My Sincerest Desculpas

My dear reader, it has been a long time, has it not? Since we last met, my life's pace has picked up speed like a swallow after a storm-zigging and zagging every which way, with the pressure of other birdies to meet, other birdies to feed. I am engrossed in all things Second Year-the classic symptoms like self-recrimination, anxiety, impatience, pragmatism, and acceptance that speak so truthfully to the Twenty-Seven Month Cycle spreadsheet given to us in training. Alas, my fear has come to reality: I am, indeed, so textbook. There is much to be done at work, like establishing partnerships with other NGOs, enhancing relations on the current one, visiting patients, writing reports...all of that exciting stuff that gets me home about 3:30, eating lunch around 5:00, cleaning up, visiting with neighbors and then finally resting around 8:00. Many a time, I awake to all the lights still on, door unlocked, music still blasting, several hours after I had layed down "just to close my eyes." My social life is a much different monster than it was this time last year. It's a lumbering, affable beast that hovers over my shoulder, persuading me to go dancing with expat friends until early morning hours, who forces me to sit on the veranda for entire mosquito-laden evenings telling tall tales of magical mangoes to the kids, who urges me to pass through towering sorghum to deliver food to a sick neighbor. What inconsequential solitary time I manage to scrape up is haunted by words in every form: fiction words from the stack of books waiting to be read, vocabulary words waiting to be studied, loving words waiting to be sent off in letters and the words waiting to be smithed into a blog entry possibly read by tens, if not twenties of people. Believe me, I beg you, my dear reader, I think of you every day. In the fleeting ideas of an expertly-crafted analogy for a next piece to the Facebook reminders to blog again, you are always on my mind. It's just that, well, you have to share that mind with other chores, memories and feelings, and I hope you can forgive me for that, especially since I just installed wi-fi in the rec room and reupholstered the couches in there. My dear reader, my dear mother, I wish I could offer you a new entry, but know that-like most of those in the past-two to three intros already exist and the meat of it isn't too far away.