In the present.

I’ve been told that I am the type of person who always wants to move to a different place and be in a different moment.  It’s mostly true. I do reminisce about the past more than I like to admit and am always dreaming about the future.  My mind has always and I think will always do as it pleases; I think to a certain point is satisfy me.  Maybe I am opportunistic. 

I’ve been trying to live in the present.  And the present has been finals after finals.  I roll out of bed most days for the last week around 11 or noon.  I sit at my kitchen table for the next 13-14 hours doing the combination of researching, writing, emailing and the gambit of social networking.  The early summer heat in St. Louis makes it possible for me to open the kitchen window and very rarely feel a slight breeze. 

I watched my fingers as I type, studying the layouts of papers across the cherry wood surface and cannot help it but travel back to Ho Chi Minh City.  To June 2007, when I was in a similar moment; looking at my fingers while I type in hopes of inspiration for what else to write and noticing the mess of student profiles and coffee stains my few hours of work caused.  It was the summer of my freshmen year.  These thoughts, strolling through memory lane, only reminds me of where I am and the small contrast of our lives: my present and past.  I try to think of my future in the same fondness. 

(Me in Summer of 2006.  Not much different from now.)

Instead of comfort, my stomach feels like as if a hundred espresso shots have been injected and I feel the adrenaline making me want to gag.  It gets worse when I think about driving across the water to work every day and driving home in the notorious Seattle mistiness. 

Then I try to focus on the present and my thoughts trail off once again to a moment somewhere in the past and to a possibility in the future.  Both thoughts make me happy.  And I wonder if I need to be living in the present all the time.  Is it so bad to live in a world of pasts and possibilities?  It sure does beat finals.