{"id":356,"date":"2008-04-13T15:50:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-13T15:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/?p=356"},"modified":"2008-04-13T15:50:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-13T15:50:00","slug":"life-in-the-exit-lane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/?p=356","title":{"rendered":"Life in the Exit Lane"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m in such a weird emotional space right now.  I&#8217;m lonely, and anxious, and conflicted, and melancholy.  And I know it&#8217;s temporary, I know at least some of the causes, and I know a part of me that enjoys the confusion, but life right now has none of the thrills I know it could.  I wish sometimes I could cry.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not lonely exactly for lack of friends or opportunities, but friends aren&#8217;t what I&#8217;m lonely for.  It&#8217;s two-and-a-half months before I leave, and that&#8217;s too long for a lame duck social life and too short to pursue any new relationships.  And I don&#8217;t have the time or the energy to organize the social life I want&#8211; and I&#8217;m not even sure what social life that would be any more.<\/p>\n<p>All my employers want an ever-bigger slice of my pie before I leave.  When I find extra hours, I end up pouring it into jobs I care less for every day.  And I&#8217;m not getting to work on my own projects.  It&#8217;s like I spend all my time driving up an ever-steepening slope, but it feels like my wheels are mostly just spinning in mud.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m torn over the dozens of friendships I want to make better here.  I&#8217;m torn over what happens when I leave to those relationships when I leave.  And if preparing to leave has also been freeing, I waver on how much to explore that freedom, and how much to care.  And in my confusion, I&#8217;ve said some hurtful, inappropriate things recently to good friends who didn&#8217;t deserve them.<\/p>\n<p>Mostly, I&#8217;m just sad.  Sad to be leaving, and sad to be alone and getting more alone every day.  I want to enjoy my last few months, and instead I&#8217;m comparing them to an imagined other life I think I could build for myself here.  Not sad enough to change my plans, but just sad enough to want to forget about them.<\/p>\n<p>I just did my taxes.  It could have been worse, but I cleared out most of my bank account and still owe the feds thousands.  It won&#8217;t stop me from going to Brazil, but it won&#8217;t make it easy.  And I still haven&#8217;t gone to the consulate to find out how legally I can work there.<\/p>\n<p>C&#8217;est la vie.<\/p>\n<p>Plan to do something fun with me before I leave!  Want to go camping?  Want to bar-hop and check out some new music?  Want to just hang out, drink tea, and talk life?  Distract me in a new way, and I&#8217;ll shake off this haze before a jet engine blows it away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m in such a weird emotional space right now. I&#8217;m lonely, and anxious, and conflicted, and melancholy. And I know it&#8217;s temporary, I know at least some of the causes, and I know a part of me that enjoys the confusion, but life right now has none of the thrills I know it could. I &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/?p=356\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Life in the Exit Lane<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}