Memorial Day Musings

Hello, readers out there. I bet everyone is still eating barbeque by the pool, and hence, not in front of their computers. (I just returned to my computer after being away for a short bit at home in San Mateo). I find it slightly odd that Memorial Day has become associated with grilling meat with loved ones. It's not as if Veterans Day makes people bring out the hotdogs and potato salad. (Wait. Does it?)

This Memorial Day, I woke up early (5:30 a.m!) and did the standard drive back from San Mateo to Los Angeles -- 101 South to 152 East to 5 South to 405 South to 10 East. Two pit stops along the way (including the requisite stop at Starbucks). It was a quiet, easy drive back, since most people were sleeping in today. My favorite part of the drive is 152 East in daylight (I hate that road at night, because it's difficult to see, but it's beautiful in the day). The narrow highway winds through rolling brown hills and then at times next to a reservoir. There are several spots where cars can park to enjoy the view. I love the calm of this stretch of road, and how I know what's coming up at each bend (the fruit stands, then the smell of garlic from the garlic fields, then the clear water, and finally the windy hills again, before the highway becomes dismal I-5 for 200 miles).

Overall, I had a nice time at home (home is always nice -- it is home after all). I thought a lot about my visit on the drive back. I got to spend time with family (mostly just my sister) and friends. I got to sleep in. I got to relax and read fun books while sprawled on my favorite couch at home (I tore through 3 books in 10 days! Note: I'm a fast reader). I even went to the dentist (that's a good thing -- now my teeth are squeaky clean).

The only strange part for me in visiting home is that feeling of being a visitor. My twenties seem to be the decade for being transient. Such transiency does not sit well with my "nester" nature. My college friend, Nelson, still teases me about how I was obsessed with "niching" our freshman year and figuring out my place in the whole college thing right away. My 1L year was difficult, because I was never here nor there. I didn't "niche." My first semester was partly spent going back home to NorCal too much. My second semester got better but was still filled with that desperate cycle of fall-behind-gotta catch-up at school. Now, I'm just marveling at how fast it all went by. How different my life is at this moment than it was one year ago. And how I'm seriously spending an entire summer in this still most foreign city where I catch girls wearing Ugg boots in eighty-degree heat.

I only hope that my mid-twenties, which are rapidly approaching (*double sigh*), are less chaotic than my early twenties. When I think about it, I did some really stupid things as a 21, 22, 23, and (currently) 24 year old. In many ways, I feel like I've lived a very selfish early-twenties. Without a family of my own to care for, without a significant other, and without set obligations, it's been relatively easy to just think about myself. Even this past week, it frustrated me to see in myself, my own immaturity and inability to step outside of my shoes and into someone else's. To extend grace where I could have. I know I'm not all bad. I have good qualities, too. I just hope that as I get older, I really do change and mature. In Christian-ese, I hope I become a more godly person. In Julie-ese, I hope to "niche" with a real purpose...