in ink.

I spent this last weekend in between home and almost home, ultimately in comfort. The same comfort I was running from in June of this year happens to be what I was craving by October.

Life plays the most interesting tunes, and to be somewhere that's familiar and foreign is like when I heard the Willie Nelson album accompanied by an orchestra. Is this what I think it is? Weird, and anchoring. So 'home', the place of my childhood and parent's address, and 'almost home', the city in close proximity, remain strangely familiar and equally distant; A full service gas station. I filled up, and used the time in the car, while someone else filled my tank, to reflect and attain perspective.

I sit here in the District on a Tuesday looking forward to an evening with friends, thankful that I have befriended people that love falafel, and also plotting my exit, which I hope happens sooner than later.

I excel at the exit. I make them grand. It's the thereafter that lacks detail, and monumental purpose. Is it plausible that, for me, the exit is the purpose? And that what happens after is the little a. under purpose's capital P in life's outline? I leave, exit, and then search with pressure for the purpose to follow, forgetting to rest in the elemental experiences that follow change, experiences that are full of the purpose I am searching for, albeit unconventional.

My last and favorite cab driver to date imparted the above wisdom, with an emphatic shaking of his head, alongside insisting that he drop me off right in front of the salon's entrance. He affirmed that "pressuring yourself does more harm than good", and also, that "you're still young! You've got time!" I was tempted to give him an impromptu new and further away address to extend the conversation. "Good Luck Miss Meredith," he said before I slammed the door.

The wisdom continued on the plane, however, after my seat neighbor Mr. Cook asked me what business was in. I answered with something eloquent like, "I'm not." In the tiny jet I took from Memphis to Tulsa, he shared with me the wisdom he's attained over the past sixty-eight years of his life. He reiterated the no pressure sentiment previously imparted by cab driver, as well as my youth, and finally, the nugget that stuck: "Write it it down. Where do you want to be when you're forty? Write it down. Before you get there, you feel aimless, like you're bobbing around at sea. And when you get there, succeeding at something you love, it's like a weight is lifted, even if it's not permanent. Writing it down has worked for me twice," he said. These words should come as no surprise to an aspiring writer, and yet...

An unwanted return brought me back to the foreign that's currently temporarily home, though the only aspects of home this place truly embodies happen in the presence of the lovely friends I've made, and also, alongside a really really good cup of coffee. Those moments are more fleeting. After settling in in a distant sort of way, I retrieved my favorite pen and held it against my foxy black notebook; a slim ribbon holds the page and the entire package screams "I mean business." That's what I am hoping will follow the writing down. Meant Business.

On a day distant from now, a stranger sitting to my left on a plane in the air will ask me what business I am in. This distant exchange will feel strangely familiar, and I will have an eloquent answer that sounds something like what's been written on the pages of the black notebook with the juicy gel ink pen currently residing in my right corduroy jacket pocket.