Biding time, questioning life

Today I saw the movie "Last Chance Harvey" with Dustin Hoffman. I really enjoyed it. I used to dislike romantic movies but I guess I have changed. I always loved Dustin Hoffman though.

So... since I accepted the job in Albany, I have just been biding my time and making the most out of the city. I have not been visiting a lot of patients, which is just stupid because it is not a difficult job to do and it pays well considering how easy it is. I made a goal of meeting all the patients I met in November, for their 90 day assessment which is coming up in February. I still have a few weeks to meet that goal, so I am not too stressed. I know I will be able to meet it. I am in a transition period again and I kind of dislike it. I feel like I am just waiting around for the excitement of the wave that I know I am afraid of. I have a lot to review before I move up there. I feel like I forgot everything I struggled to learn while I studied for my NCLEX. I am still looking for a place to live. I met this nice girl named Jenny when I went up to Albany last weekend, and there is a chance she may end up being my roommate. I pretty much made up my mind that either I will live with her, or I will live alone. I do not want to take any more gambles on roommates. I have lived with wonderful people before, and I have also had the bad roommate experience. Like they say, when it's good, it's great. But when it's bad, it's REALLY horrible. I have enough experience living with people I want nothing to do with, and I want to enjoy my living situation for a change!! I love living alone, like I did when I was in school in Binghamton. I never thought Binghamton was the best place on earth (I couldn't even bring myself to go back there after my graduation, to visit professors I swore I would visit!) but the experiences I had while living alone are definitely enough to make me say that those years I spent up there were the best I ever had. I don't think there is enough to say about the joys of living alone, but I will try. I guess it's just a great feeling, being able to do whatever, whenever, however, wherever, and with whoever you like...for any reason you like (though when I lived alone in Binghamton, I rarely had people over, since I was around people all day and just wanted to be alone at the end of the day). It's not like the people I live with now (my mom and her husband) are strict or whatever, but I am accountable for something being that I have my own room that I am not currently paying for, and even that small percent of accountability makes me uncomfortable. I just want to rent my own place and get the fuck out of this smoky apartment, and have the freedom to blast music, cook naked, sing and dance like an idiot and just be free!

On another note... I was thinking earlier today about how different of a person I was four years ago, and how thankful I am to have changed so much. I know people who are now where I was four years ago, and I feel sorry for them even though I probably shouldn't, because we all lead our own lives and who knows, maybe their current states are just what works for them. Then sometimes I find myself comparing what I am today to what I was at the age of 12, half my life ago. It is amazing, being a human. People today love to literally argue to death about their own perceptions of god. To me, god is science. I was thinking the other day about what it is that supposedly makes us different from other animals. I don't think I could say that it is our ability to talk, because other animals have the ability to communicate vocally too. I don't think I could say that it's our ability to make tools develop technology, because other animals do that too. They can learn just like we do, though perhaps not at such a fast rate, I guess? I don't know. I mean, who does? But it's certainly fun to think about. I wonder what makes us humans fundamentally different from other animals. I also think a lot about death. Even just walking down the street and seeing a pigeon fly away from oncoming traffic, I think: that pigeon has the same instinctual fear of death that we do. But where does that fear stem from? What is there to fear in death, actually? It's pretty crazy when you really think about it.

I love feeling insignificant. I am not saying I love it when my romantic partner swoons and lusts after every female besides me, or that I love being mistreated by my fellow human; that's not what I am talking about. Have you ever looked at the stars, or the ocean, or the view from an airplane, and thought to yourself that you are so small, and every problem you perceive to be major in your life is really just nothing in the grand scheme of things? That's what I am talking about: the kind of beautiful reflection you undergo when you realize that you are nothing, you mean nothing, and your "big" life is completely inconsequential among the millions and billions of worldly and outerworldly energies that surround us every day. You are but a speck of dust in the wind. And yet, you still have to worry about passing your midterm exams, getting to work on time, and having enough money to pay your bills. Not that they are not important things to worry about; they are important...but they don't affect the physics of gravity, or the spin of the earth, or the glow of the sun, or the undercurrent of the ocean.

One moment stands out in my mind as being the most beautiful moment I have ever lived. It was in Nicaragua this past July, where I went with my best friend Dioliver. We decided to make the trip out to the beach in the middle of the night to watch sea turtles lay eggs. It had been a dream of mine for quite a while, but I never could have expected all the feelings I felt that night. We rode on the back of a big truck out of our hotel at 1am, with about 6 other people, heading for the beach. When we arrived, we were made to stand by a shack just outside the beach area, holding flashlights while the tour guide educated us about the turtles, and told us what and what not to do while observing the egg-laying. He seemed like he cared a lot about the turtles, and I, as a tourist, was glad that his heart seemed to be in the right place. As we made our way on to the beach in a single file line, we were told to keep the flashlights off. The only light to be seen was the light from the stars, and that light reflecting off the crests of the gentle waves that carried the magnificent turtles to shore. I swear I could see every star in the sky, and I felt incredibly humbled by the awesome sight of a night sky I had never beheld before in my life. I imagined early human life lived by the movement of the sun and the lights of the stars and moon. It was simply unbelievable. The guide had told us that the turtles always came back to the same beach where they hatched, to lay their eggs. Wild salmon are known to do this, as well. What is it within their DNA, within their electrical networks that tells them where to go? How beautiful is it that a living creature will fight, perhaps to its own death, to go back to the place where it was born, and carry on the tradition of its lineage? All of this natural beauty, and the lack of humankind's answers to these deep questions, just floored me.