In Medias Res #12- We're Co-writing the book of love, and you dear reader are a shitty ghost writer

Oh dear reader,
I didn’t mean to leave you hanging last week. But let’s be honest this is a cold and heartless relationship we are in. I give and give, and you never reciprocate. Not a single comment since we’ve started In Medias Res 2: Attack of the Employed Student Affairs Professional. I didn’t mean to jilt you, but perhaps on some subconscious level I did? You are by far the most dysfunctional relationship in my life, and as such I passionately love/hate you.
That’s not really what this post is about though, dear reader. Sure I needed a week off from your passive aggressive style of cyber love making. In reality, though, I was home for the holiday and I was too busy and wrapped up in the minutiae of being with my family to want to blog. Had I been back at work? I most certainly would have been nursing at the teat of your quiet unknowable approval.
So what did I do with myself over break, you might be wondering? (Are you? Are you truly, dear reader?) Surprisingly not the stuff I used to do on vacation. When I would come home from grad school all I wanted to do was relax. I parked myself next to a pool and read my way through whatever I could get my hands on at the library. There were breaks, of course, for meals and movies, but generally when I headed to my parent’s house for any length of time it was to crash.
I attribute this largely to the stress of graduate school. This time, while home, I did much of the same. I read a lot (in particular Daniel Mendelsohn’s excellent memoir The Lost, the new collection of Best American Non-Required Reading, and Nancy Horan’s Loving Frank which I found sort of disappointing). I saw some movies (in particular No Country for Old Men and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, both were exceptional). This time around though, I just had more energy. Obviously I’m less stressed, and so I find myself less in need of an emotional cleansing. Also the warm weather and sunshine energized me in a way it hadn’t before-maybe I’ve been living in the North for too long.
Whatever the case I got more done this time around. What it was I actually ‘got done’ I could not tell you, but I at least felt more productive. I went places. I saw people. I did stuff. I ran into a number of people from high school who had returned home after a couple of years away. Quite a few of the people that I work with now took jobs at our institution because they were from the area. One of my colleagues moved back here after ten years away. I thought a lot about what it would be like to move back. There are some things I miss about home; foremost among them being how rarely I get to see my family. The weather is pretty much unbeatable, as well, although in reality the place I grew up no longer exists. My hometown was smallish, with lots of farms. As I grew these farms gave way to housing developments, and by the time I was in high school the population had boomed. What was a tiny suburb has become a small city, and so were I even to move back I wouldn’t be moving to the same place. Case in point: I used to ride my bike past the same cow pasture every day for years on my way to elementary school. Now the cows are replaced by a Target. Admittedly? The Target smells better.
When I was job searching I didn’t look seriously at most of the institutions in the area because the institutions didn’t really match my needs. There are two small public universities, both of which are largely commuter schools (which makes the potential for a Residence Life position pretty much nil). Further south is a prestigious private institution, but the only positions open on their HR site were in admissions, and that’s quite honestly an area I am in no way suited for. Further north is a pretty awesome honors college that is part of the state university system, but it is by far the most isolated institution in the state and one of my goals was to get out of a college town.
By the end of the week I was more than ready to get back to my big city life and my big city job (as a friend half jokingly referred to it). I do miss things about being home, but most of the things that I really miss aren’t even at home anyways. I miss the freedom from responsibility that being home engenders. I miss the ability to drop off the grid and be taken care of. I imagine even if I had taken that admissions job I would still miss those things. I would though be a hell of a lot fatter as a byproduct of Sunday dinners with my grandmother. So solely for the sake of my health, I’m probably best off where I am.
Next week, dear reader? You will have your damn post on time. I would never cross you twice. I love/hate you too much.