Campfyre Stories

Outside and inside today.

After taking my only weekend off until August and doing absolutely nothing, today is very gray on a lot of levels.  To start the morning off, I got the news that Spawn’s best friend will not be coming with us to Falcon Ridge this year.  Apparently, there is drama.  I’m not looking forward to breaking the news to Spawn…

I’m not sure if there’s anyone else he would want to bring, or even who could go.  I don’t know his other friends (or their parents) as well as I know this friend and I doubt that stealing a different kid for a week would really fly.  Also, I’m concerned that it might be too late to get another kid in on the volunteer front.  *sigh*

This week I should start learning my new job.  The facets that have been suggested so far are very intriguing, since very little of it is anything I’ve done before.  I’m not sure when anyone is going to find time to start actually training me, but hopefully it will be soon, and will help stave off the boredom that I’ve been experiencing during the severe downtime that I’m in.

I’m actually pretty excited about the prospect, but until we actually get moving on it, I’m pretty much mired in ennui and, having lost my primary and favorite source of distraction, there’s not much I can do to get out of it.  At least not yet.

Then the sun came out, but it didn’t get rid of the gray and rainy inside.

I think that part of the problem is that there are no windows in my building, and the climate control makes it always feel cool and a little clammy.  When you start the day with gray and rainy, then you assume that it’s the same all the time…  even with the quick smoke breaks, you just can’t shake the idea that it’s still better inside than out, whether that’s true or not.  The weather of the morning affects the mental image of the weather of the day.

It gets downright depressing.

But, sometimes, just sometimes, the sun does come out.  Sometimes it only takes a few minutes of a good conversation with like-minded individuals, or maybe even just someone who’s already feeling like a merry ray of sunshine to take your clouds and scare them off.

Of course, when it’s this gray and rainy, the sun can only last for a short period before the sky opens up and the world seems like to flood.  For me, though, this is always a relief.  There’s something cleansing about a good, strong rain, as opposed to the light rain from a fully cloudy sky.  When it rains like this, the greens seem greener, not just in the moment, but for days afterward.

At least, that’s how I try to see it.