Nov. 21

11/21/2025 9:14 Correspondence 94

As the holiday nears, the days have seemed to grow warmer and warmer—an inverse reaction of intuition. Most would think of Thanksgiving as cold and cozy, yet it seems more likely with every passing year that that's just an idealistic dream. 

I finished work today. I've finished my job every day. I might say I've finished this semester if it weren't for a few pesky classes. Still, though, I have taken a lot of time to reflect on this semester. The ups and downs and wins and losses. I feel changed. I feel older. I feel more worldly yet more alone. The world is massive; how does anyone expect to feel connected to it? Maybe growth is grappling with that reality. Maybe growth is coming to terms with self-significance. 

If this semester has had just one exceptional and noticeable impact on me, it's my perception and relationship to time. Living hour to hour by a schedule will do that to you, though. It has made me feel the weight of every passing minute. The significance or lack thereof of spare seconds. What's remarkable to me, though, is it's not the blue blocks of time and events that feel my calendar that makes me feel the constant flow of time, but the space between.  The small moments between big events, the 5 minutes before a class starts. Or when I get ready too early for wherever I'm planning to go, and I sit in the strange, awkward moments of empty time and space. It is always those moments that stick with me. When I look back at my semester, it's those moments I see. 

What do you do in empty space? I sit and think, feeling every awkward moment. 

That's not entirely truthful, I admit. Sometimes, I read comics too. 

I admit, there is a sadness washing over me as I write this. Maybe I'm just feeling the unremarkableness of this project, but it's strange to think there are only five more true school days left. And I feel like, nearing the end, these should be grand and stunning and awe-inspiring. And hey, maybe they will be. But I'm feeling ever more likely they will not be. I feel like they will be unremarkable and short and unchanged. But that's how it goes. That's how days pass. Looking back, I do not see 93 entries into this digital compendium of my time at college. I don't see much at all. 

I say these things not with regret or sadness. I say them with curiosity. I say them from the mind awstruck with the mundane. This is my record, and I wouldn't change a thing. 

I will be gone for a while, maybe sharing a few photos here and there, but absent from voice. And that's okay.

I nonetheless hope you have a truly spectacular Thanksgiving if you celebrate it. And if not, a simply remarkable week.

Goodnight, dear friends,

Calvin Landreth