Like a Christmas Tree Thrown Amid the Rapids

I wrote this doozy of a post on Facebook in January 2010. If you’re curious as to what I was feeling before I transitioned from Georgia to California, here you go. I thought it’d be fitting for re-posting on this day after Christmas, also known as the most depressing day of the year.

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I consider myself a fairly patient, easy-going guy. Haven’t always been this way, though. I used to be incredibly impatient and worried over how I’d get through any single day (ah, inglorious high school…). But I’ve matured over the years and God’s most definitely filled me with copious amounts of patience.

And yet when it comes to spiritual matters and you think you’ve got more than enough of something, you then find out you don’t have nearly enough of it.

I think I’ve always been a pretty faithful steward of my money. I just don’t spend it on things I don’t need. Heck, I even hesitate buying a Gatorade from a vending machine after a long run in blessed, 100-degree Georgian joyfulness. Yes, I enjoy saving, but I don’t hoard either. In fact, I thoroughly enjoy giving. To other people, and to God. I don’t want to puff myself up or anything, but I feel I’ve faithfully given God what’s His over the years, and then some. So when it comes to fiscal matters, I feel like I’ve done pretty good, honestly.

Needless to say, I’m so utterly lost and confused right now. And mightily disheartened.

I’ve been jobless since last August when my student-worker status at UGA’s Ramsey Center expired. I was to go on an epicK road trip with my best friend the next month, so I figured I’d look for a new job once I got back home in October. And if it took a while, it’d take a while. Like I said, I enjoy saving, so I had a decent amount to live off of until I took over at my glorious new job.

As October passed into November passed into December, I realized I wouldn’t be working by the time me and the family left for Pennsylvania for Christmas. But hey, no biggie! I’d applied for a job working on the 2010 census and they said they’d call people back once the new year hit, so hooray I’d have a job again soon enough! And off to PA I merrily went.

A week ago I interviewed for another job rating 5th and 8th grade standardized essays. Not the most excitable notion of “work,” but hey, I have a B.A. in English and I’ve written over three drafts of a 338-page novel in the past seven months. Surely those things would count for something and I’d be a practical shoo-in for one of the sixty jobs they’d be offering.

Well, I wasn’t. Got rejected. Still blows my mind. And the census job? Seems I’ve fallen through the cracks there as well.

So, all those piled up savings? I’m now down to $60.79. Last month I had to start paying off my $2600 loan for my year at Brewton-Parker. $50/month payments for the rest of my freaking life. Jolly grand. (Of course, my great experience at BPC was more than worth it.) Over the past couple months I’ve been extremely conservative in how much I drive my car (and subsequently have to spend money on gas). In fact, most weeks the only time I fire ol’ Mitsy up is when I go to church Sunday mornings (thankfully I only have to drive five miles away for that). But at this pace, I won’t even be able to drive to church soon. Insane.

Without having a job and being able to drive, well, anywhere, I’ve been collecting dust at home. It’s not all bad, as I’ve been making the best of my imprisonment here: running, working out, reading, and investing boatloads of time on this novel. I definitely thank God for all the time I’ve been able to devote to my beloved story.

But now that my novel’s in the homestretch, I, uh…well, I kinda need a job. Now. Bad. I can only make it to my mid-February loan payment before my account is depleted. Insane.

I’ve never worried about money my ENTIRE LIFE. Not once have I ever fretted over where my next dollar would come from or how I’d pay for ___. I was so blessed with that job on campus the past three years. But now…now, I’m worrying. And my patience quota seems lower than the balance of my checking account.

And it’s not even so much, “AHHH I NEED TO PAY FOR LOANS AND GAS.” No. After spending all this time trapped at home the last several months, it’s that I’ve come to the blinding realization that I need OUT of this place. This house; this city. Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, and friends: I love y’all – but I need to spread my wings and fly away from you. Soon. Or I will go freaking insane. I experienced similar feelings when I fled for Brewton-Parker in 2005 and Oxford in 2008, but those feelings cannot compare to what I feel now.

I love Donald Miller. How I went so long without hearing of him / reading anything by him is totally beyond me. From Blue Like Jazz to A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, I’m now embarking on Through Painted Deserts. I’ve only read the author’s note on this latest Miller-adventure, but it was quite possibly the most poetic, heart-stirring four pages I’ve ever read:

…everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God’s way. All my life I have been changing. I changed from a baby to a child, from soft toys to play daggers. I changed into a teenager to drive a car, into a worker to spend some money. I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change. Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons…

I want to repeat one word for you:

Leave.

Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.

Simply put, I want to leave. Need to leave. I have some ideas on places I could go in the coming year, but without money, I am unmoving. And so I feel stuck, empty, and rotting. Like a Christmas tree thrown amidst the rapids.

One of my favorite places on Planet Earth is Harris Shoals Park here in Watkinsville. I first started visiting the mini-rapids there several summers ago when I began jotting down prehistoric ideas for a grandiose novel I’d eventually write years later. There’s something about the sound of water rushing onto rock that just soothes me to the core.

I meandered to the park this afternoon and discovered a small Christmas tree laying sideways on a large stone in the middle of said waters. I wondered where it came from, what sparkly decorations and lights had adorned its pine-needly limbs not even a week or day ago. And now here it was, drowning and left to rot alone in a mad torrent of water.

You see where this is going?

I really don’t want this note to be a pity-party for Tom. Really, I don’t. I guess I just want to express what’s been building in my heart this past (extremely frustrating) week. I see all my high school and BPC friends living fantastic lives, getting married left and right – even having beautiful kids. No, I don’t particularly want to get married or have children right now, but I want to live an exciting new chapter in my lifestory too. A new chapter, filled with new plot lines…new characters, new scenes.

I want to leave. Start over. Blaze a new trail. Laugh and cry over things I’ve never laughed and cried over before. I want to climb out of the rapids and find me a brand new forest to plug roots into.

And so finding a job right now takes on added weight. It’s about so much more than paying off loans or being able to fill up my gas tank. It’s about saving enough…so I can leave.

But yeah, I’m worried about the whole loan/gas thing just the same.

I’m trying to maintain some perspective on this matter. Don’t get me wrong; I’m so incredibly grateful for this house I’m currently living in. After witnessing the horrors in Haiti from this past week, I count myself extremely blessed and don’t take anything for granted here.

But is it so wrong that I just want to fly away and live life anew? I thought everything was finally lining up for me with this job and I could finally start saving toward my eventual trek out of Georgia. But no. I’m still here; still stuck in the rapids as my needles turn from green to orange.

I send out novel queries to agents in two weeks. Hopefully that will lead to something; but even if it does, that’s more of a longer-term thing. And even then, I don’t want my novel to be about the money. Never. I want it to be about lives. I want this story God’s blessed me with to, in turn, bless others.

Thoughts of grad school are starting to roll around more seriously in my head, but as it relates to my leaving home, that too is more of a longer-term solution at this point.

And so, I humbly ask for your prayers. I don’t think I’ve ever been as perplexed and beat-up about life as I am right now. I want to change, I want to leave, I’m ready, and I’m not afraid! But it’s so frustrating that I just don’t have the means to do anything about it right now. *moan*

I’m ready for my new chapter. If only I knew how many pages I have left in this one. Or how exactly the character “Tom” gets out of this mess.