Weather forecast at 28

“ I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end. ”
— Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

 [Drafted 10/11/17, edited December]

Weather forecast at 28:
 I seem to finally be growing into myself. My behavior has become in-line with my age; my financial situation has become in-line or somewhat above-average, though I foresee it skewing to below-average into my 30s; my syntax seems to still be keeping ahead of my age, according to others; my looks have overtaken my age, also according to others.

When people find out I moved to Colorado, they ask how I like it; this is the most common question I'm asked. Because many of the people asking have also come from out-of-state, I get the impression they're seeking confirmation that we're all having fun and have made the right choice in moving.

I hypothesize there are many forms of vampirism here, not all of which are directly related to Colorado. I do feel more worn down here than I did in Dallas, which is part of the reason I'm abandoning the geography. The atmospheric dryness is one form of vampirism, compounded by my work at the library - books can be very water greedy at times - though I find that to be a somewhat acceptable occasion to be sucked dry, as it were.

I think Tuesdays are my favorite in the work week. Often the office will empty or be mostly empty and I can complete my work and do what I want. It reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode about a man who does to an office-for-one each day to perform seemingly meaningless work for an unseen employer.
Thursdays are my least favorite day in the work week. People linger to meet with a VP who comes in town. It means having to order Jimmy John's. And I want nothing to do with that restaurant. The orders are always wrong. And the twenty-two year old assistant manager mewls from his office: "When will my free lunch get here? When will I have my Jimmy Chips?" And I close the door to his office on him. I can balance budgets, payment schedules, and work flows, but somehow I can't sort out lunch orders. Eventually I am in my car with my own homemade lunch, and it's Fall, and I watch falling leaves cover my windshield. At the end of the day I drive home, leaving a cloud of leaves behind me; the Spirit of Winter casting aside the remains of the living.

This has been a year of large personal growth in Colorado.
Things I have come to realize about myself:
1. I pay more attention to my face blindness; actually noticing my reliance on body structure, and the way people carry those bodies, to recall who they are. People look askance when I mention it.
2. I sometimes feel light-headed. I see things more often, that persist longer; lights, shadows, and random color vibrancy of objects. I have always payed attention to tricks of light, and distortions due to fatigue since I was young. I distinguish past-day examples from present-day occurrences.
3. Small internal battles are ongoing; the challenges to reality; and feeling like everything is chaos and targeting me, when it is within me projecting outwards (I have only noticed this happening once, and it stopped when I noticed it). ["Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - PKD]

This is a survey of themes that recurred throughout 2017. I'm looking forward to the coming changes of 2018 with mute excitement and hope. This is, perhaps, the most human I can be: to turn from the American Dream of a guaranteed comfortable cage and continuously pursue freedom, which carries with it its own special brand of contentedness. Lastly, I miss my books and look forward to being reunited with them.