A rough timeline

Two months ago I interviewed for a job I wanted but didn't think I was qualified for. Two weeks after that, I found out my new employer thought differently, and four years of unemployment ended.

28 days ago I went to my friend Jasen's place to watch Mythbusters. We sat on opposite ends of his couch and contemplated the gap between us, but didn't close it. The following Wednesday I came back, and the Sunday after that we watched the new miniseries "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking." On that day the gap closed, and six months of solitude ended.

One week ago I fulfilled a promise I made to myself five years ago and saw Faith and the Muse perform live.

Four days ago I joined forces with some close friends and some new acquaintances to celebrate all that is possible, and all that we wish to make possible. I also bought a pair of sandals that I had been searching three years for.

Tomorrow, according to what I've heard, my uncle leaves his wife and children to move in with another woman. He remains my favorite uncle, and his wife, my favorite aunt.

Nine days from now my third godchild is due to be born, but it could be sooner.

Four weeks from now I begin posting a chapter a day of my science fiction novel (more on this later).

Two months and six days from now, two of my best friends are getting married to each other, and more than three years of planning will come to fruition.

***

Life is governed, it seems, by the principle of punctuated equilibrium. Change is slow and arduous but inevitable; our solitudes and our personal famines last excruciatingly long and then, in a moment so fast and unexpected it hardly reaches our notice sometimes, they're gone in the flood of new direction. Sometimes it seems you need only close your eyes for a moment and you wake up in another life, an unfamiliar one, one you never expected and never hoped for oftentimes only because you didn't know it was possible. And then, sometimes before we even notice that it's happening, we habituate to it and begin to think that it was always this way, just as a river that bends so slowly that it appears to be straight until viewed from above.

Where is the river going?