Tuesday Thoughts: Adjustments

Today is one of those days that won't really get going until it feels like it should be time to stop.

I had no real responsibilities this morning, just revising and finishing up some paperwork for this evening's internship committee meeting. My afternoon will be spent running off to two hospitals to do visits, but I want to make sure that I give both of them time to have finished lunch and things before I get there. I suspect that I'll finish both visits in about two hours, which means that by 3 or 3:30, I will be left again wondering what I should be doing until my internship committee meeting at 6 and the stewardship task force's meeting at 7.

Last week was crazy, everyone told me, and they said that things should settle down for me this week. If this is "settled down," though, I think I preferred crazy! While things are still getting sorted out around here - when I'm preaching, what I might be teaching in the fall, what youth involvement/responsibilities I'll have, etc - I find myself with quiet days that I don't quite know how to fill. Once we put together a schedule for home visits, or once I'm teaching confirmation and need to plan lessons, or once I'm preparing a sermon every couple weeks, I'll get busy again. But for the moment, we're still getting things figured out, and getting them figured out during the relative slowness of summer. We're changing the worship schedule in the fall and revamping Sunday School, so I know that very soon, I'll be helping with that.

But for the moment, things are a little too quiet.

Things are too quiet around the apartment, too! Matt had to leave early this weekend, Sunday afternoon, and he doesn't come back until tomorrow night. When he's not around, the apartment feels really quiet. I leave the TV on no matter what my task - even baking cookies last night! - and have slept the past two nights on the couch because the bed seems too big and quiet and lonely. I'm definitely holding up better than I did my middler year at PTS. I'm totally functional and not crying all the time. But when I get home in the evening, after I've checked my email and eaten some dinner and changed into more comfortable clothes for the evening, the apartment starts to feel big and empty. Going into this internship year, I had all of these great plans for how I'd exercise in the evenings, and go out to Borders or Barnes and Noble to read and drink coffee, and watch movies while I knit. But when I get home every evening (no matter how busy or quiet the day), I'm tired! So I just feel like sitting around. Sitting around is more fun and feels less lazy when I'm doing it with someone else. :)

So I'm still adjusting to living alone and cooking for one (it's a huge challenge unless I'm ok with having days' worth of leftovers). I think that as I get more used to my schedule and feel as if I'm settling into some sort of routine, my energy will return and I really will do all of those things that I'd planned to do. And I think that as things get rolling around here and I get busier, I'll be more and more grateful for the free time that I do have once I get home for the night.

It's been a smooth transition so far - smoother than I would have expected - but it is transition nonetheless. So I'm still figuring out how to be me in this new place, and how to be me while also being a part of this congregation, and how to be me when I'm missing Matt, and how to be me in a place that feels as yet so temporary, even though when I finish internship, I will have been in Rockford longer than I was back in Chicago after PTS.

I think that's the prevailing feeling right now: my brain can't process the length and breadth of internship yet. It feels temporary, as if I'm leaving in another few weeks, or in another month, and as if I don't need to learn the layout of the grocery store or to pick a favorite place to drink coffee or to find a favorite restaurant. But I'm in my third week here - getting toward a month - and I expect that by the end of August, I'll be able to better comprehend my place in this community and in this church, and I'll be able to understand and accept the "permanence" of being here, even if it is "only" a year.