I know most days recently I walk around like I've got life figured out, and most days recently, I feel like I do. The simple side of it, keeping it simple. Trying to squeeze things down into managable portions. This I was taught. This comes directly from another group of people with whom I am acquainted. That and that only. Only sometimes I fall short of my own ideals. Maybe this is human nature. I brought home two oversized suitcase, I'd say packed to the gills but I get points for humility only in that sense because for a few seconds I thought of the baggage handlers who would have to load the suitcases on my outgoing plane, off the same plane and then reload it onto my connecting plane. So now I have two gigantic suitcases which take up a good portion of room and which are packed heavily with items that seem overbearing to our apartment. This is a fact of which I am suddenly not entirely proud. I mostly wanted to get them out of the hair of my parents, who maybe didn't understand if I was going through some kind of giving up of possessions. And indeed it did feel like a surrender of sorts, but it was a much stronger surrender than just giving up a few clothes... it was a surrender involving giving up of specific beliefs that I had about how things ought and need to be in order to continue with life as I know it... I see it as a facing of the self, and maybe it seems lately as if I were whining to get some of the security I had behind me before the decision to say screw it all, I'm doing it my way. I've seen it at work, the place where it seems I clamor the most for pardon, constantly desiring more recognition because over time I feel like I should deserve it... but where I have a lot to offer my employer in the way of brains and creativity, I also lack in terms of common sense, follow through , attitude, and general disposition. I still think they're foolish for not giving me more responsibility and blame my faults on their reluctance to relinquish the keys, figuratively speaking. Truth is, I feel like I'd be better off moving on to something different, and only I can hope that it might be better. This is still about the American dream, if one can believe it but I think it's more--- the human dream of self-fulfillment. Maybe I'd feel a calling to be a travel agent, and find the love which comes from serving others more fully if I had travelled the world often myself, so that I might have some more experiential knowledge to give... but that hasn't quite happened yet. And the reality is instead working at a cubicled desk, behind a computer screen without any real inspiration behind it, just the knowledge that one can gain from a book or the repetition of information gathered from rote memory. So the time for escalation would conceivably be now. And yet that will need to be done progressively, over time, because that's just the way it seems to work for me. Maybe I could pull together some kind of lightning quick means to be back up to speed, but likely I would have to struggle through the first phase... it is likely, without much experience behind my back. I have faith that all these things will work themselves out if I work toward them. The fact if the matter is that I am tired of taking the easiest path and doing the most formidable thing. It had not served me very much in previosu years and I have reason to belive that it will help now... but I am the catalyst in my own domain, the wheels of the bus go round and round if I let them...