roller coasters

Life is a funny roller coaster. Unlike a roller coaster, the dips are less fun and more terrifying because we often can't see where the track levels out. The ride up isn't the exciting part, the opposite of life as well. That's the most excruciatingly boring part, until finally at the precipice, the car speeds up and gives you a shot of adrenaline.

I suppose an optimist would look at life's roller coaster as such, with a better outlook on the overall picture. A pessimist would view the ride more like an actual roller coaster for someone that doesn't like to ride them. On the way up, wondering when the bottom will fall out; back down again, heart racing, terrified of the outcome. The optimist will take it all in stride. Enjoy the ride up, not worried about the top. Look ahead on the way down, knowing it's going to level out eventually so you can catch your breath.

Where does this metaphor come from? Life lately has been a roller coaster ride. From the dizzying heights of my roller coaster ride, I thought life couldn't get much better. Friends at work, new friends to climb with, blissful relationship. Then the stresses piled on and on. Destaffed. Traumatic spondylithiosis. Migraines. Hunting for a new apartment.

Just like that, the cars leveled off at the bottom of the hill, took a barrel roll, and began their climb back up to normal. New job transfer accomplished, apartment settled for next year, climbing to destress, taking time to breathe and snap some photos. Give and take. It's a wonderful ride.

hopeless to hopeful

postsecret really got to me this week. forgive me for being a romantic at heart on this post. used to be, back when i was (seemingly) blissfully single i'd get all choked up at romantic gobbledygook. engagement stories of friends. sappy, cheesy chick flicks. blockbuster hits with that love story thrown in to appeal to a broader range of moviegoers. i'd silently sit, with the knot in my throat or that half a tear welling up in my eyes, with the thought racing straight from my heart to my brain and back again, "why not me?"

more often than not, it hit me after a few pints. still amped up and not tired, but alone in my room after a long night. stories of exes hit me hardest. so-and-so's engaged. really? super! one thing i finally learned in my years of trial and failure in the dating regime was that until i was truly happy alone could i truly be happy together with anyone else. even in relationships, these feelings beleaguered me at times, taking my head and heart out of any new attempt before it even got started.

so, i set out to focus on that which enriched my happiness and avoid that which prevented it. live music. climbing. writing. reading. traveling. surrounding myself with good people and limiting negative influences. even prayer crept back into my life. all things began to line up, and i truly was a happier person. moving here didn't do much to change that, despite starting over with the stresses of searching for a job, a place to live, places to climb, fun things to do, a new cadre of friends to spend time with. at that point, happiness sought me out. i wasn't searching for happiness. i created it, and it grew within my life to the point where i currently am. no longer a hopeless romantic, i favor the hopeful side of things. where those old triggers used to drag me down, i'm more optimistic in my tone of thought. that knot still rises in my throat and the tears welling are out of happiness rather than regret.

"i can't wait until that's me."

enough

don't know if i'd received this email before, but it's a good one. i wish you enough in the new year.

Recently, I overheard a mother and daughter in their last moments together at the airport. They had announced the departure. Standing near the security gate, they hugged, and the mother said, 'I love you, and I wish you enough.'

The daughter replied, 'Mom, our life together has been more than enough. Your love is all I ever needed. I wish you enough, too, Mom.'

They kissed, and the daughter left. The mother walked over to the window where I was seated. Standing there, I could see she wanted and needed to cry. I tried not to intrude on her privacy, but she welcomed me in by asking, 'Did you ever say good-bye to someone knowing it would be forever?'

Yes, I have,' I replied. 'Forgive me for asking, but why is this a forever good-bye?'

'I am old, and she lives so far away. I have challenges ahead, and the reality is - her next trip back will be for my funeral,' she said.

'When you were saying good-bye, I heard you say, 'I wish you enough.' May I ask what that means?'

She began to smile. 'That's a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone.' She paused a moment and looked up as if trying to remember it in detail, and she smiled even more. 'When we said, 'I wish you enough,' we wanted the other person to have a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them.'

Then, turning toward me, she shared the following as if she were reciting it from memory.


I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how gray the day may appear.

I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more.

I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting.

I wish you enough pain so that even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger.

I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.

I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.

I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final good-bye.

Then, she began to cry, and walked away.

They say, it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but an entire life to forget them.

all my exes live in texas

[disclaimer: this stream of thoughts was not brought on by any of my exes. i swear.]

a few weeks ago, i got a text from a friend. "[insert ex's names] just proposed to [ex's new squeeze]. why do i care?" i tried to make her feel better, but i'm not so sure if i did. the short conversation came back to life in my brain when i happened to run into [ex's new squeeze] at christmas mass. she's someone that i went to middle school, high school, and college with, but it's been more than a few years since we'd spoken.

so the rambling in my brain began anew. why do we care so much about our exes' love lives? is it that sense of lost hope, even though the feelings for that person have long since faded? i went through my brain last night as i struggled to fall asleep.

i was talking to my favorite brunette about this last night, relaying the story of [friend with the ex]. we came up with a few theories. first and foremost, we are genuinely happy that they've found love anew, albeit with a twinge of regret because of our extinguished hope for it to be us. however, our happiness for that ex isn't free. it comes with conditions. that regret grows into other emotions when we know the new flame, either because it's someone he/she knew while dating us or a mutual friend of ours. another condition is when it's the next one. becoming the last one sometimes hurts, but it balances out when we stop looking into the past.

by staying in our present and looking towards the future, our past can no longer haunt us inexplicably. being happy with ourselves makes hearing about exes' love successes heavy on the good, light on the bad. that wave of romantic nostalgia is fleeting. there's a reason it didn't work out, and besides, you've gotta love the one you're with. if you're any good at this dating game, you get closer and closer to your target with each missed shot. consider each new flame as an upgrade of the snuffed ones.

as leda puts it, "your ex already had a shot. it didn't work out. no sense in worrying about it."

happiness

...happiness is a difficult thing--it is, as Aristotle posited in The Nicomachean Ethics, an activity, it is about good social behavior, about being a solid citizen. Happiness is about community, intimacy, relationships, rootedness, closeness, family, stability, a sense of place, a feeling of love...--in this America, happiness is hard.

i just finished reading Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel. if you've not heard of it, it's a memoir of one young woman's battle with depression. throughout the book, i felt my self vacillating between empathy and annoyance at her state of being. she struggled with knowing she needed help and running at the first signs of it. i identified with her, recognizing the same self-destructive behaviors that plague(d) some of my friends in my early 20s. the relationship woes. the substance abuse. the listlessness. clearly, she made it through the trial by fire; otherwise, her book would've never been written. it wasn't until her eventual release by pharmacy that i got something out of this book. we are a nation of drug addicts. remember from your health classes in middle and high school that a drug is anything that changes the way your body operates. caffeine is a drug. food is a drug. heroin is a drug. alcohol is a drug. medications, prescribed or otherwise, are drugs.

her clarity of mind after making it through her "black wave" belittled the drug culture that infects our health care today. her line of thinking is much like mine, in that i often refuse to go to the doctor with minor ailments, knowing that they'll often prescribe something to make the symptoms go away when my immune system will often take care of it in about the same time frame. i don't take aspirin unless i can't see straight; i'll only take ibuprofen to reduce swelling from injuries. prozac is so readily prescribed by doctors these days that it has become a bad joke, one that wounds people with true problems.

happiness is a choice. someone very dear to me says that often. you can choose to be happy, you can choose to be sad. when you make sadness your choice too often, depression is the result, and your brain won't let you make choices anymore. i had all of the components of aristotle's definition living in gainesville.

at times.

i chose happiness, and in spite of leaving all of those behind, i am managing to reconstruct them in my new environment. i'm delighted to be a part of such a new, vibrant experience that i can't help but smile more often than not.

regrets

one of the hardest parts of visiting gainesville was choosing who i would spend time with and who i would even inform of my visit. the people that feigned sadness at my departure, but haven't heard from since? nope. the people that were excited for my departure because they knew i needed to do it? sure. they were excited not because i was leaving, but because my life would become richer and they knew they'd see me again.

last night, that came true. i met the moms from work at conestoga's for lunch. i ask for healthy, they choose conestoga's. i have a country fried steak and mashed potatoes. not exactly what i had in mind. it was good to see them. they gave me the third degree about my love life. gathered what was left of my gainesville possessions at christie's, got to catch up with leda, and headed to candler's. we hit the rock gym and flouted that new grg edict of no guest passes for non-first-timers. candler, kaleigh, and i had fun crushing plastic. flaco's, sadly, was a disappointment as far as the food went. the company couldn't be beat. thank you to all for showing up. it was great to see you and catch up.

stubbie's and its smokeless brilliance led to sculpturing, the gainesville kissing cousin of buildering. good times, war wounds this morning. to all involved, sincerely, my door is open to you if you want to visit.

surely, next time i visit the 'ville, it'll be for more than 18 hours and maybe i'll open my mouth to more than those of you who were in town.

downward facing dog

yesterday, as i brought my groceries in, i saw a woman doing yoga by herself in the grass. facing westward, it took me a second to realize she wasn't dancing. it was a beautiful afternoon to do it. rather than making me laugh because she looked silly, it made me simultaneously happy and sad. happy from outdoor yoga memories. sad because i miss climbing with the yogi. i briefly thought of joining her, when i realized that my inexperience would have intruded on her spiritual experience. i walked silently by, wishing for a day when i know more and can practice on my own.

namaste.

silver lining

it seemed like nothing went right today. late to work, early to leave, and a comedy of errors in between.

theodore geisel's birthday is on sunday. who is theodore geisel, you ask? why, dr. seuss, of course! today, we celebrated his contributions to american children. included were plans for a read-in at the end of the day. the kids brought in pillows, beach towels, a stuffed animal, and lots of books. some forgot, some didn't care. one little niña told me yesterday that she didn't have a stuffed animal. ¿qué triste, verdad?

flashback two years ago. an end of the year gift from a less-privileged girl was a well-loved teddy bear. it was small, dirty, and came from the heart. it's been one of the few gifts that i've kept. ok, that's not true. one of the few gifts that has not been spendable or perishable that i've kept.

return to now. when she told me she didn't have any stuffed animals, i immediately thought of that well-loved oso pequeño. this morning, i called her over and gave it to her. big smile. she read with it this afternoon. at the end of the day, she came back over to me to give it back. i asked her if she wanted to keep it. a big smile and brown eyes that said, "can i really?"

¡por supuesto!

2007 wishes revisited

at the beginning of the year, i made some pretty lofty goals for myself. i didn't think about them daily, but they were certainly in the back of my mind. for those of you new to my musings, here they were:

I don’t do new year’s resolutions. However, this upcoming year will be full of blank slate possibilities for me. A new home. A new job. A changing life...
First, I hope for strong friendships. I know that I can count on a lot of my friends for most anything. Some of my friends, I’m not so sure. I’d rather have a few true friends than a lot of occasional friends. That goes especially for those of you that I can see on a regular basis now, because come summer, I’m out of this town. Which category do you fall in?

with my move, i've figured out who my true friends really are. my occasional friends, i talk to occasionally or not at all. my true friends keep me abreast of their lives, return phone calls, and have even begun to visit! i'm making new friends up here, slowly but surely. same problem as gainesville: it's tough when i spend most of my days working with people who are out of my friend age range.

Second, I hope for an excellent new beginning, wherever I land. Overseas will be infinitely more exciting and frightening. I’m scared of what might happen, but I know that now is the time to do it. Any older, I’ll run the risk of not doing it and regretting the indecision. Stateside will also be great, no matter where I wind up. I’ll have old friends wherever I go, this I know. It’s the new ones that I’m looking forward to.

i think i'm off to a pretty damn good start!

Third, I hope for happiness. Not just for me, but for all my friends and family. I’m going to do more this year to ensure that in my own life. Spontaneity is the new trait I’m going to try on. I hope it fits. For the rest of you, do what you need to do in order to find your own happiness. Sitting around, lamenting faults does nothing to improve yourself.. Call an old friend. Make a new one. Learn a new sport. Read a book. Climb a tree. Go roller skating in the sunshine and eat cotton candy...

this move has made me happier than i've been in a long while. i've been more spontaneous with doing things this year. random trips, random fun. less stress about the outcome, more stress on the present. i don't think this move would've been possible without a lot of spontaneity. a month to find a job and a place to live, neither of which i actually accomplished before moving. stressful, certainly. a learning experience, more than i realize.

so those were my wishes for this year. i wish for more of the same in 2008. one thing i definitely learned though: wishing gets you nowhere. i can finally say that i'm not content to let things i don't like bother me or keep me down. i remove them from my life or ignore them. confrontations are still necessary, but there's no longer going to be a build up of weeks and weeks as before. which makes my last prediction or hope for my tabula rasa year the most telling:

Like a phoenix, I will rise from the ashes of the last year and begin anew.
On a tangent from the tabula rasa idea, I also see the first definition [a. The mind before it receives the impressions gained from experience.] Before it receives impressions gained from experience. That’s all well and good. Locke was speaking mostly about infants and their formative years. How little genetics play in how someone turns out. The nature vs. nurture argument. Yes, it’s an oversimplification. A little literary license, please. Some experiences are too painful or wonderful to forget. Painful lessons learned build up and make us more tentative to make friends, try new things, form meaningful relationships. Too many of those lessons, people become jaded and distrustful. I don’t want to get to that point. Yes, I hurt, but some things are always going to hurt. It’s just a matter of how often and how much. As the year begins, I’m going to do my best to get past the painful ones and quit living in the past. What’s done is done. I guess that’s as close to a resolution as I’ll make this year.

uh-oh!

"you did a lot better than i expected you to." quote unquote, courtesy of missy.

i went snowboarding today. i apparently did ok. my wrists, knees and tail are a little bit sore. forward, ok as long as there's an incline. turning, ok as long as it's a right and on my toe side. stopping, improving. people in the way sketch me out a bit. i was really worried i was going to flatten a five year-old.

yet another way to fall spectacularly; this time in a spray of snow and spinning snowboard. yet another expensive hobby. at least it's closer than climbing was in florida!

just to see you smile

this morning on my way to work, it was commercials on all my normal stations, i was 2 blocks from work, and i hit scan. for the first time in a while, my radio stopped on a country station.

and i left it there. on my way home, a tim mcgraw song came on and my mind started rambling. not because of the actual song, but another. i'm not sure why either.

yesterday I knew just what you wanted
when you came walkin' up to me with him.
so I told you that I was happy for you,
and given the chance, I'd lie again.
just to see you smile...

an ex and i used to joke about this song, saying we'd do this for each other if it ever went south. notice, i did say ex, so it obviously did. i always took the lyrics of this song to be from some lovesick fool who can't get over a lost love. though i never saw myself in this mold, i have been in those shoes. where my heartbreak would stay hidden when she finds new love and i unluckily get to meet him.

thankfully, i've never had to lie about it. when it would've been a lie, it never came up. now that it wouldn't be a lie, the same is true. as best i know, all the women in my past are giddily happy with guys they've either married or madly in love with.

...and i couldn't be happier for them. no lie!

quick recap

it was brought to my attention that i have not written in a while. this has been quite a busy week. here i lay on the floor at lee's apartment in chattanooga with mostly new gainesvillain climbers that i don't know. quick flight, hilarity on the trip from the ATL with palmer, hanna, and the one and only c.p.

anyhow, back to the task at hand.

tuesday evening was spent in the back of my truck, under a sleeping bag, on my crash pad watching the planes land at reagan. i'm not talking crop dusters. i'm talking about commercial jets, 50 feet or less off the deck, bright landing lights illuminating the world ever-so-briefly. very awesome.

wednesday. work, eh. happy hour after work, better. gym bouldering session, best. now mind you, this is before i even got home. i think the grades are a bit soft in the gym. at least sending 3 V6s and flashing 2 V5s in one night is good for my self esteem. we'll see how it translates in the ever-flaccid grades at LRC tomorrow morning. quiet evening spent at home, laughing at eddie murphy and arsenio hall.

thursday. i have come to the realization that i cannot be complacent at work. ever changing, always 100%. i'm not content to be mediocre. something's gotta give: sacrificing my free time activities, and consequently my sanity; or sacrificing my beliefs about my own work ethic. 9:30 Club is like a 2 story common grounds with a pro sound system. sister hazel played a great set. all the stress dissipated as soon as i walked in the door of the club. i have unplanned-edly wound up going to 2 shows in the district, both for gainesville bands.

and back to the present time. time to hit the...carpet. yeah, i'm crashing on the floor. this is what i do for a vacation. i think there's something wrong with me...

thankfulness

this year, i am thankful for...

the courage to make a new start.
family and friends to help make the change, despite having no job and no home.
the continued blessing of family and friends as i adjust to the change.
new friends.
old friends.
happiness.
health.
wealth.

tabula rasa.i've been saying it since i left. it took a while for the blank slate to actually exist. letting go of the last 10 years was hard to do, especially leaving the grgers.

this took on a new meaning as well. in the last 3 years or so, gainesville finally became home. i belonged. i never had that sense of home in so.fla. yes, my parents are there, but i never had that bond with my surroundings as i did in the 'ville. i am thankful for that sense of home that i was blessed with for that most recent home, but i also know that it was indeed time to move on.

...and i am immensely thankful that i chose to do so.

autumnal bliss

gray dreary skies. bright cheerful leaves. sure takes the edge off of a drive to work! guess which one i paid more attention to...

i need to get some pictures to share with y'all. this cold keeps up, the leaves are going to be on the ground before too long.

fortune cookie

"you have an unusually magnetic personality."

i think i should play the lucky numbers on the back of this one!

soul food

oh, how i've missed you! i should've been an addict at mom's kitchen (no, not from the rocks being sold on the street corner outside). their fried chicken and greens (of the collard variety) were always pretty amazing. always out of sweet tea and lemonade that'll rot your teeth instantly.

yum.

clowe and i just returned from flavors in falls church. for about $10, i got more food than i could handle at one sitting. mac & cheese that i could eat by the pound, great greens, and pretty much two entire fish. and cornbread.

oh, sweet tea, how i've missed you!

i'll reserve my final judgment until i have their pork chops and fried chicken. yes, that means i'm going back at least two more times. who's with me?

ear-to-ear grinnin'

go heavy on the good, and light on the bad. a hair more happy and a shade less sad. turn all the negative down just a tad...

wrinkles only go where the smiles have been...

i'm growing older but not up...so let the winds of change blow over my head. i'd rather die while i'm living then live while i'm dead.
----------------------------------------
yeah, this leopard's changed his spots. life is good. the bones creak a little bit more than they used to in my early 20s, but hell, i'm having a lot more fun now! it's nothing a little vitamin i and ice can't fix. i think i've finally grown into the laid back, que sera sera attitude that jack johnson and jimmy buffett have been filling my dreams with for years. it's about damn time...