Life is a funny thing.

It twists and turns, bends and leaps, loops and whirls, winds around, skips steps, and doubles back upon itself. It's both a Möbius strip and a freeway in Nebraska. Funny stuff, life.

I just got back from a party. A retirement party, to be exact. It was a fun night, a fun celebration.

Now what you have to remember is that I'm pretty new in my job, finishing up my first year. So everything is new. Expect when it's exactly the same.

Turns out I just spent the evening with an odd combination of people. There were colleagues I just met this year and people who've known me for a good 20 years, since I was a kid. Twists and turns and loops and doubling back.

I was born in a medium-sized Midwestern city, grew up, moved out, and moved on. Went to college in another medium-sized Midwestern town, worked for ten years in a third. And now I'm back where it all began, about 15 years after I last lived here full time. My mentors are now my colleagues. Déjà vu all over again.

Whoever it was that said that the more things change, the more they stay the same, really knew what the hell they were talking about.

Do you ever, as an adult, feel like you're really still pretending at this grown-up thing, playing dress-up, as it were? I know I do, all the time. There's no way I can be this old when I swear I feel the same way I did at 16.

But I really don't feel the same as I did at 16, and I know I don't. My perspectives have changed so much. The same tendencies are there, but I've... sharpened, I guess. Focused. I've grown, and changed, and thank God for it. But a lot of things feel the same.

There were quite a few people in the room tonight who had known me as a kid, and remembered me from then. They, plus the others who didn't make it tonight, have been so helpful, so gracious to the former brat they knew. They've spoken highly of me both in front of my face and behind my back. I've gotten handshakes, smiles of welcome, offers of help, hugs.

The fact that so many have remembered me from way back when, even when they were not directly associated with me at the time, shocks me still. It makes me wonder about what reputation I had that I didn't know about then, how that's affecting me now, and how smart of a move this really was, coming home.

So here I am as a theoretical adult, trying to carve my way in this new job, in this new - yet old - community, to find my place. I want to appear intelligent, to not be a burden, to darn well see to it that my name is associated with quality and competence and knowledge and creativity. I want to earn respect.

Can I really live up to this? Or am I just a mediocre thinker with a mediocre life, doing my best to fake proficiency and not get found out?

What am I trying to say with all this? Darned if I know. This whole new job, while I'm pretty sure I like it and I'm pretty sure it was truly the right move for me at the right time, has been pretty surreal.

I guess it's just the same old wish to leave the world better than I found it, to be what I'm destined to be. I just have to sometimes take a minute to wonder where on earth I am and if I'm going the right way.

Life should be a verb. It should also be a rumination.



Today's song: How to Save a Life by The Fray. That's my job, right there in a nutshell.