Day...12?

My toilet stopped working. My live-in handyman wasn't here to fix it. Plunging didn't work. I looked up solutions online and tried them to no avail. After a few days, it started working again. Independence: 1.

Stimee's car stopped working again outside the post office. Wouldn't start. Another good samaritan (i'm meeting more and more of those lately) noticed the sign around my neck that said DAMSEL IN DISTRESS and helped me take care of it, meeting me at the hardware store and helping me get the parts needed to get it going again, then fixed it all for me. Independence: -1.

I called the park service to check on the status of the two jobs I'd applied for. Didn't get one (they had 71 qualified applicants), but interviewed for the other. I'm hoping I get it. To be honest, I'm a little conflicted about the idea of working for the park service. It's a great organization and the job seems like a great fit for me. On the one hand. On the other, I feel like it'll make me seem less independent: meet a guy who works for the park service, then a year later oh what do you know I'm wearing the same uniform. Does that contradict my desire to be independent? Then again, i chased the job on my own...

I was talking to my brother a month or two ago about the fact that my parents toy with the idea of living here for a little while when they reture. I told him that it would be great if they did. His response was surprise: "I thought you moved to Alaska to get away from Mom and Dad." Well, kind of. A little bit, maybe. But that desire had to do more with wanting to be on my own, away from mom and dad's saving graces whenever I need to do laundry or get a ride somewhere. Now that I've had that and the cord is successfully cut, maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing for them to share my town.

Tomorrow is the last day my boss is here before he takes off for a week in Juneau. This means that from Monday through Friday next week, I will be running the senior lunch program without him. I have a friend helping out but still-- I'll be in charge. How's that for independent? I guess we'll find out, depending on whether I rock it or bomb it entirely.

I'm starting to get a sense that, in terms of the original intent of this blog, I'm managing pretty well being independent from Stimee. With all the things that the universe has thrown at me, I feel like I've handled a lot better than I would have 2 years ago (and, a lot better than i DID a year and 3 months ago) without the comfort and support of my boyfriend. Sure, it'd have been a lot easier if he was here to help with some of it, but the fact is that i don't absolutely NEED him. I can function without him.

And yet... like I've said before.. I don't think anyone is truly independent. A loner living in the woods still relies on the natural cycles of things, the game population, the freezing and thawing, and all the things our ancestors worshipped and depended on. Maybe this is Buddhist philosophy leaking through... maybe true enlightenment comes from ceasing to be dependent on anything else. The escape from the samsara world, to my recollection, comes from the release of all one's ties to it. In a nutshell... that means being truly independent which, physically in this life, is nearly impossible. Spiritually, though, i can see the appeal.

To be independent spiritually might mean freeing oneself from the things that we CAN control our dependency to: our desires to please people; our desires to be accepted; our wants and "needs"; our attachments to money; our materialism; our pettiness and things like gossiping, smoking, obsessions with the media, and so on. But doesn't this also mean severing ties with other people? We spend time with other people because we care about them and we like the way they make us feel to be in their company; are these desires things that prevent us from being truly enlightened and truly independent?

I'm not sure... but I do know that I am a lot more independent than I used to be, and that I don't think I'll ever be 100% self-sufficient. But like I said-- no one is.