this one is for you, Mandy

Summer is halfway over, and that it borderline unbelievable. I’m actually enjoying my job; my friends who had worked at the camp before—Jobst and Sarah, namely—hated it and warned me against it. Now that I’ve gotten into the groove of things, however, I’m actually content to go to work for eight hours a day. Maybe it is simply that the last full-time summer job I had was moving boxes from trucks into school buildings; this certainly beats that, because it is air conditioned, not monotonous at all, and we get all the free food we want! But I only have three more weeks left, and then I’ll be done till the 15^th of August. I’m hoping to be able to work some hours at the coffee shop during early week, because finances are going to be unbelievably tight come next month.

Dad asked me if I knew what I wanted to do when I graduate this December. “Nope.” I’ll have a degree in biblical studies, and right now I’m looking at going into social work or trying to find a ministry job around Cincinnati (they are ridiculously hard to come by, especially for someone with a resume as unimpressive as mine). I may or may not go onto Grad school. I really want to, but it may be financially undoable. I need to get my resume together and start sending it out; they say you’re supposed to do it five months in advance of getting a job.

Dad also asked me if I still write. Having finished Dwellers of the Night several months ago, I’ve been itching more and more to write. But I don’t have any good, solid, concrete ideas. I’ve been rewriting a book I wrote in 2005 called The Sons of Mars. It is a pretty involved story, mostly action, revolving around the Roman Republic and fictional wars against the Gauls. It’s not really the kind of writing I want to do, but it helps. I am like a man craving a cigarette but smoking only stubs. I want the real thing but I can’t really grasp it, at least not yet.

Anyways. My cell phone is ringing. And it’s already 9:00 and I need to take some Nyquil and go to bed. I have to get up at 5:00 tomorrow for work.

That’s an update on my life, Mandy.

I miss you.