it’s snowing right now, huge thick fluffy chunks of ice, coming softly down to the ground. i finished work and walked to my car, it was covered in a few inches of snow. this is all new to me, working and living in a place where snow is a constant reality. growing up in seattle, it was cold, but it rarely snowed, we were just too close to the water. but here, in the mountains it always seems to just be on the horizon. we don’t have feet of snow piled against the sides of roads, stained brown with dirt and crusted with cold, but there is snow, and i’m unused to driving in it. the car i drive is little more than a cardboard box with a motor that i’m pretty sure weighs about 100 pounds. on mornings when i wake and the ground is white, i look forward to a 40 minute walk through it to my junior high. it’s calming, if a little cold, and i don’t mind it.

i’ve been back from vacation for a few days now. it was a long one. not in terms of time but in distance and experience. the cities were all distinctly different and had their own ebbs and flows much like the ocean. undercurrents running below the surface of each. kyoto, osaka, hiroshima, each sad and beautiful in its own way. i saw a lot, i ate a lot, and i think i learned a bit about myself. maybe again, it’s time to grow up and take some responsibility for things. i don’t know how many times i’ve typed these words, how many times i’ve had these thoughts. i guess it’s probably time to stop thinking though, and get down to doing.

i’ll be 26 this year. in two months. twenty six. i don’t really know where i thought i’d be by now but it probably wasn’t here. two years of life outside of my own country, friendships i never thought i’d lose gone far away from me, parts of myself i thought dead and gone returning to ask for more. vices too man, holy shit, vices. it’s been strange, the entirety of all this. 

but as strange and awful and soul wrenchingly dark as things have gotten, i haven’t yet been broken, which, i guess, can be enough on its own.