1:47 AM - Time, Truth, and Delayed Reactions

Music: “As Time Goes By” by Sam Dooley
"The fundamental things apply..."

And what a year it’s been.

I’m not talking about my gap in posting – though it is lengthy and downright deplorable. I’m thinking about my time living in Wyoming.

For just over a month, starting just before Christmas and continuing since in the brief moments I have to linger amidst my own thoughts, I’ve been trying to figure out what all I’ve learned over the past year.

I didn’t do anything special for the one-year anniversary, and not just because I was previously unsure which day to celebrate. Does one pick the day you arrived or the first day of work? Would doing something on midnight, the connector of the two dates in question work?

Apparently it was just another day. I know this because I woke up one morning, smacked alarm clock around, stretched to pick up my watch with the broken band, and realized I’d been in Wyoming for a year and three days. I believe my general feeling was along the lines of, “Huh… Isn’t that interesting…”

So as this shows, while the milestone hasn’t been dominating, situated front and center, it has been something I’ve been poking at. I’ve spent time trying to remember where a was a year prior (be it picking which books to take with me or hoarding soap and mints while camped out at a hotel). I even had the chance to reread some of the stuff I wrote during my initial arrival (the five-section notebook I took with me to the state press convention was partially filled with early journal/possible post entries).

I have also been realizing how work itself has changed. Duties and expectations have risen, and I would like to think I have largely met the challenges. If anything is an indicator, the paper has still come out every day, and I have continued to repress the urge fill headlines with curt, uncouth curses detailing how I’m feeling (some nights) 20 minutes from deadline.

Note: While I never expect to follow through on this impulse, part of my brain has worked to develop a rationale if it gets in and nobody stops it:

“Yes, while the adjective choice I included may appear a bit slanted and subjected, I would argue that my description of the people and their actions are, yes, brutally blunt, but also deadly accurate. Perhaps I could have chosen a verb that does not have such a harsh, sexual connotation associated with it, but doing so would not have painted the situation so precisely. To subscribe to a lesser truth is like saying ‘horse’ when you mean ‘thoroughbred;’ it’s technically the same, but the reader is deprived of a richer, more contextualized address. Though while I’m talking about horses, let me take the opportunity to apologize for that blatant bestiality comment inserted in front of that politician’s name. That is nothing I know for a fact, it is my theory if pressed, and off the record, the lawmaker might admit ‘libel’ is not quite the right word.”

I know. I’ve prepared an awfully long defense for an offense I don’t plan on making, but I prefer to put the blame more on my active imagination than any malicious premeditation (which would also be my backup argument should the first one not work).

As I said, I’m in a period of casual reflection. It’s interesting what little things attract attention when you give yourself the time to simply notice.

I’m not sure if anything will become of it. And as previously noted, it’s not overwhelming my thoughts – I’ve still got plenty of things to focus on.

Still, it’s been nice to notice the little things … to be thankful for a fuller library and an emergency $100 in place of the emergency $20 (which I was riding as far as it could go in fall 2005) … to be able to stretch under a familiar blanket and also rest my feet and drink on a coffee table … to have the privacy to compose my thoughts and listen to own eclectic music mix and snack on imitation bacon bits, all at 1:40 a.m. morning.

And to smile as I realize it’s 1:40 a.m. Mountain Time and not Central.

It’s little things like that which make me excited to see what the next year, and day, may bring.

P.S. To answer the longstanding, unanswered question (see three inches beneath the present line) I was so overworked I had the skip dinner for the first time in months and was more concerned with racing deadlines than what day it was. Being overtaxed with anticlimactic endings can cause a person to forget, if not neglect to mention things.

The truth can be both dull or dazzling, and to allow it to remain what it is, we can’t change it. That’s the curse and comfort of being a true recorder.

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