Last week, after 9 hilarious-sometimes-repetitive years, The Office finally said goodbye. Many thought the show should’ve ended the year Steve Carell left the show. I wasn’t necessarily in that camp at the time, though I wouldn’t have minded seeing the show bow with its lead actor after 7 successful seasons.

At first, it was intriguing to watch the eighth season play without Michael Scott. I approved the reveal of Andy Bernard as new office manager, rooting for him in his new-found struggle for Michael Scott levels of beloved authority. After a couple episodes, we saw office manager Andy take his employees to a local tattoo parlor where an innocent “Nard Dog” was inked onto his nether region.

That was the moment the entire office officially rallied behind their new leader, and thus, I was sold on Andy and the new Michael Scott-less era of The Office. Robert California (James Spader) tied up Andy’s emergence beautifully:

There’s something about an underdog that inspires the unexceptional. — Robert California, The Office

The rest of season 8 progressed lackadaisically, however, giving storylines to a historical Gettysburg visit, a nonsensical Florida road trip that reintroduced a meaningless Nellie Bertram, and some random new hot chick tried to steal Jim away when nobody wanted to see that.

It was time for the show to end.

While I didn’t understand Andy’s massive 3-month departure from the show this season (and his downward spiral in general), I applaud the end result: Dwight deserved to be manager.

While the job didn’t make sense for Dwight’s character a season ago (dude shot a gun in the office and had grown noticeably loopier), the role fit perfectly for him this season. And seeing Dwight mend fences with long-time rival Jim made for a heart-warming tie to the bow of their chaotic relationship — nay, friendship.

After seeing Jim prank Dwight countless times over the last 9 years, it was a perfect finale twist to watch him “prank” his bespectacled nemesis with surprising delights — including the magical return of one Michael Gary Scott, re-ushered into the show with one last classic “that’s what she said.”

From a stapler in the Jello to a National Treasure-esque office scavenger hunt, Jim’s “best prank ever” line holds some serious weight.

Along with Michael Scott’s reappearance, quite a few others made their own Office returns. Check out this article for a complete list of all the crazy cameos!

I noticed some of these appearances while watching, but couldn’t believe some of the others. You mean Meredith’s adorable little son “Jakey” from season 2′s “Take Your Daughter to Work Day” episode was the same actor who played her now adult stripper son? GET OUT.

Additionally, the entire Office crew was basically in the finale as well! How special.

For the most part, everyone got their happy ending when it was all said and done:

• Dwight and Angela were wed (in shallow graves, no less!).
• Long lost (hopeless!) lovers Ryan and Kelly reunited by running away together.
• Nellie adopted her (Ryan-trendy!) baby.
• Erin found her birth mother (Joan Cusack!).
• Kevin found a job he was actually competent in (bartending!).
• Stanley escaped the job he hated so much and retired to Florida (carving wooden Phyllises!).
• Creed went to prison — not exactly a “happy ending,” but oh so fitting for his crazy character. And his bearded self seemed quite fine with it!
• Andy became an Internet sensation and eventually returned to his Cornell roots (ever heard of it?).
• And Jim and Pam moved onward to a bright future — where else? — in the crown jewel of the South: Austin, Texas.

I don’t say goodbye to shows all that often. LOST is the only other significant show I’ve had to watch sail off into the horizon, and while that show capped their six-year run with emotional poignancy, many plot-lines were intentionally left unfilled. People either loved the LOST finale or hated it.

I can’t imagine anyone despising how The Office said goodbye. While I think the show lost its focus for more than a few episodes, these last few episodes roared back to what made those first couple seasons so very beautiful.

The Office became real again.

In real life, people and places change. People retire to Florida and couples move to Colorado or Texas to pursue the next phase of their shared existence. People are hired, people are fired, and people come and go out of our lives like the wind sometimes.

But sometimes, people stay. And that’s real, too. If they stay long enough, that special sense of “home” develops like a blooming flower. For the disgruntled (and “gruntled“) employees of Dunder-Mifflin in Scranton, PA, they basked in that bloom for nine years.

I’ve wandered this planet for 26 years trying to find that myself — find home. The ordinariness of a paper company leads me to believe home is so readily in our midst. We just have to open our eyes sometimes — be willing to change, be willing to stay.

My three favorite quotes (of which there were so many) from The Office finale go as follows:

No matter how you get there or where you end up, human beings have this miraculous gift to make that place home. — Creed Bratton, The Office

I think an ordinary paper company like Dunder-Mifflin was a great subject for a documentary. There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn’t that kind of the point? — Pam Halpert, The Office

And my personal, soul-stirring favorite:

Goodbye, The Office. You were and will forever be beautiful to so many.

Question: What did you think of The Office finale? Did you cry? Weep? Oh, and what was the deal with that four-toed statue in LOST???

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You just read “The Office” Finale: A Goodbye to Beauty by Thomas Mark Zuniga. Leave a comment; make a friend for LIFE.

Every now and then, I tend to wander. It’s kind of my thing. And sometimes I tote a camcorder along for the ride. It’s also kind of my thing.

Recently, I wandered to Palm Springs, California — a resort town in the middle of southern California’s hot dusty desert. I’d been to Palm Springs once before — last spring, just before Eastward Ho — and now, I made a return trek.

From Marilyn Monroe to Kathy Griffin to Windmills of Glory, I hope y’all enjoy this lucky thirteenth installment of Wandering Wednesday!

Question: Are you pro-windmills or anti-windmills? What about Kathy Griffin? (For the record, I LOVE BOTH.)

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You just read Wandering Wednesday #13 – Palm Springs, CA by Thomas Mark Zuniga. Leave a comment; make a friend for LIFE.

“Hey, were you guys just praying?”

I turn from my four church friends to a man – a young man – with blonde hair. He’s a couple years younger than me — a veritable kid with studded earrings. He dons a red sweatshirt emblazoned with the acronym of a local university.

“Yes,” we confirm to him. We were praying. Praying over one of our own in a downtown alleyway just outside the restaurant where we’d spent the last two hours.

The young man steps toward us, wheeling along what I think is his cart of earthly belongings. Only this isn’t actually a cart.

I’ve met the homeless before. Encountered them in this very city and in Chicago. But I’ve never met the homeless like this.

As the guy-younger-than-me gets closer, he confirms to me and my friends he’s indeed homeless – along with his son.

He lifts the flap of the cart which is actually a stroller, revealing the most serene sleeping two-year-old boy I’ve ever seen. He’s tucked beneath a bright blue blanket, his blonde hair tussled over a chubby face unaware of five foreign faces now staring down at his innocent frame.

Photo courtesy Redink Photography

The young man tells us his name is David; his son’s, Adrian. (Although I’m employing pseudonyms here.)

“I saw you guys praying,” David says, “and my heart just went, YES GOD.” David looks upward and points to the sky. He’ll make this motion several times over the next twenty minutes. Does it whenever he mentions the name of God as if to clarify His omnipotence.

David tells us the story of being a college student and how he became homeless, and I ask him if he’d like some money. I immediately realize it’s a silly question to ask a homeless person, but for whatever reason I feel awkward simply sliding him a 10 without asking.

“Dude, I’ll take whatever you can give me. I’m struggling.”

My friends and I pool some money together and his youthful though grizzled face brightens with gratitude. He instinctively tells us more of the God he keeps pointing to and believes in – believes unequivocally.

He proves it.

Without warning, he lifts his sweatshirt and reveals two red scars on either side of his white chest.

“A little while back I got shot underneath the freeway,” he tells us. “The bullet went straight between both lungs. Totally missed the heart. I woke up in the hospital and everything was fine. I was fine. It’s a miracle.”

He shakes his head and continues.

“And dude, this one will blow your mind.” David lowers his sweatshirt and tells us another story. “Three months before Adrian was born, I actually jumped from a bridge 55 feet up and tried to commit suicide. Again, totally fine. Look at my legs –” He does a little jig like any normally limbed person could and stretches downward. “I just can’t touch my feet is all.”

I chuckle inwardly; I can’t touch my feet either. Though I’ve never jumped from 55 feet up.

“So yeah, dude, I believe in God. I’ve got so many stories. He’s real. I just don’t understand why all this is happening. Why I’m homeless like this. I wasn’t living right, so am I being punished for my past sins? Or is He testing me or what?”

I hold back tears as the conversation noticeably shifts from carefree alleyway jigs to heartfelt spiritual questions. I’m standing directly to David’s left, and he eyes me with bold blue orbs. My friends listen intently, circled about Baby Adrian’s stroller.

“I haven’t thought about God for weeks,” David confesses, pointing upward again. “It’s really hard to talk to Him or even think about Him when I’ve got all this shit going on.”

He whispers the word “shit” out of politeness, I suppose, though I’m completely fine with the word. Those words don’t faze me nearly like they did five years ago — back before I realized other people are messed up and struggling with stuff way worse than me.

Listening to him speak, I cannot fathom what David is going through. Cannot firstly imagine living homeless on the streets for a single night, let alone with a two-year-old son in tow.

I stare down at the sleeping boy with undoubtedly bold blue eyes just like his loving father.

“Can we pray for you?” one of my friends offers.

David doesn’t miss a beat. “Yes, please,” he says, as if hoping from the start we would gather round him and do what we’d just done with one of our own.

Over the next few minutes, we lay our hands on David’s arms and shoulders and pray for him and his innocent son — two people we’d just met and hardly knew and yet deeply cared about. One by one, the five of us speak words to an invisible God we cannot see and yet can look upward and point to because we see what He does.

He hands us money in a downtown alleyway.

He spares our lives from bullets and bridges.

He blankets us in a stroller when night falls.

He lives. As sure as the sky above and ground below, He lives.

Even while shit happens around us.

I’m the last one in our circle to pray for David and Adrian, and when I say “amen” and lift my hand from his shoulder, I look to my right and see David red-faced. He wipes tears from his eyes and sweat from his brow.

“Dude, I feel like I just worked out for hours. Thank you.”

We part ways for the night. The five of us to our cars; the two of them into darkness.

I don’t know what will happen to David and Adrian. Where they will sleep tonight or what they will eat tomorrow.

But I know one thing.

They have a Father looking over them. A Father who pushes David in a stroller just as David carts his own son, leading them both through a world of struggle day after day after seemingly unending day.

While David’s struggle wasn’t erased that night by five strangers’ prayers, I hope David was reminded he has something vital worth fighting for. A son’s survival. Hope and love.

Redemption.

When redemption does come to David — and I believe with sincere hope that it will — I hope he tells that story to Adrian. That along with the story of a divinely led bullet or an impossible jump from a bridge, the blonde-haired boy also hears the tale of his earthly father’s homelessness.

An earthly father’s homelessness and the night he remembered his heavenly Father.

A Father more faithful than the sun.

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You just read Homeless Hope in an Alleyway by Thomas Mark Zuniga. Leave a comment; make a friend for LIFE.

GOOD NEWS, Y’ALL. Remember that book I wrote? Struggle Central? I technically released it on my birthday a few weeks ago, and the response has been affirming. So very affirming. And now, guess what?

I get to release my book again! Only this time it’s, like, more of an official release.

After some up-and-down painstaking waiting these last couple weeks, I’m finally out of the “processing” stage with my self-publisher and into the next waiting stage of this process. If all goes according to schedule, my book should be listed on Amazon by the end of the week!

Barnes & Noble will take a bit longer, but gosh, having Struggle Central on Amazon soon will be amazing.

When the book officially goes live for all to see/purchase, I’ll no longer be offering it for free via my newsletter. So if you haven’t signed up yet, I highly encourage doing so!

Speaking of my newsletter, I’ll be sending one out as soon as Struggle Central is indeed listed. Not to repeat myself here and then there, but it goes without saying…

If you’ve read the book and loved the book, I hope you’ll rate and review the book as well.

I’d be so grateful for your input; you have no idea. Every rating/review is huge!

In the meantime, you guys should definitely check out this amazing book review from my friend, Laura Coulter, at her blog Known & Renowned. I’m so touched by her kind words about Struggle Central, and I hope you find them inspiring as well. Also, I hope you’ll become a fighter with me!

So, that’s all for today. I took a brief vacation this weekend, and now that I’m rested up and my book is finally pushing through Amazon’s birth canal, I hope to return to my usual, more regular blogging cycle.

Sorry if that metaphor made you queasy. It kinda made me that.

Uh. Carry on.

EDIT: My book is actually now available on Amazon! That process went so much faster than I thought. Click here to rate/review/purchase Struggle Central now!

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You just read “Struggle Central” is Almost Born. Again. by Thomas Mark Zuniga. Leave a comment; make a friend for LIFE.

It’s May.

These last two years, May has brought about a shift. A change. A drastic tide to the normal flow and current of my life.

Leaving. 

I tutor in September.

I tutor in October.

I tutor in November.

I tutor in December.

I enjoy the holidays.

I tutor in January.

I tutor in February.

I tutor in March.

I tutor in April.

I tutor in May –

And then I leave. Give May a week or two at most, and then I go on a cross-country adventure and have my world rocked for three months somewhere far from southern California.

Two Mays ago, it was Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Last May, it was Ridgecrest, North Carolina.

This May — it’s Orange County, California. Here. Where I’m currently typing this post.

This May, I’m not leaving. I’m staying.

Much of me still feels tormented by this decision of staying in SoCal rather than packing it up for another exciting adventure. And yet, part of me is indeed intrigued to see what the end of May and June and July even look like on the west coast.

I’ve never experienced a summer in California. Have only lived out here, at most, for nine months at a time between August and May. I still have no idea what exactly I’ll be doing all summer to support myself, though I have a couple academic/campy options on the table.

These last two Mays, I’ve had to abandon my middle school tutoring position with a few weeks still remaining in the school year. I always felt guilty doing that. Abandoning the kids with the other tutors naturally staying.

It’ll be uncharted territory to finish out this school year with these precious seventh and eighth graders. For whatever reason, I’ve connected with this particular batch of preteen monsters more than any of the kids from my last two years combined.

It all started with that emotional reunion in January, and it’s only gotten better these last four months. From making me laugh on carefree college road trips to making them laugh at  ”serious” tutorial sessions, I just love these kids.

Apparently, we have a banquet at the end of the year (I’ve missed the last two end-of-year banquets!), and I’m stoked to see how that catered little event with the kiddos goes.

For the first time, I’m gonna watch these eighth graders graduate and leave me instead of my bailing on them. That’s uncharted territory. A change.

There’s also my incredible church and the potential to continue investing there in whatever capacity by staying this summer. Admittedly, I am somewhat excited to see how this whole staying venture into uncharted territory goes.

But yes, I’m devastated too. Still so saddened. I really wish my face was on this collage of beautiful faces. But it’s not; it never will be.

That’s hard.

The end of May and I’m sure much of June will be difficult — wondering what life is like at Camp Ridgecrest or some other magical escape.

But I guess I have my own unique adventure to enjoy this summer. My first summer on the west coast. An adventure not of leaving, but one of staying.

Whatever that entails…?

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You just read A New May Story: Staying in California by Thomas Mark Zuniga. Leave a comment; make a friend for LIFE.