Someone pointed out that it has been about seven months since I last updated this thing. I hadn't even begun to notice that it had been so long, but oh well, nothing I can do about it now I suppose.

On October 17 I will have been here in Wrangell for two years. Now it's time for me to start the job search so that I can ensure that I'm not here for much longer than that two year mark.

In that two years I've learned a lot about myself, why I do the things I do, and why the world reacts the way it does. If I tried to express my conclusions I think it'd just fall on its face as a pot of half-cocked observances and conclusions.

One thing I've noted, and I standby, is that many here have a really difficult time being okay with being single. I'm one of those. I want love. Everyone wants to be loved. The problem comes from being with someone just because they're convenient, or the best you could get at the time. I've done that before and I told myself I wouldn't do it anymore. It has been difficult keeping that in mind on lonely winter nights, or those last few words before parting ways from an adequately attractive/intelligent/interesting possible-partner at the bar. Part of that is because I'm young and there is a lot of pressure not to waste one's youth, and I feel it, and I admit that I feel it. Part of wisdom, I think, is understanding that resolutions are tested constantly, and clinging to them for the sake of upholding a thought you once thought was correct is not particularly wise. I don't know if I'm happier with the way I've lead life as a young single man in the middle of nowhere, but I like to think that it rounded out some of my rougher edges and has eliminated some of the apprehensions and a good deal of the pretensions I had before I came here.

It has eliminated a lot of the fear I once had. It's hard to be shy when you've slept in a snow-cave in below zero weather at the summit of the highest peak on your island; or hung suspended from a granite face with only your will to live helping you back up. It comes through even in conversation these days, that I feel a sense of confidence that I thought I had two years ago, but that I didn't gain until now.

I've learned a lot about what I want, and I hope that when I leave I have the good will and strength to pursue it.

there are still doubts. I know this journal seems like a declaration that I've somehow graduated to a new level of adulthood or manhood or whatever, but I think that there will always be a sense of insecurity or a difficulty in understanding, or a deficit in knowledge that, though these may be diminished, will always exist in some way.

I remember how I felt a complete lack of connection to most of my peers shortly after I arrived, and how that thought ate away at me, making me ask myself what I was doing and why I didn't fit in. The conclusion that I eventually came to was that I don't fit in, and that's not my fault and that's not their fault. I don't work in the woods, I don't find passion in the same pursuits and, in the end, I really have very little in common with the people here who do. There is a restricted variety of personalities and social groups here, and finding that you don't fit into one of them is unfortunate, but it's not the end of the world. It's just another one of the many reasons that it's time for me to move on. And, I think that's how it will be from place to place until I find the right spot for me, with the right group, the right job, so on and so forth. Part of that is finding internal peace, to be okay wherever, but I know that I'm not ready for enlightenment and I still enjoy the idea of a personal identity, so I'll look for a kind of happiness in the rest of the world, because I still feel like even the suffering and the bitterness of life is intrinsically beautiful and heartbreak reminds you that you have a heart to break.

I have to remind myself of these things, because as much as I believe it it doesn't mean that I have to like it. So, it's time to go. It's time for the next chapter in life and the next evolution.