looking forward, a number of my good friends here will be departing to pursue their lives in other parts of the world. this time next year, nearly all my friends will have left hawaii and that reality is cause for me to pause and look at my life here.

because i never thought i would stay in hawaii for any extended period of time, the thought never occurred to me that i would make good friends here and then watch them leave before me. it’s a strange concept reality that i’ve accepted, but at the same time, haven’t quite yet internalized.

the exodus has officially begun with one of my good kwi friends, who returned to kiwi land last week. i find some irony in her departure, as it was exactly one year ago that we met. a number of us were celebrating the birthday of a mutual friend and she and her wife joined us for part of the evening. almost immediately, her and i hit it off and we’ve been buds ever since and while she has returned home for lack of a visa, i’m glad her wife is here for a few more months.

in the next several months, many more will be leaving, while i stay behind to pursue my life in hawaii.

on the one hand, with all it’s splendor, living in hawaii doesn’t come without complications: cost of living is high, it’s virtually impossible to own a decent home. then there is, of course, the distance. i have family and friends who are, increasingly, scattered across the globe. a sister and her family in london, friends in chicago, new york, ohio, kansas city, and now even new zealand. more family in san diego, arizona, and st. paul. traveling to see any of them takes considerable expense and time. the jewish population is nominal at best with few options for worship or dating. and beyond the jewish realm, my dating prospects don’t look much better.

on the other hand, there isn’t another place that i’ve been or can think of to where i would want to relocate and despite these difficulties, i’ve told myself that i would never again choose city of residence based solely on the quality of the dating scene and so refuse to relocate simply because i more likely to meet ‘a nice jewish girl’ somewhere else. sure, i struggle to see family and friends on a regular basis, but hope that will improve as i get older and collect a bigger paycheck. hawaii is wonderful for so many reasons and i’ve really come to love it here and think of it as home. i can’t (yet) imagine leaving.

what’s more, career choices, i feel, are limited. however, i have begun to make a place for myself in the realm of hawaii politics and hope, in looking toward the future, to somehow make that place one where i can be both happy and successful.

while i’ll say i’ve never believed in the notion of destiny or divine providence, there is a part of me that truly feels the path and trials of my life have brought me here for a reason. if that is indeed the case, i haven’t yet figured out that the reason might be. i am so thankful for the time i’ve spent here, the people i’ve met, and the friends that i’ve made as a result. i’m happy and i look forward to traveling this path and seeing where it takes me. i don’t think i’ll be leaving hawaii any time soon.

we’ll miss you….

that’s right, i’ve been in hawaii a little over five years, or:

5 years, 21 days
1847 days
44,328 hours
2,659,680 minutes
159,580,800 seconds

(yes, i’m a geek) this is of course assuming that my memory is correct in my arrival date of october 5, 2002. it’s been a long and interesting five years, full of changes, surprises, and revelations. a brief recap….

as i’ve said on more than one occasion, when i arrived in honolulu, it was with the intention and understanding that i had come for a temporary visit. after a year, or so, in the company of my best friend in the beautiful island state, spending some time in therapy “getting happy,” i would return to the mainland to pursue my life. as the first year approached its conclusion, i had just found a shrink, was still home sick, but wasn’t ready to leave as i hadn’t yet achieved my goal. i would tell people, “i’ll probably go next year.”

over the next two years, i began to find my stride, my own set of friends, went through a couple of jobs, made great strides in therapy (even tried medication), but still wasn’t ready to leave. “i’ll probably go sometime in the next year.”

therapy did great things for me, so much so that there’s not much about the old me that still remains. of course, this is exactly what i wanted, however the change did not come without casualties; i’ve lost (drove away?) two of my closest and oldest friends. the first is my roommate and best friend since high school. during my most vulnerable years, he helped me stay on a relatively even keel and cope with a life that i despised. as my therapy progressed, my personality shifted and as a consequence i started to drift away from that friendship. it’s something i will always lament, however one of the most important things i’ve learned is not to regret change because it’s inevitable. we still talk and are still friends, i think, and still live together, however the closeness we once shared is gone, perhaps forever.

the loss of that friendship was the first sign, in my opinion, that i was on a clear course away from the person i once was, a person that i hated. while there were still issues that remained largely unresolved, after over two years of therapy, my doctor and i agreed that i had come as far as therapy could take me. it was a huge victory for me and while i cannot remember the exact day, i can look back and say it was a huge turning point and perhaps one of the happiest days of my life. it had changed me for the better and allowed me to get over a relationship that had broken me. i’m every day thankful for that, even though i will think of the girl from time to time and miss her.

i still had another close, good friend, which helped while the first friendship started to turn south. it made it all less distressing. then of course, that second friendship hit the wall, frustratingly, while she was in honolulu visiting. without getting into the details, from where i stood, she did something she shouldn’t have, something she should have known better than to do. what i think made the whole thing irreparable was the fact that she felt bad about doing it… just not quite bad enough to stop. as a result of all that, we now barely talk at all. to be honest, i can’t say as i have much feeling about it at all at this point. does that make me an ass? maybe.

a few months before my therapy came to an end, i began a new path that would become a life passion. i joined the progressive democrats of hawaii, a liberal political organization that has provided me with a vehicle to become a mover and shaker, as it were, in hawaii politics. the success of that organization has become one of the significant driving forces in my professional life, though my activity in politics has expanded far beyond the limits of pdh. with the conclusion of my therapy and the discovery of a life long passion, i began to feel my life finally come together and i less and less thought about my eventual return to the mainland; hawaii started to feel like home to me, though i hadn’t yet committed to staying, i simply didn’t think about when i would leave. “at some point, but who knows when,” i started to tell people.

at the end of may 2006, i attended my first democratic state convention. i had only been involved in the political scene here for roughly five months, but things were already going so well, i was not only a delegate to the convention, but also the time keeper, sitting on the dais, helping keeping the speakers on track. there are still people who recognize me for that role. it was a great experience and i look forward to expanding on it at the 2008 convention as a delegate and the chair for registration and credentials.

i also worked on the reelection campaign for us senator daniel akaka. i attribute my success to this point, at least in part, to my participation in that campaign and the people i met, the connections i made, and the things i learned along the way. the senator won his reelection bid with moderate competition and i’m glad to say i had some part in that, however small.

i still have a lot to learn and a long way to go to get where i want to be, but i’m doing it and enjoying it in the meantime. i have no doubt that i will always be a political activist in some capacity.

now, looking just over my shoulder at my receding five-year anniversary the reality of my life begins to take shape. while the past five years have not transpired at all like i envisioned they would, i am content with my life and am glad to be where i am….

…has temporarily shifted.

some time ago i was faced with a startling realization that i’m still trying to sort out.

it seems more people have been reading this stuff than i have suspected. not just close friends and family. people i work with. people, who like me, spend much of their free time working in the realm of politics, have at least once visited this blog. while i’ve always hopped across the line of how much honesty and detail i should include in my posts, i always leaned more toward the side of full disclosure at least in part because i didn’t figure that many people were actually paying attention.

in a sort of delayed clarity, it came to me… if these people are at least occasionally browsing here, a certain someone else might be as well. and my heart sank to my small intestine.

sure, i’ve been reasonably careful not to use too many names, but i’ll admit to not being as elusive as i might sometimes believe myself to be. with this new, somewhat unsettling information, a question arises that i cannot shake; what if i’ve wrecked what small, slim, minuscule chance i might have had by discussing certain topics here?

as this site has become my main source of release and introspection, i’ve been forced to discuss the topic of a certain girl who regularly inhabits my thoughts and while, again, i’ve never used her name, i’m now mildly paralyzed by the possibility that she’s not only visited this site, but that she’s also read and understood passages that deal directly with her. i’ve never doubted that she was smarter than i and could understand my weakly cryptic entries, but was comforted by the now seemingly naive notion that she just hadn’t visited this site.

this all arises after planning a gesture that has the potential to score me points, so to speak. on the other hand, i was convinced last week, after a couple of drinks, to abandon my plan of (i hate the way this sounds) ‘passive pursuit’ and invite her to a function in waimanalo. thankfully both fate and reason triumphed, and i continue to travel down the safe path only to have been potentially detailed any number of weeks or months ago by what i’ve written here.

originally, i had intended this post to deal with the impact on me of certain people here in the political world having visited this site. i’ve been thinking about this post since last weekend and my thoughts have progressively shifted to how this has affected my chances with this certain girl…. even now, i cannot quite bring myself to include her name and am caught in a seemingly hopeless dilemma. do i continue on my current and quite likely hopeless path of ‘passive pursuit’ just to keep what little hope i do have alive? or, do i make another ‘bold’ move and ask a second time for a date? for better or worse, these are not answers i can answer. i’m stuck.

i’ve been here for what is approaching five years. in that time, looking back, there hasn’t been a single girl i’ve met that has produced in me the same level of affection and uncertainty as this girl. there’s something about her that is at the same time both confusing and endearing. i’ve developed significantly more self-confidence than i had when i first came here. i’ve met a number of interesting girls, asked them out, and been rejected with little dejection. but for some reason this has been quite different and i know the reason why; this girl is so much smarter, funnier, interesting, intriguing, endearing, not to mention cuter, than the others. of course, on the other hand, my chances of success are virtually nil.

it always seems to come back to that, doesn’t it, my lack of hope in the situation? i’m stuck. i’ve lost track now, of just how long i’ve been contemplating all this and still have nothing to show for it. i’ve still haven’t any answers. i’m still frustrated and while i’ve finally (weeks later) decided to post this, i still can’t help but worry about the consequences, hence the title of the post….