Someone I went to high school with posted this video today on facebook. It’s one of the best videos I’ve seen on the subject (and believe me, I’ve seen quite a few). Please, watch it. I know it’s a bit on the long side, but it’s worth it. Please.

Were you crying by the end? No, maybe not. But I was. This…this video grabs at the rawest, deepest part of me and shakes it. It’s hard for me to talk about.

This video rocked me so thoroughly that my first inclination was to post it on Facebook with a brief but personal message. Then I started remembering all of the people I haven’t come out to yet. People I care deeply about, like my godmother. Not for any other reason then I haven’t before and maybe I’m a bit of a coward when it comes to things like this and most times I don’t even think of it and I’d tell her tomorrow except she’s having brain surgery next week and maybe this isn’t the time to have things be all about me. And that’s just one person and she’s not on my newsfeed, but is it fair to put that up on my newsfeed when I haven’t told her yet? And who else is on my newsfeed that I would need to worry about; do I need to check all however-many-hundred first?

…

Now is about the time that all of you are glad you don’t live in my brain, isn’t it?

And just when I’m starting to really teeter on the edge between utter panic and stubbornly wanting to share this with the world, I remembered my blog. I know only about three people still check in regularly, but that’s three people more than none. And it’s also, in a way, a promise to myself to move into openness at my own pace. A reminder, perhaps, to have courage, not just in the small things, but the big things too.

I’ll get there one day; you wait and see.

I don’t usually go about resolutions that way; usually I make a list of varying lengths (last year I had 4, the year before that I had …what, 11? 18? some absurdly ridiculous number that I’m too lazy at the moment to verify), but all of them pretty much have the same weight to them. All of them are also pretty much the same from year to year; lose weight/get healthy/stop hating body are all, when you get down to it, going for the same result. But this year I’ve decided that, while I’d like a list of those goals–it’s always good to have multiple things to aim for–I’m going to work extra hard on one specific thing.

Resolution the First is that I am going to try, every day, to actively practice unconditional love.

This stems from a few places. One of which is that I realized that in 2011, while I didn’t make many leaps professionally or personally (the moving out, when you get right down to it, was dropped in my lap; I didn’t have to go out and work for it), I did spend a lot of time paying attention to my character and trying to be the person in day-to-day life that I’ve always wanted to be. I’ve worked on keeping my temper, being polite even when I don’t feel like it, confronting issues if I felt they needed attention, and reaching out to people who needed to know that someone was noticing their struggle. I’m not finished yet, obviously (come on people, I’m only 25), but I’ve been pleased, overall, with the decisions I’ve been making in these areas. I like being able to face myself in the mirror every night.

The other main arena that fostered this resolution is church. I have a shirt with my church’s name on it, and on the shirt it also says “God’s unconditional love practiced here.” At the time I got the shirt, I thought it was clever and fit with the general spirit of what the parish community focuses on, but that was about it. It was a t-shirt saying. I moved on with my life. In the past few months, however, the church has undergone a significant amount of struggle and drama and hardship, the majority of which was caused by interpersonal communications. It’s been, at times, quite nasty, and it’s going to take some time to repair. It got to the point where the Bishop came for a visit the Wednesday before Christmas to talk with the parish and announce a few things. The Bishop is a gentle, soft-spoken man who I greatly admire and respect–he opened the meeting by saying “I’m sorry,” and made sure to tell us, multiple times, that he loved us. Clearly, this is a man after my own heart . When he began discussing the struggles that we’ve been facing lately, he looked out at all of us and smiled softly.

“I’ve been thinking lately that you all have a new motto for your church. Unconditional Love: It’s Not as Easy as it Looks.”

That phrase has been mulling in my head these past few weeks, because he’s right. Love isn’t easy. To quote the sign that my parents had hanging in their bedroom for years, Love is a helluva lot of work. But it’s the most important kind of work there is.

I’m generally a nice person, but that doesn’t stop me from being petty, or selfish, or needy. There are times where I want to give up on a good thing because the other person is doing something that I don’t agree with, or not giving me what I want at that point in time, or simply because I’m grouchy or frustrated. There are plenty of times where I get snappish at work because I am tired of people asking me questions to things I think they should already know and because I work with them for 40 hours a week and sometimes your patience just wears thin. I could keep going, but really, it’s a straight-forward concept and I think you all get the point.

I know that I can’t achieve this resolution the way I have it worded–I’m not going to be able to do this for 366 (leap year!) days–I can’t because I’m human and fallible. That’s just how it works. But I also don’t want to just say “I will achieve this goal 280 days this year.” That’s just too much counting. So instead I’m just setting the bar high and hoping that I come pretty close to it.

I think it’s going to be an interesting resolution to watch the progress of, and take a look back on at the end of the year. I think it’s time for me to grow a bit more, and this is the direction that I want to grow in. We’ll see how it works out.

I hope your new years are going well for you so far, resolutions or now. Keep safe, and be well.

There’s some year in review stuff that I always like to do. First up is the first line meme. I realize that this doesn’t ever really say a whole lot, but I’ve been doing it for a few years now and I enjoy it.

January:  I’d really like to start talking about 2011, but before I can do that, I have to finish up 2010.

February: I’ve been thinking a lot lately about lost things.

March: I’ve been thinking for a few weeks of how I wanted to write about yesterday.

April: I’m not dead yet.

May: I have both nothing and too much to say…and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

June

July

August: I’m still here.

September: My trip to Chicago was fantastic.

October

November

December: Hello folks! It is well past my bedtime and no longer my birthday, but I’ve been playing with shiny new presents and got distracted.

…it’s all about the “I” statements, people. And yes, I realize that last one was two sentences; deal with it. Looking this over, it’s clear that 2011 was not one of my stronger years for writing things. More on that later.

We also have the Year in Review Meme! Yay!

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?

TRAVELED OUTSIDE OF THIS TIMEZONE!!!! YES! SUCCESS! Also, became an Episcopalian, moved out of my parents house to rent an apartment, got a credit card, stayed at one job for a full year  (and got paid days off and benefits!!!), and bought an expensive piece of furniture. I’m sure there were other things, but that’s what’s sticking out right now.

2. Did anyone close to you get married?

I somehow made it through 2011 without any weddings. Which is weird.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

No one close to me, but there were several facebook friends that had kids this year.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Thankfully no.

5. What countries did you visit?

Pssh, screw countries (ie, still just US); I WENT TO CHICAGO!

This is really hard for me to answer right now, actually. I’d like a bit more financial stability, but I don’t really expect that to happen. I think…I think it’d be a clear[er] sense of purpose.

7. What date from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

September 2nd-5th: Going to Chicago with my wonderful cousin S (I need to get her a nickname; I’m Spazzoid on her journal) Friday to Sunday, then coming home and moving into my aunt’s apartment the next day. There will be other days I remember, but nothing from this year quite compares to that weekend.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I think it’s a tie between finally getting out of the time zone, moving out, and buying my chair. I’m insanely pleased with all three of these things.

Also, while it wasn’t my biggest accomplishment, 2011 was the first year since 2007 that I didn’t get any speeding tickets OR get in any accidents. Which, considering how little driving I did while I was at college with no car, compared to driving almost every day, several times in horrible wintery conditions (“I’m driving on a sheet of ice right now”), I’m really proud of.

9. What was your biggest failure?

…you know, this is the first year in awhile that I haven’t already had the answer ready and waiting. I think it would either be failing to have the courage to have honest conversations with people or failing to spend more time out in the world doing things.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I had a 24 hour bug on July 6th. Other than that, nothing comes to mind.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

MY CHAIR MY CHAIR MY CHAIR MY CHAIR MY CHAIR MY CHAIR MY CHAIR MY CHAIR!!!!!!!

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

My aunt. Without her I would never have this apartment and all that comes with it.

My cousin: she’s the whole reason I even went to Chicago, and then she refused to let me pay for half of my plane ticket.

My choir director for being a weekly source of sanity, comfort, and wisdom, as well as for keeping the choir together these past few months, and for making all of this painful church drama a bit more bearable.

My anonymous card-giver, who made me burst into tears over a twenty dollar bill.

Liz’s behavior always deserves celebration, but she gets extra points for dealing with me bursting into tears on the phone with her by saying “I’m coming over and bringing you money. How much do you need? …never mind, I’m just coming over. See you soon.”

Dorkface for the best birthday wakeup call ever. And for being all successful and getting engaged!!!

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

A certain junior warden. The church drama mess as a whole. Work when it started laying off so many people in a short span of time.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Oh my god, my car. Car, I love you and you take really good care of me. I just wish you were slightly less expensive. Also, Chicago, rent, student loans, and groceries.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Have you not been paying attention? MY FRICKIN CHAIR, PEOPLE!!!!!! Also Chicago, my apartment, choir, and Aldi’s. Seriously, guys, Aldi’s is awesome.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?

Tangled music. “What the Hell” by Avril Lavigne. Christ is Risen by Matt Maher.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. happier or sadder? I think about the same? Probably a bit happier overall, more stressed at this period in time.

ii. thinner or fatter? Probably also about the same; hopefully moving in the right direction.

iii. richer or poorer? Oh, I’m so poor right now.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Knitting, writing, volunteering–basically using my time for more creative purposes.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Worrying about how I was going to pay for everything. I also wish I’d spent less time online.

20. How did you spend Christmas?

Spent another Christmas Eve at church all day (it was wonderful! …except for that part when I had a panic attack that my mother would kill me because I told my parents the wrong mass time), got in around 2am, slept until 1pm, went over to my Grandmom’s house for a few hours, went to my parent’s house and got Doctor Who season 6 (soooo good!!!), then hung out, at leftover stromboli, and watched the Doctor Who Christmas Special before heading back to my apartment for the night. Tim and Steph didn’t come in until the 27th this year, which meant that we had two different celebrations.

21. How did you spend your birthday?

I had off from work! Woo! Dad was off on Thursday, so we went out to Throwback on the 29th (this has been the trend for a few years now). On my actual birthday I was woken by a very sweet call from Dorkface, then fell back asleep for awhile. I went over to my parent’s house, but my mom was the only one home (and Jenny the Dog, of course), and since she fell asleep in about 15 minutes, I went back to my apartment. I talked with Liz, hung out, and then went to Passariellos for dinner and then Dad and I went and bought me my new shiny samsung galaxy mp3 player. Pretty good day!

22. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?

My parents and Jessica. <~~~ This was my answer last year. I think if you add Liz, we’d be good.

23. Did you fall in love in 2010?

Nope.

24. What was your favorite TV program?

Doctor Who, So You Think You Can Dance and Once Upon a Time.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Standard answer: “Nope. I don’t have the time or energy for that sort of thing.”

26. What was the best book you read?

My choir director got me hooked on The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay (serious high fantasy). I also finally read Tamora Pierce’s Terrier and was pleasantly surprised (the first five pages kept making me think it was going to be bad). Ohhhh and I almost forgot about Pegasus by Robin McKinley. Omg guys, do you remember how upset that book made me?

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Not a whole lot of new stuff this year, although I did really enjoy the Tangled soundtrack. My favorite new single was Harbor by Vienna Teng.

28. What did you want and get?

A trip outside this time zone. My chair. Doctor Who in all of it’s gloriously wonderful…ness. A new mp3 player. Friends at work. My own space.

29. What did you want and not get?

More money; also, for my car not to be so expensive.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

Tangled counts because I hadn’t seen it before, and it ties with Harry Potter 7.2; going to the midnight showing with Mom was awesome. Oh, and the Muppets was pretty good too.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Last year my answer was “probably more money.” I hate to sound so shallow, but this still rings true. I would have also have liked to have better luck connecting with friends sometimes.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Hands down, easy, is Alex Kingston. Ohhh, my goodness.

Honorable mentions to: Melanie from SYTYCD, as well as Ginnifer Goodwin and Jennifer Morrison in Once Upon a time.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?

…It’s always hard for me to answer this question, since usually when political issues start stirring me up, I try to walk away and listen to something else so I don’t lose my temper. It’s still mostly the education and gay rights stuff though.

36. Who did you miss?

I’d rather not say.

37. Who was the best new person you met?

Christine and Melissa at work, Mimi in choir. …I’m trying to remember if I met any other new people this year.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011:

I knew this one before, but it bears repeating: Pray hard. God might surprise you.

I really enjoy quiet, alone time if I’m in a setting that allows me to feel whole.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you taught in 2010.

“Carol Joy, it’s Easter.”

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

Suddenly it’s so hard to find

The words that would help me speak my troubled mind

He’s offering these to me as if to be kind:

There’s a train, everyday, leaving either way

There is a world you know,

And there is a way to go

And we’ll soon be gone, it’s just as well.

This is my opening farewell.

~Alison Krauss and Union Station, Opening Farewell

I wish I were pretty, I wish I were brave

If I owned this city then I’d make it behave.

And if were fearless, then I’d speak my truth

And the world would hear this; that’s what I wish I’d do

If my hands could hold them, you’d see

they’d take all these secrets in me

and I’d move and mold them to be something I’d have set free

I want to darken in the sky, open the flood gates up

I want to change my mind…I want the water in my eyes…

I wanna let the rain come down, make a brand new ground

Let the rain come down tonight.

~Sara Bareilles, Let the Rain

But honestly, I need to be a little crazy.

All my life I’ve been good, but now I’m thinking

What the hell?

~Avril Lavigne, What the Hell

All right, that’s enough for one night. Be well!

Seriously, this bedtime thing needs to happen. Be well!

PS: I’ve apparently been gone too long. New updating page, where on earth did my categories go?? I found them, but only by editing later.

Pictures:

My cousin and I in Chicago; it's small because I stole it from her. Aren't we adorable?

Sear's Tower; they had 4 glass sections you could walk out on. Awesome but terrifying!

There are more pictures, but I’m running low on time; they will come later, either here or facebook.

And then I came home and moved into my new place the following weekend. It’s been going. I’m not fully unpacked, though the kitchen is nearly there and my bedroom is coming. I’m devoting my Saturday to getting most of the rest of it done this weekend (I couldn’t last week because choir started back up again. …things have been a bit crazy…) and then I can even have people over! There are no pictures of the place yet because it’s not done.

Anyway, one of the downsides of the place is the lack of internets. Right now I’m at Starbucks and need to close up and go home before they kick me out. …Also, I need to eat dinner. So, hope you all are well and things are good! I’ll be back later when I have the interwebs (web-webs) more regularly. Until then, be well!

Umm. I had more to say than this but I’ve been staring at the screen and nothings coming. Well, plenty is coming, but it’s all “I still have to read that one thing before I go to bed tonight and do I have a lunch tomorrow? (yes, Dad took out turkey) and what am I forgetting? and song lyrics to Little Women: A Musical. You probably didn’t need to know all of that, but there it is.

Anyway. Hope you all are doing well. Oh, yes, I survived both the earthquake and the hurricane just fine; not even our power went out. That was the other thing.

Goodnight!

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Are you gone? Good.

I finished reading a book today that sent me into a sobbing, heartbroken fury.

As much as I read, and as deeply as I get attached to characters and stories and such, this doesn’t usually happen to me. There are two occassions in particular that stand out for me. The first wasn’t even a reading, so it’d be cheating, except it was Lord of the Rings. My parents practically had to drag me to see Fellowship of the Ring. I had somehow managed, while scarfing down anything even remotely resembling fantasy throughout elementary, middle, and high school, to miss the Lord of the Rings completely. Stop looking at me like that, I don’t know how either. All I know is that when my parents said “Let’s all go see Fellowship of the Rings together, it’ll be fun!” I replied, “Can I go to the theater and see Jimmy Neutron instead?” I had somewhere along the lines come to believe that FOTR was some crazy-gory action movie and I wouldn’t be able to handle it and I’d much rather prefer a nice, reliable cartoon thank you very much.

Well, I was over-ruled. And then I fell in love and had that fateful moment when I looked at my watch and thought, “Two and a half hours in. That leaves about half an hour for them to get to Mordor and throw the ring in, no problem.”

…

That was not how the story went. My parents STILL make fun of me for my reaction. “That’s not an ending!! What was that? Where’s the ending? I sat through 3 hours and that’s what I get for an ENDING?”

“Well, it’s a trilogy, honey.”

Bullshit. I knew what trilogies were. Trilogies were three stories written by the same person about the same group of people tied together by one common theme/string/whatever. They weren’t one giant story split into three books/movies. I felt gypped.

These days, it’s one of my favorite stories to tell people. I made one of my friends literally fall out of her chair she was laughing so hard at me. Of course I’ve also seen all three movies by this point, so I know what happens, and it all worked out.

The other occassion I keep thinking of is the time I had to read The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell for my freshman year of college. It was the required summer reading, and I got started on it the last week of June like a good student (and was, of course, horrified when I got to college two months later and it seemed like everyone I ran into for the first few days said they hadn’t read it). I find The Sparrow to be a very hard book to describe, even if the plot can be summarized in three words: Jesuits in Space. How can you convince someone that this book may be one of the most life-changing things they ever read with a description like that? There’s no way they’d believe you.

Anyway, the author makes it pretty clear from chapter one what the ending to the story is. That isn’t the important thing; the important thing is how the characters even get to the ending in the first place. But I read the beginning and thought, “Well that spells it out pretty clearly who I shouldn’t even bother getting attached to.”

And then I went and got attached to them anyway.

I remember reading the last fifty pages of that book in something like a fury. I have one very distinct memory of wanting to hurl the book as hard as I could across the room, and the only thing that stopped me from doing so was the knowledge that I needed to know what happened so badly that I’d just have to walk over and pick it right back up again. It was…heartbreaking and horrifying and yet it reconciled so many of the places that didn’t fit together throughout the rest of the book that you couldn’t help also feeling relieved and hopeful. It also…I don’t know how to describe it, except that something about those last fifty pages makes me give the book a wide berth, even now. Usually I’ll revisit books that move me that deeply several times through my reading cycles, maybe even as often as once a year. I’ve even read Deerskin at least twice (that’s another entry for another time). But I don’t think I’ve been able to read The Sparrow all the way through again.

Which leads us to Pegasus. I bet you can see where this is going. But before we get there, allow me one final bit of background information.

Robin McKinley is, hands down, my #1 favorite author of all time. I know that Neil Gaiman can write a much wider range of interesting things, and Terry Pratchett is funnier, and Tamora Pierce spends more time with her main characters and Louisa May Alcott is more timeless and whatever else. But at some point, I realized that I just don’t care about all of that. Robin McKinley is my favorite author because she is. It was pretty much bound to happen since I first discovered that the woman has written not one but two Beauty and the Beast retellings. What is perhaps more surprising is that neither of them are my most favorite thing she’s written (Spindle’s End is, if you were wondering).

Needless to say, I get terribly excited when I discover that she has a new book out that I haven’t read yet. The last few have been a bit tricky; Dragonhaven was fantastic, but Sunshine had me worrying for awhile. This is not, I should note, Ms. McKinley’s fault; I was hesitant to read a vampire book since I’m not a fan of them in the first place and I’m a bit disgusted by the whole Twilight faze. What eventually got me to even crack the spine was the fact that Sunshine was published an entire year before the first Twilight book came out, and after that I was hooked. Since then, she’s really only put out short story collections, which as much as I enjoy, aren’t really her strong point, and after those came Chalice. Chalice is, again, another entry for another time, but long story short, I didn’t find it so much good or bad as I found it disappointing.

And then I discovered that Pegasus had come out last year, and I ordered it through the library. And it came in, and I had that wonderful feeling that only certain books get, where I both can’t wait to read more of it because it was so good, but didn’t want to read it because then I would have read it and I would know what happened and I’d be that much closer to the end of a really good thing.

If you take nothing out of this entry, please take away the fact that Pegasus is really, really good. It is, in my personal opinion, one of the best things that Robin McKinley has written in years.

Final Warning: I am going to give away something major about the ending. If you don’t want to know, please stop reading now.

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Which is why I was so shocked when the book ended at the crest of the story arc.

Shocked is perhaps not the right word for it. Aghast. Overwhelmed. Horrified. Outraged. Furious. Even sitting in the lunchroom at work, I burst into tears (although not as violently as I would have done in private, and I was able to stifle them a lot more quickly). And not just the crest. It was pretty much as if she had purposely looked over her work and thought, “Hmm, what would be the most soul-destroying place to end this book? Oh, yeah, that’ll work.”

The book, which I never doubted was going to end on page 404 because all of her stories end on whatever the last page of the book is because in the 33 years that the woman has been writing she’s never once written a sequel. True, the closer to the end I got, the more worried I got, but come on now, this is Robin McKinley we’re talking about here. The woman doesn’t do sequels. She’s written companion pieces. She’s written stories that make hints of references to other things she’s written. She’s even written endings that would allow themselves to lead to new stories, if she ever felt like writing them. But everything is on its own and complete.

Never has she taken a book and said “Let me end this at the worst possible moment, break your heart, and make you wait at least another year until I tell you what happens next.” I know that I have to wait a year because one of the first things I did when I got home was check her website to be sure that she WAS writing another one. I mean, the woman doesn’t write sequels. What if this was just supposed to end on a really awful, soul-destroying note? Oh god, I’m not sure I could forgive her. But the blog has a big note in the top left-hand corner of the page, Pegasus II, coming in 2012. Oh, thank the Lord.

I was mollified only slightly by this blog entry that I came across while searching her site for any nugget of information that we could possibly expect in the second part: “You’re going to hate me for the ending of PEGASUS.  Well, I hope you’ll hate me:  you’ll hate me if you like the book.” Which pretty much sums it up.

Thanks, Robin McKinley. Thank you for an amazingly awesome infuriating book. Now pleeeeasse publish the second half!

Post-script: additional comments found on McKinley’s blog. I feel like this is what my favorite English teacher would sound like if she were a fantasy writer. (Also, yes, I did obviously recognize a broken story arc. That did not negate all of the panic of “oh god, this woman doesn’t write sequels what the hell?”)

I’ve been thinking about how strange relationships are lately.

There’s a boy that comes up on my Facebook newsfeed sometimes who I used to know. I’m always glad to see he’s doing well, and sometimes snoop around his profile to see what’s new, or message him if it’s his birthday. I occasionally even wish he had done better by one of my friends, but life gets complicated sometimes. But sometimes I just stare at his pictures and remember how he’s the only person I’ve ever stayed up all night in a hospital emergency room for. I couldn’t bear to leave, even when most everyone else was dragged away due to exams in the morning, or the remaining night watch went off in search of coffee and sustenance. I stayed there all night, paying off other debts of love that haunted me, other people I hadn’t stayed or visited enough and then they had died. A long night which I mostly spent praying that he would just hang in there and quit scaring the shit out of me. And I always end the remembrance by wondering how that connection could exist, and yet we never talk anymore. I can’t help wondering if he even thinks of me when he remembers that night. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t.

I go through a similar thought process when I think of the only college room mate I ever had. We were starkly different, and she hated the school that I passionately devoted all my four years of college life to, so it wasn’t always easy to connect. But we got along, mostly because we had the sense to let each other be, and when she left at the end of the year she transferred somewhere else and has presumably gone on to do other amazing things more suited to her style of living. The day she moved out, I remember looking at her and knowing that we’d never see each other again, even though we’d shared the same tiny dorm room for nine solid months. I had no idea how to say goodbye in a way that would feel appropriate for such a parting that would also allow us to be two people who were, in the end, roommates but not friends. It wound up being just as lame as I had expected it to be.

We all must grow older, and not everyone who has come into my life has stayed. Sometimes people are kind enough to tell you that they’re moving on without you. Sometimes the separation is climatic, or ugly, or painful. And sometimes it just happens because you’re two very different people, and neither of you is really going to work to keep going what was once a comforting thing. That’s just what life is. But these moment and relationships that become so strong, so closely entwined, and then left for nothing always leave me feeling like I’ve missed something somehow, something everyone else seems to better prepare themselves for. It reminds me that I’m easily forgotten. I hate few things as much as I hate feeling forgotten.

And so I reach out when I can, and renew old friendships that I let lie low if I think that there’s a spark still there we can kindle. I’ve done better than I expected to, these past few years, and the payoff shows. But there are always going to be relationships that aren’t going to be renewed, and these in-between sorts of connections are always going to be in that group.

I’m trying to learn to be okay with that.

I’ve known for a time now that I’m surprisingly good at what I do. I think I’m just one of those people who is blessed with a base level of competency at a wide variety of things. I’m never going to be the best at anything; I’m not saying that to be self-pitying, but rather as something that I’ve just learned and accepted over the years. But I’m also smart enough and quick enough to get by very well at a lot of different things, and this job proves that. I can work and thrive and, sometimes, even show off in a money and numbers driven environment, when my whole focus is and always will be people.

It also makes me feel good to realize this because feeling this way acknowledges that I won’t be at my current job forever. It isn’t going to be the rest of my life, and I don’t have to feel trapped or held back by staying just a bit longer. It’s a way of saying, “Yes, I’ll leave this one day, but not yet; I’m not finished here yet. I’ve still got plans and things that I want to do first.” And in the meantime, I’m hoping to show off so well that it pays off for me. I’m not counting on it, but I’m also not going to sit by and let the possible chance pass me by.

I don’t actually know if people have been checking in or not, but in case you are, I haven’t given up on this blog. I just needed some time off alone to figure out what I wanted this space to be. Someone had noted that my last entry was yet another post on a similar theme that I tend to rehash, and while the comment was kindly meant, I took it to heart. I looked at my blog and realized that I couldn’t figure out if I just wasn’t writing about new things anymore, or if I was actually running out of interesting things to say.  I think, looking at it now, that I was just becoming increasingly bored, despite my efforts not to, and it was showing through my writing. So, utterly disgusted, I told myself that I wouldn’t write another blog entry until I had something worth saying. And then… two months went by. I’m still not sure, even now, if I’ve made my way past that edict, but I know that I need to start trying to write again. Its too easy for me to close myself off sometimes. And if you’re here, reading this now…well, that means something. And you’re worth trying to find things to write about.

There was something else that made me want to clamp down on my words for awhile until I figured out what I was trying to say. I mentioned in my last entry that I had gone to Asbury Park and found the answers that I had been searching for. I didn’t have the heart, at the time, to tell you what they were. The smaller ones I’m still going to keep to myself, but I was rereading this last entry and remembered what the final and most painful one was, and finally put two and two together.

I was still in the car with my choir director (it’s an hour and a half drive, after all), and we had been talking for most of the past hour about work and creating an adult life and finding talents and growing older and those sorts of things. I can’t remember now, because I didn’t note it in my journal, what specific things I was saying at the time, though I could give it a pretty good guess. In response, my choir director looks at me as straight on as she can while driving down a highway and says, “Your friends are worried about you. They’re all moving on to other things, and they see that you’re not.” 

Two months later, when I feel I’ve done a damn good job of showing that I am moving on and doing well and that there really isn’t anything to worry about unless you go out of your way to do so, those two sentences still hurt. At the time I first heard it, I could barely deal with it, especially since it was said in the softest tone she could manage, probably knowing full well that I needed to hear it and no one else was going to say it to me. It was so god-awfully true that the only way I was able to cope with it was to shut down possible avenues that would contribute to my friends’ worry. Without consciously realizing that this was the conclusion I had drawn, I decided that if I wasn’t writing repetitive or poorly-masked blog entries, people wouldn’t worry as much. I’m not saying this was a brilliant idea; in fact, I’m pretty sure that all of my stupidest plans have been conceived when I was panicking about/trying to not freak people out. It’s one of those things I’m working on, and will be working on for the rest of my life.

So usually-long story short: I’m back, and I’m apparently still writing about finding answers and growing up and all of those heavy hitting things. But I don’t plan for that to be the entirety of my focus anymore; I have updates and plans and other, vaguer topics that I’ve been thinking I can write about. It just needed to be my focus this first time around because I wanted to explain. I know I didn’t need to. It’s just how I am.

I hope you all are/have been doing well. I’m not even sure who stops by here anymore, so feel free to leave a comment and say hello. Or don’t; that’s perfectly fine too. Either way, I’m glad you’re here. Until next time!