Kevin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alliancesjr) wrote2010-12-01 11:50 am
alliancesjr) wrote2010-12-01 11:50 am
First Snowfall
Magic exists.
My life tends to alternate between coasting along and just scraping by. Sometimes I'm floating high above the clouds, enjoying where I'm going and having not a care in the world. Other times, which is to say about 98% of the time, it sucks beyond belief.
Today I am sick. I have a very bad head cold, which I've had since Saturday night. I've taken Monday and Tuesday off of work, and I'm not feeling any better but here I am, back at work, because I looked at my bills and my bank account and I cannot afford to take another day unpaid because I've used up all my vacation time this year. In point of fact, I've backslid yet again, and I've lost every single bit of that headway I've made since taking that loan. It shouldn't be a problem now, since I've just gotten that second job and I'll be getting a paycheck this Friday - and in fact, it works out that between alternating pay periods between my full-time job and the one at the bookstore, I'll be getting a paycheck of some sort every week. Even if the inbetween ones aren't that great, it's still money that I don't already have.
My brother continues to jerk my family around, over a full year after his first disappearance. There's been some new developments just this weekend, but I won't get into it now. Suffice to say, he's running my parents through the wringer and there's nothing I can do but sit and watch.
It gets overwhelming, but I got to work today and looked outside the window and I remembered why I put up with all of it, why I get out of bed in the morning.
Because magic exists.
Today is the first real snowfall of the season. Big fluffy white flakes of pure innocence were lazily drifting past the windows of the office building, and I couldn't stop grinning for two hours. All of a sudden, I was five years old again, waiting to go outside with my sister and build snow forts and throw snowballs and run around and break out the plastic orange sleds, shrieking in glee as I plummetted headfirst down the steep hill about ten blocks away from my house, crashing into a large snowdrift and running up to do it all again, before finally coming back inside and enjoying some hot chocolate in one of the mugs from my dad's impressive collection, which is the only time I ever even think about touching them.
I look at the freshly falling snow, the first of the year, and all my grownup troubles completely vanish. I'm lost in a childlike glee of Winter come at last.
That's magic.
All around me, people complain that it's too cold. They move down South to get away from it, they grumble all the while it's here, and generally get in a bad mood because of it. I understand that, but that has never been and hopefully never will be my response. I hope to all that ever is that this feeling will last me until the day I die. That I will always feel the magic in the air of the first snowfall.
That's why I can never leave this place. If I ever move away from Chicago, it had better be to a location that has similar seasons. I could never be happy where it doesn't snow. Sure, I could live there, but it would never be Home to me.
Tomorrow, my grownup problems will be back with me, full force. They may even hit me harder, making up for the time they were gone. But now, I choose not to think of them. That's the thing about magic; if you think too hard about it, it disappears. And I choose to believe in the magic. Today, I am happy.
My life tends to alternate between coasting along and just scraping by. Sometimes I'm floating high above the clouds, enjoying where I'm going and having not a care in the world. Other times, which is to say about 98% of the time, it sucks beyond belief.
Today I am sick. I have a very bad head cold, which I've had since Saturday night. I've taken Monday and Tuesday off of work, and I'm not feeling any better but here I am, back at work, because I looked at my bills and my bank account and I cannot afford to take another day unpaid because I've used up all my vacation time this year. In point of fact, I've backslid yet again, and I've lost every single bit of that headway I've made since taking that loan. It shouldn't be a problem now, since I've just gotten that second job and I'll be getting a paycheck this Friday - and in fact, it works out that between alternating pay periods between my full-time job and the one at the bookstore, I'll be getting a paycheck of some sort every week. Even if the inbetween ones aren't that great, it's still money that I don't already have.
My brother continues to jerk my family around, over a full year after his first disappearance. There's been some new developments just this weekend, but I won't get into it now. Suffice to say, he's running my parents through the wringer and there's nothing I can do but sit and watch.
It gets overwhelming, but I got to work today and looked outside the window and I remembered why I put up with all of it, why I get out of bed in the morning.
Because magic exists.
Today is the first real snowfall of the season. Big fluffy white flakes of pure innocence were lazily drifting past the windows of the office building, and I couldn't stop grinning for two hours. All of a sudden, I was five years old again, waiting to go outside with my sister and build snow forts and throw snowballs and run around and break out the plastic orange sleds, shrieking in glee as I plummetted headfirst down the steep hill about ten blocks away from my house, crashing into a large snowdrift and running up to do it all again, before finally coming back inside and enjoying some hot chocolate in one of the mugs from my dad's impressive collection, which is the only time I ever even think about touching them.
I look at the freshly falling snow, the first of the year, and all my grownup troubles completely vanish. I'm lost in a childlike glee of Winter come at last.
That's magic.
All around me, people complain that it's too cold. They move down South to get away from it, they grumble all the while it's here, and generally get in a bad mood because of it. I understand that, but that has never been and hopefully never will be my response. I hope to all that ever is that this feeling will last me until the day I die. That I will always feel the magic in the air of the first snowfall.
That's why I can never leave this place. If I ever move away from Chicago, it had better be to a location that has similar seasons. I could never be happy where it doesn't snow. Sure, I could live there, but it would never be Home to me.
Tomorrow, my grownup problems will be back with me, full force. They may even hit me harder, making up for the time they were gone. But now, I choose not to think of them. That's the thing about magic; if you think too hard about it, it disappears. And I choose to believe in the magic. Today, I am happy.