Return Trip

“Master Wayne, it's been a long time…
Are you coming back to Gotham for long, sir?”

Well, I’m down to my last four days in Utah. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for six years. It’s even harder to believe that I’ve been away from home for eight. EIGHT YEARS! Jeez, even Bruce Wayne was only away from Gotham for seven years when he left for HIS training.

“You will go to the Degobah system. There you will learn from
Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed me.”

I guess in a way you could look at is as that: training. There’s a certain kind of growth that a person can’t get when he’s close to his family. Look at Superman, he never realized HIS powers until he left Smallville. And Luke Skywalker never made any REAL progress toward becoming a Jedi Knight until he left his friends and headed for Degobah.

“That place...is strong with the dark side of the Force.

A domain of evil it is. In you must go.”

“What’s in there?”

“Only what you take with you.”

Heck, even on Degobah, Luke had to face things on his own. During my time in Utah (hmm, that even kinda SOUNDS like Degobah) I’ve met some fantastic friends and have had great times with them, but I’ve also had some very solitary times. Sometimes disappointment has left me feeling alone and at other times, by my own design, I’ve arranged for the solitude of living alone. I think part of the reason that I stayed away for so long was so I COULD be alone, because despite its negative connotations solitude can help a person come into his own.

“You don't need to be helped any longer.
You've always had the power to go back to [Kent].”

The funny thing about “coming into one’s own” or discovering oneself is that it’s like discovering anything else in this universe: the thing you’re discovering has always been there, but sometimes it takes work to find it. You’ve got to put forth effort and expose yourself to it before its truly discovered. Some people find themselves very quickly and some people never even misplace themselves.

“Oh the cleverness of me!”

I’d consider myself a conglomerate of all those types of people: I’ve never like I DIDN’T know who I was and after all this time on my own I don’t feel like I’ve changed at all, but I think that everyone should take time for introspection because you’ll find that you’re a lot more impressive than you had imagined. Now… I’ve always thought quite highly of myself, so you can imagine how much more self enamored I must be now that I’ve improved upon my confidence.

“Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them…

Stretch out with your feelings.”

Every now and then I’ll have a sort of “out-of-time” experience. I say out-of-time because its like an out-of-body experience, only I’m still in my body and I’m still myself, but for a second I can feel things that I know I wont feel for a few more years. Like when I was at BYU, I can remember hating my trips up to campus because campus was always so crowded and hurried and there was always a class I was late for or an assignment that was almost due. But near the end of my senior year, still in the thick of that hustle and bustle, I can remember my frustrations stepping aside for a second and feeling like, “Wow, I’m not going to be here much longer and I can already tell I’m gonna miss this place.”

"You make it out to Utah much, Saul?"

"Not as much as I'd like."

"You should. You'd like it. I think you'd like Provo."

Suicide Watch

Seahawks 10, Steelers 21

“…4:00 wallow in self pity… 4:30, stare into the abyss…
5:00, solve world hunger, tell no one…. 5:30, jazzercise…
6:30, dinner with me. I can't cancel that again…
7:00, wrestle with my self-loathing; I'm booked.
Of course, if I bump the loathing to 9 I could still be done in time
to lay in bed, stare at the ceiling and slip slowly into madness.”

It was hard to get to sleep last night and it was hard to get up this morning. I don’t think I’ve felt this depressed since the last time I was dumped by a girl I really really liked… and since I can hardly every stand anybody, to the point that I never go on dates... that was a LONG time ago.

They say that what goes up must come down. I’m no physics whiz, but I’d guess the depth of a drop must be a two to one multiple of the height. I was riding the highs of the Seahawks train for the past 4 months. Especially in the past four weeks there have been tons of on-line media to read, watch, or listen to. And since I never do ANYTHING at work, I’ve taken in just about every ounce of it.

The bad thing is that now that its over all the down time I used to spend devouring 'Hawks media I now spend bumming out about what’s transpired.

“…I know the rage that drives you: that impossible anger strangling the grief, until the memory of your [team’s almost perfect season] is just poison in your veins. And one day, you catch yourself wishing the [team] you loved had never existed so you'd be spared your pain.”

I’ve heard it said that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. And I really AM ecstatic about the Seahawks even making it to the Super Bowl, but until they get back and win it, I think I’ll forever have a bitter taste in my mouth about how it seemed like the calls, the game, the refs, the league, and the nation seemed to conspire against the Seahawks. If you think I’m just a whiny fan, look at the game stats and tell me the Seahawks shouldn’t have won!

“You love the [Seahawks], but have they ever loved you back?”
“Who do you think you are… Dr. Phil? Go on, get outta here!”

I’ll never stop loving the Seahawks or the game of football, or even the NFL, but until they hoist a “World Champions” flag high above Qwest Field, I’ll always have my suspicions about the integrity of Super Bowl XL.