Tonight the sunset was beautiful here. And I felt grateful to see it. It is a small blessing in my life that it is no longer pitch black when I get off work… nothing is worse than feeling it’s the middle of the night before you’ve even had dinner.

Whenever I most seriously entertain the possibility of learning to paint, it’s always because of the sky.

And there’s so much sky here in Texas. It was one of the hardest things to get used to when I moved here, having lived my whole life nestled amongst mountains. (Well, that and the blistering summer heat I can feel burning my poor pale skin as surely as if I were a vampire).

I’m sure my more positive attitude is greatly influenced by the fact that my back is feeling somewhat better. By which I mean I am no longer in brain-melting amounts of pain even taking the medication the hospital gave me.

I still wake up much earlier than my alarm because the medicine has worn off and my heating pad shut off long ago. I could do with a good night’s sleep.

This has been a terribly long week and it was technically a short one because Monday was a holiday. But the weekend was a blur of sleeping, pain, and old episodes of How I Met Your Mother, so this week kind of feels like an extension of last week, being that most of those three days I was unconscious or desperately wanted to be.

But for the past few days there have been minutes (or dare I think hours?) of no pain – of which I am certain my going to yoga on Tuesday played a part, even if I did spend half of class on my back with my feet up the wall or in child’s pose.

And I managed to set up a doctor’s appointment for next week, so hopefully I can manage with Ibuprofen and rationing the stronger stuff until then.

Now that there’s room in my brain for thoughts other than “Owww!” I’ve been feeling a bit more myself. I even cooked dinner. And wanted to eat dinner. So that’s definitely an improvement.

I didn’t want to get too adventurous, though, so I picked a Netflix movie to watch. The Hours came up on one of the lists created for me and anything with Meryl Streep is bound to be good so I watched it.

And it was.

And it made me think thinky thoughts that I haven’t quite processed yet.

Except this: this town is my Richmond.

Not in a stones in my pockets kind of way.

I’ve been there before but I’m not there now by any means.

More in an I need to move to London sort of way. (Metaphorical London… though real London is an enjoyable fantasy in itself).

I’m grateful for the things that moving to this place has taught me and the growing that I’ve done here.

But I’m done with this place and it’s done with me.

Which has nothing to do with the people I’ve met who are wonderful.

But I’ve learned once and for all that staying where you are because you’re there leads to stagnation at best.

If you don’t know what else to do; find something.

Because if I managed to get out of the stones in my pockets place it doesn’t make any sense to waste that second chance at life by not really living.

Going to work to pay for a room to sleep in while I’m not at work isn’t a life.

Or not one I’m interested in living.

I might as well do something worthy of the oxygen I’m taking up.

You know?

Anyway, this weekend I’m going back to the grind of looking for jobs, most of which I will be under- or over- qualified to do, but which are at least in a place where I could go to a museum or a play or a gallery.

And more importantly, where maybe I won’t even have to drive a car.

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