I hung out with high school friends for the first time in too long to remember. Most of them I hadn’t seen in months and some since graduation. It felt good to come back to earth. I enjoyed having my friends’ company and I realized I did miss what I had been ignoring. I have not been living in a hole but for the most part I am in solitude. I train in the mornings, then I go home to a four bedroom empty house. My dad is in Florida and my mom in Virginia Beach. My sister is in North Carolina and I have no idea where my brother is. Sometimes I get calls from friends but typically racing gets in the way of hanging out.

I guess some people think I dropped off the earth. After having no privacy and no solitude all year, I am sort of enjoying the feeling of loneliness. I guess it makes human interaction that much better. In the movie Into the Wild, Chris McCandless responds to his friend, “I will miss you too, but you are wrong if you think that the joy of life comes principally from the joy of human relationships. God’s place is all around us, it is in everything and in anything we can experience.” I guess that is how I feel. I don’t necessarily feel alone because I am surrounded by a beautiful world and the feeling of something greater. I’m not trippin or anything. I just mean its hard to look around and observe life and things without being amazed and overwhelmed.