A Thing Called Summer

So this crazy thing happened to me recently. I think they call it summer, but it lasted too long for it to have been only 4 months, and it passed too quickly for it to have been roughly a third of a year. In any case, summer is drawing to its end, and while I've been up to a lot of fun things this summer, I haven't been writing or really documenting any of it, so for those few benevolent souls who are interested in the goings-on of my life, I've prepared a brief (if you know me at all, you know that to be a baldfaced lie) recap of whatever comes to mind of the past four months.

So, this happened. Also, just as a side note, I'm almost
perpetually pale, so if you think the sickly pallor is the
unfortunate result of cool lighting or something like that,
rest assured that it is actually just my pasty self in all its wonder.

So there was graduation. That was a thing. Then I kind of stared the wall for like five days, and then I filled out job applications for a month or so while learning Javascript and reading in my free time. So many good books this summer: Faust, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Hafiz, Oscar Wao, No Country for Old Men, as well as an epic fantasy trilogy of which I've grown less fond with each subsequent novel. Alas, I digress. As you might have noticed, I said that I filled out job applications for a month. I should have said "for two months," but I wanted to break it up into separate segments so it would sound less pitiful. I still had (and have) my job at the missionary training center, and while it pays very well, it only gives me like 5 hours a week. So, I filled my days moving infinity friends to new homes/apartments, devising herb bread recipes with my roommate Ben (who is apparently a connoisseur of artisan breads and all things African), and working on my First. Video. Game. Ever.



This might, alas, be a good time to make known to all from whom I've been able to keep it until now, that in less than a week, I am starting a master's program in video game production. It's kind of a long story to explain how, over the course of two years, I went from biochemistry to pre-med to English to Russian (?) to video games, but to make much shorter, more interesting story, a cloaked man cornered me in an alley one night and without speaking pressed into my hand a crumpled square of parchment upon which was written my destiny. The problem is, his handwriting was really bad, and aside from that, he was left-handed and had used a gel pen, so it was pretty much impossible to know what I was supposed to do. So... I gave it to a drunk man and decided to write stories for video games. Who knew it was that easy?

Anyway, so I've been working on one game in particular, and it's been a lot of work, but I've learned a ton. My experience with programming and animation before this summer were pretty much null, so I've had to just kind of look up tutorials and fiddle around a lot to get stuff to work, but I'm really proud of what I have so far. It's obviously still got a long ways to go, but I'm getting to the point where I can actually start doing story rather than working on more back-door stuff, so that's a lot of fun. Below there's a picture of an enemy unit that I've been working on of late. It's called a rift hound, and it is kind of a creature that just comes through the portals but no one is really sure what they are or where they come from. Soooo mysterious, isn't it....

Anyway, I know this is going to come as a severe disappointment, but I did finally get a job this summer, which meant my game development and for-fun reading took major cut-backs. I had to lay off my two imaginary personal assistants, and I cancelled the gym membership that I never got around to actually signing up for because of hidden loyalty fees that they told me about up front. Definitely not the best marketing strategy ever. Anyway, I've been working at the Boys and Girls Club, which is basically an after-school/summer program for kids from single-parent homes or from rougher backgrounds. Yesterday was my last day (thus the renewal in game development), but it was a lot of fun, and I learned a ton from it, too. Some of the kids really got on my nerves, but others made me really excited to be a dad someday. I think the thing you realize working around kids (or anyone really, if you pay attention to the things adults don't say) is that everyone needs a sense of belonging somewhere. I think love--like, as in just pure, out-of-the-goodness-of-your-soul compassion--is one of our most fundamental needs.

This summer, I've been blessed to be around some really great friends. I'm posting photos of a few of them so people have proof that I haven't yet, in my interest in programming, descended into the nerd-cave of antisocialism nor given into the urge to seek sustenance only from Hot Pockets and Mountain Dew. All of these are even outdoors, which means that I went on hikes and camp outs and did other interesting things which now elude my memory.

 So, all in all, it has been a wonderful summer. I have a strange relationship with summer, because on one hand, it's the most wonderful time of the year (Santa tricked you into thinking Christmas time is, but that is clearly false: there's a reason a third of the animal kingdom sleeps from September to April), but on the other hand, as Regina puts it, "Summer in the city [is] so lonely, lonely, lonely." It always seems like summer is the time when I have my highest highs and lowest lows, and I think it might be the loneliness and the floating that maybe make for the vulnerability that allows you to really connect with people, but for some reason this summer, it was just kind of... there. Every other summer, I've felt like I had huge experiences with love--not necessarily with loving a single person, but with my heart growing to envelop everyone around me--and I went into the approaching school year or whatever with a renewed love of life and people and the world. I don't know what it has been about this summer, but I haven't really felt that as much. More disconnected than anything else. And now the summer's over.

A friend once said something that he didn't know was poetic but it was. I know this only because he hasn't a poetic glimmer in his soul, but he said to me, "Greg, we're like seasons, and we grow into our different summers and winters all the same." I think he was right. I'm not sure that I understand the full significance of those words, but I know we encounter seasons of emotional or spiritual winter or summer, and most important is that we are growing through it all--that we are conscious of the growth, that we are ready learn and grow no matter the skies we fall under.

My friend and I argue sometimes about a song about summer. He regards it as defiantly hopeful, while I, somewhat hopefully defiant myself, see it as a nostalgic acknowledgement of an ending--a loss. I think there's a bit of both of those in summer, though, and I think the song sums up pretty well my feelings toward this summer's end. It has been a blessed one hundred twenty days, full of eternity and nothing.