i guess it has been much longer since i have written than it feels like… i never intend to go so much time without having written something, anything… but each time i sit down to write here, i want to write something significant or mesmerizing… and quite honestly, that does not happen that often.  my life, when i think back to being in my late teens and early twenties, was so full of passion and new feeling and all these things… and now, i feel so set in my day to day… like nothing is new or beautiful or whatever.  maybe im jaded.  i want to feel so passionately.  mostly, i look around and wonder how people Love the things they Love and why people get excited about something that seems ridiculous to me.  dont get me wrong, i Love hearing about my friends successes and joys and adorations… i live for that… but i feel i am just living vicariously through them.  i want so badly to know joy like they do about those things.  i dont feel depressed.  i simply feel like i am in the wrong place in the world and i feel helpless in trying to resolve it.  i look back on my time in oregon and realize that i had it great and almost perfect for a while and that now i am in a city i never ever wanted to return to.  and while getting out of this place is on the horizon, i feel it will never be soon enough.  i dislike that i am writing so negatively, because there is lots of joy in my day to day… paul has been kind and warm and cuddly when i need it in the cool autumn night, and the dogs have never been more attentive or Loving or downright fun.  but, i cant imagine that i really want to sit and write about my dogs.  or paul.  or even myself.  i think so often that is why i put off calling friends when i lived in oregon.  i always wanted to have a story… something grand to tell them when i phoned, like, “this amazing thing happened today,” but it seemed like it never came.  and now looking back, i think to myself, hey, man, there were so many amazing days… and now i fear i am falling back into being somewhere and forgetting to see all the good even though there is some bad… i should probably call a friend today and say, “hey, the leaves are yellow, and the sky is blue, and the air smells fresh.  and that is all i have, but i needed to share it.  i needed to tell someone that this moment was amazing to me.  even if it was trite to you.”  i think i need to start appreciating even the most mundane.  i should stop shrugging my shoulders and form actual concrete opinions and lose friends and make friends and laugh and cry.  i should stop being so passive, which is what i think i was trying to be for so long… i think i got passive and easy-going jumbled up…  and easy-going is nice, but i feel like i went from easy-going into passive and somehow slid right into complacent.  and that is the last thing i want.  cause i really do have fire in my belly.