like a citizen. On weekends, driving around town, I could point to a job that I had done in my own community. I painted that building over there. I cleaned that office. I hedged that bush and so on.

But working with Koreans from my home office has changed that feeling. All the seeds I plant, the people I touch, the work I do is an ocean away. I have to trust that I am making a difference and deep down I know I do.

I am going back to school and that to me is very exciting. I moved back to Bellingham. I have come full circle. Once upon a time I despised the ideology of this liberal arts college town. But that doesn't much matter to me anymore. What matters is that I now have a vision for what I want to do with my life.

So I am back in Bellingham. I'm 31 rather than 21. I will be the old guy on campus and that is scary but I am excited to learn and commute and be part of a community again.