Reflection on Summer

This is the last night in my own room for a long time.

But at least I won't be as sappy as I was last summer about it, now that I know what it's like. And besides, this summer was crazy good:

--I got a job, made a little money. I won't be flat broke when I go back to school. (Don't ask me to touch that check from that other little thing I did last January...that's for something bigger and better.)

--I made a difference in some kids' lives. As cliché as this sounds, it's probably true--teaching Korean, even though I myself am still learning, was a way to expose some kids to a culture they would otherwise not be exposed to. And even I learned something about myself in the process--although I may have seemed like a crotchety 42 year-old man with no soul, I still was deeply passionate about getting my point across.

--Made new friends, but kept the old. Well, a few of the old, in any event.

--I wrote my first good poem in a long while. (It was posted here, if you look back a couple of entries.) And I'm learning my first new classical piano piece in a long time...it's coming along alarmingly well, though we'll see when school starts.

--I could be good in the kitchen...if I only got off my lazy ass to get in the kitchen.

Most importantly to me, though...

--I saw people whom I haven't seen in years. No, this doesn't mean reconnecting over Facebook (though that's a nice surprise in and of itself, depending on who it is). I mean actual, face-to-face, heart-to-heart interaction. Yeah, I know, strange concept in this day and age, isn't it? There's something about actual physical contact, or sight, or whatever that emails definitely don't have, that Facebook tries to poorly replicate, that even pictures can't capture, but face-to-face, in-person encounters do. One person I saw, we were close friends when I used to live in Denver many, many, many, many years ago. We hadn't seen each other in FIFTEEN YEARS. Another person, I had kept in touch with lo these last two years. We hadn't seen each other for that amount of time, but it was a special reconnection for me. I just hate this impersonal barrier electronic communication sometimes raises--there are so many different vocal inflections that are lost over written text in an email. (Which is why I wanted to do podcasts to go along with my blog entries, but...that worked out really well, didn't it?)

But in short, it's been a wonderful, wonderful summer. Now I hope my brain isn't totally dysfunctional when I return to school.