So, life. What's to say? Sometimes it's brilliant. Other times, more often, it's less brilliant. I'm trying to live for the moments when the former is the case.

I found Dria's new blog yesterday after stumbling across some pictures of her and getting caught in a fit of nostalgia and self-destructive, self-proclaimedly stupid curiosity. I shouldn't have gone looking and I regretted it. The situation is pretty much unrectifiable, and thinking about it only makes me crazy.

I move out of Schlachtensee this coming Saturday and I still haven't found a new place to live yet. David and I have made steps on finding several places but none of the prospects are even looking likely at this point. May end up homeless for a while, but not roofless, which is the real thing to worry about. If that happens I'll be storing my unessential things my exchange program director's office and living either in a hostel or with Nathan in Göttingen until we find a place.

Berlin has a forest in it, the Grunewald, and a few days ago when Nathan was here we went for a walk there. I had to leave early that morning to go to the university so I left Nathan sleeping. On my way home I bought some food for a picnic, packed it up as a surprise, and then suggested we go for a hike. We ended up eating in a wooden tower we found in the woods with a bench and some open slats in the walls. We hypothesize that it's used for hunting.

We also saw some wild pigs, heavily furry, a brown adult with several black and white spotted babies, which were startled from their hang-out near the trail by our approach. To tell you the truth it scared me nigh shitless. I've heard horror stories about wild pigs. Nathan was rattled as well. He picked up a big rock "just in case" and didn't drop it again until the pigs were far out of sight.

I'm feeling pretty directionless of late. I just don't know if the things I'm doing are the right things, or if the goals I'm working toward are what I actually want. I suppose one's never really sure of these things. It's interesting, though, that when I imagine what (all concerns of reality aside) I'd really like to do for a career, the things I think of are all things I've been doing since I was...well, since before I can remember. I'd like to be a concert musician with an orchestra, for instance. Or a Grand Prix show jumper, or a member of the Olympic equestrian team. Flying planes is euphoric but it's hard and it's alien even after all the time dedicated to it these past three years. It's still something that I don't think I really believe will ever happen. It's just not something that someone like me does. It takes precision and confidence and a kind of intelligence that I can't command. If I force myself to do this, if becoming a commercial pilot is actually something that I force, will it ever pan out? Maybe it requires more dedication than I have. I don't know. I always start to doubt my love for flying once I've been out of a cockpit for a while, though, and at this point it's been nearly six months.

In conclusion, and switching gears completely, a mantra has been running through my head today. "There is no nobility in sadness. There is only an occasional sadness in nobility." I think I would do well to remember this.

everyone's a critic