cross country skiing

That may be what I miss most about Alaska. In both Fairbanks and Elim, to just step outside my front door and strap on some skis and head off - that is a special kind of bliss that I just can't find here in the South.

Today I was making what is probably a not atypical Texas-bashing statement to my Contracts neighbor, and we got to him saying, "Yeah, but nobody lives in the vast openness of Alaska." "Oh, but I did and so do some others. Just because you can't drive there doesn't mean there's nobody there." I miss nature. No, it's more than that, because I can find nature at a park. I miss wilderness. Wildness.

And life in Alaska, like everywhere now as I age, would be better if I were loaded and working at a big law firm.

I toy with the idea. I toy with trying to find a job on the west coast this summer. I like the south a lot in a lot of ways, but I don't feel a compulsion to live here forever. Nor does that idea repulse me. I'm pretty open, but I want to make major bank.

What's still open is the status of my relationship with Dayton. But leaning towards over. But we do have to decide pretty quickly and it needs to be a permanent decision - because if he's NOT coming here, then I'm going to try to find a job this summer (the rate for the big firms is $2400/week) elsewhere and I'm making all sorts of other changes to what's going on for me.

I've waited almost a year and a half for him, which should make me able to wait another few days for him to finish thinking things through before we talk, but I think that's the point. I've waited a long time for him, and I'm over waiting. It's happening or it's not. I do understand that he's of a refugee and African mindset, that things move more slowly for him and he's afraid of losing the security of where he is now after suffering so much. I do understand that, and I'm not angry at him now for moving at a different pace than me. But I need to be fair to myself, too. If he can't move at my pace, then we need to move to separate tracks, and it needs to happen now. It will break my heart irreparably, but I will survive. I like things determined, and I like action - I'm like a top that must spin or I fall over (or like a beagle that dances in circles on its backlegs, going nowhere). (Except of course, that I DO go somewhere, always, even if it's just to ski around the mountain.)