Deja Vu/Contemplation

I've been so tired, this week.  Well, for awhile I suppose.  Most week nights I'm exhausted, having spent a day keeping up with twenty 7-year-old children.  It's not rare in our job as elementary school teachers that we come home exhausted each day, but this week feels especially tiring.  Was it the craziness of Valentine's Day?  The sugar the children have ingested this week must surely be the reason for their off-the-wall behaviour, right?  It could also be the blah of mid-February, wearing me down as I await the arrival of spring.

I ran some errands after school today, and when I came home I put away groceries, tidied a few bits of clutter, and then I opened up my laptop.  I put a soft and warm blanket over my lap, and logged in to my Google Reader.

It's been about an hour, and I've just been sitting here, catching up on blogs I have been behind in reading.  As I've sat here, the sun has set and the only light in my condo is the glow of the laptop screen.  There's a sense of deja vu.  I've done this before.  I'm transported back to my first year of University.

When I went away to University, I took my family desktop computer with me (my dad finally able to get a new one for himself at home).  We didn't have laptops, we took paper and pens to lectures.  Having a computer with Internet all my own was such a novelty.  I can remember some evenings in the winter months, with the sun setting early, coming home and logging in to my computer and browsing all sorts of time-wasting websites that I knew back then.  I had a LiveJournal blog account, and I'd read through posts of blogs I followed.  I'd chat on MSN Messenger with my friends.  The sun would set, and I'd be enjoying my computer time so much I'd barely realize I was sitting there in  darkness, until Dr. McVet or Quin would be home from their final lecture of the day, and we'd head off for dinner in the building across from our dorms.

For just a moment I looked up just now in February 2012, and was instantly transported back to my first-year dorm room in February 2004.  And suddenly I'm remembering so much about those great years in that great place.  My life has had many twists and turns since then, but where I think I've ended up now is in a state of happiness and peace.  Eight years ago I sat in the dark of a dorm room with a lot of unknowns ahead of me, embarking on my journey into adulthood.  Now, I sit in the dark of my condo, a place I live alone as a full-grown adult heading into my "late 20s", thinking about how I've really made it happen.  How I've generally ended up where I want to be, and who I want to be.  Sure, there is so much more to look forward to, so much more I'm impatient about and want to have happen in my life sooner rather than later... but right now?  Right now, in the dark, on February 16th, 2012 I am just happy.  My life is so good.

Another eight years from now, in February 2020, will I find myself contemplative in the dark once again, my only light a computer screen, with blogs to catch up on?  I can't help but wonder what twists and turns my life's journey will have between now and then.

For now, I'm going to turn on a light, and start making myself dinner.  I'm looking forward to literal tomorrow, to have a girls night with Dr. McVet and Quin.  We'll gather together after working the jobs we've each worked so hard through post-secondary education to get, and gossip and laugh the same way we did eight years ago when it was all just beginning.