8:07pm spent a half hour on the phone with my daughter. She was playing an online game. we just bantered. I was working on posts. Listening to song “Low Key in Love” The Struts/Paris Jackson

I put my name and the word hospice in a search. It came up with my time in Modesto. The blog also came up because I mention being a hospice chaplain in posts. I am going 100mph yet I keep my foot on the gas. I have put my failings on display. I am exposed and terrified. Yet I don’t stop.

5:56pm just walked in the door to home. Furniture didn’t come. Of course. Today felt the most like Utah 2003-2008 in a long time. Awash in good feelings and happy memories. I miss the WIL so bad I could cry. I think about her every second.

8:09am at work, on a sales meeting conference call…Arizona is where I am supposed to be. I work hard here. I am appreciated here. I am valued here.

“While realizing ten years ago I didn’t have the faintest idea I would end up where I now am, I still like to keep up the illusion that I am in control of my own life.” -Henri J.M. Nouwen

California, Arizona, Utah (Wyoming), even Nevada. My mind was racing this morning on my walk. Where will I end up in five years? Where should I be? What does it means to be alone? What do I lose/gain to have my wife and daughter with me? To have my mom live with me? To be a good employee? I didn’t have the faintest idea four months ago I would be in Arizona. Funny, I think I can figure out where I will be five years from now. It is a distraction more than a plan.

5:44am I dreamed a female high school acquaintance was romantically pursuing a friend from college. Her face had been disfigured by an accident during surgery. I was talking to another friend about her. He said “Th problem isn’t really her face. Everyone with her ends up dead.”

7:29pm the movers called. They are delivering my furniture tomorrow. It has been over a month since they picked it up. I have slept on the floor for two months. I won’t know what to do. Sitting on an actual piece of furniture. Sleeping in a real bed. Watching shows on a real screen.

I am never the same person. To everyone I know I show different sides. Sometimes intentionally. Other times naturally. That is what makes sharing these posts so hard. Different people know different versions of me. To put my name on something, put it out for public consumption creates one singular me. I would be revealed. Or exposed. Understood. Rejected. I don’t even have one version I share with myself. My persona changes daily.

6:30am I am amazed how little nostalgia I feel for Orange County. That could be because I am still in the moment. It didn’t really end. My wife and daughter are still there. Circumstances just changed. On Sunday I thought about driving by the ok’d house, going for the walk I took the last year. But I didn’t want to do the nostalgia thing. I went for a walk in laguna niguel instead. I purposefully did new things, looked at the place from new angles. Perhaps someday I will miss it. But not now

Holding on to the past is seductive. Uplifting moments now gone is a cheap way to feel something. The past is removed from context so it seems purer. I have always indulged nostalgia. I planned trips to poke around past places to evoke nostalgia. What do I mean by “nostalgia?” It is an energy that emanates from inside me. Right about the top of my stomach. When I have a certain memory it radiates outward. all the way to the end of my fingers, through my legs and the top of my head. The feeling is even more powerful when it sneaks up on me. That is why I would go to places I lived in the past. I would visit an old office. As I drove up I would remember a lunch with colleagues, or a success at work. I never knew what thought or memory would hit. Sometimes I might visit a place and not feel much. Other times memories would flood my mind and I would burst into tears. Just writing this makes me realize how strong nostalgia is. The rush. It is a very formidable high. Lately I have felt trapped by nostalgia. Always trying to relive the past. Missing out on the present. Not anticipating a future. Utah is the most dangerous nostalgia. The job, the place, the woman. They still hold so much power over me. But they are gone. To miss them is futile. Now the rush causes more sadness than joy. I move forward. I am excited about this summer. Spending time with my daughter. Working hard. Anticipating what life has to offer.