It seems the closer I get to the end of my service the faster time passes and the more I feel it's slipping through my fingers. There is so much to do, so much to learn and so many ways to grow. For a few reasons I put my request to stay until June rather than leaving in March on hold for a week then asked that the hold be taken off so that, if I'm wanted, I have a little more time. I'm excited to go home, but more than that I'm nervous to hurry home. Funnily the skills I intend to develop in graduate school could make me a prime candidate for a second period of service in the future as a librarian or translator, if I wanted that...and if the stars were to align that way I have the option to reapply and see if I'm wanted again. But given the state of a number of things, not least the world economy, I think my first stint will be my only. (It is an instance of thinking very far into the future, but there's retirement, too).
My writers' group had a resoundingly good final session for a while, with a talk by a member of the Universal House of Justice and the enthusiastic author of a fair amount of children's literature. We may resume in a more informal way in the future. I don't know if I will continue to go. I almost feel that it's a distraction from writing. As one participant, my friend Soha, put it, "writers are like cats." Indeed it was odd sometimes to see us all together in the same room. It was a bit like a mixture of oils and waters. That's not to say that we didn't get along, but we didn't mix in a perfectly coherent way all the time, or much. Anyway, I'm all for supporting my friend Jenna who has been facilitating the workshop, with the help of her devoted husband, Joseph, who while not a writer himself has cooked dinner for the whole group at every meeting. At the same time if the makeup of the participantship is such that the workshop descends into being a mere social gathering, I'm out of there, because I am definitely not hanging around that mixed bag, much as I love it, for social reasons.
I love to see Jenna and Joseph together. It's interesting to see how they interact and work things out. They're one of the most unified couples I've ever met. Here I get to see the relationships of a fair number of couples, young and older, up close (for better or for worse--that's one thing I don't like much about this place, and few people do--the lack of social privacy). Jenna and Joseph are one of the most unified couples I've ever met. I've also met couples here who love each other and operate just fine by giving each other space, and on average I think that's the healthiest thing--but some people want to stick so close together it's admirable and beautiful. There's another couple here, Elise and Bhojraj, who offer each other so much mutual support it's lovely to see. I guess I'm starting to get an idea of what kind of partner I'd like to have, and be, though I don't feel ready to get married now or anytime soon.
Nutrition class is going strong. During the first session we tackled the big question "why be healthy" and created collages that represent our mental images of health and wellness. There is a fair age variety in the class so it was funny to see a bunch of adults pursuing a kindergarten's activity with such zeal and enthusiasm that the facilitator had a hard time getting people to stop. At the following session, last week, I learned or re-learned all kinds of scientific nutrition information. My brain loves that stuff and being aware of how and why things are good or bad for you is all the more motivation to eat or not eat them. We've been asked to set two wellness goals and outline some practical steps to achieve them. Each week we refine them. One of my goals was to minimize refined sugar and processed foods and I've done reasonably well so far by getting rid of all the sugar in my house that wasn't pure maple syrup or honey (I realize these things aren't so good for me, either, but just having them around is better than keeping other varieties of sugar in the house too). I love sugar but I think over time I'm craving less and less of that. I imagine part of that is physiological changes that are taking place as I get older and part of that is sheer awareness of what I'm doing to my body when I eat junk and part of that is my learning to cook and being able to control what goes into what dishes. As I said in my last entry I don't want to specialize in any one type of cooking because I'll rapidly get bored and so will my tasters, but I do have a (reasonably) tangible aspiration now which is being able to effectively combine ingredients without recipes and measure without measuring cups. I'm definitely getting there. It's so much fun to google two ingredients and see what kind of recipes I can find. And I'm getting better at doing background research before I run my own experiments.
And in other news if I'm not too busy--and I intend to be very cautious about not overloading myself--I might join the choir. They have a performance coming up in a couple of weeks, so until then it's not a wise idea for me to join--so I have until then to think about it.
