SARA

Tonight I lost my best friend.

She died at 9:47, surrounded by strangers, in a hospital in Tennessee.

No one could be with her. The quarantine rules for hospitals didn't allow any visitors, not even her father.  She died from complications from an organ transplant she had 15 years ago.

We had been friends since the 7th grade.

She knew me better than anyone else alive. She was my secret keeper. She knew everything.

She was smart. She was a nurse. She was funny and mean and so soft hearted.

She was my best friend.

I thought there was more time.

I wanted to sit and write about her in the way she deserves to be remembered, but I can't think of the right things to say right now.  One day I hope I can do it.

...AND I FEEL FINE?

I wanted to come here and wax poetic, or to be more honest, be silly about the whole COVID-19, self distancing, world grinding to a halt thing. Being silly is my brand, after all, and there is a lot of silly about the whole mess, if you stop and think about it.

Having to learn to work from home with software most people have never heard of and the mishaps associated with that? Everything nonessential being closed and us having to figure out how to amuse ourselves without the normal distractions? Hoarding toilet paper? Being relegated to your house and maybe one or two other specific locations? I mean, it sounds like bad reality television!  HOUSE ARREST! This fall on NBC!

But right now I’m not feeling so silly. I hate when I don’t feel silly, you guys, because then I get THOUGHTS. Thoughts lead to seriousness, and seriousness leads to stress eating potato chips. 

Ya know, in some ways, I don’t think it’s a bad thing, the quarantine stuff. In fact, I think maybe society might have needed it. We all spend so much time making so much noise. Work this, work that, school stuff, we gotta be at church this many days a week, oooh, let’s go to the movies, or shop, or play sports, or violin lessons, or whatever keeps us from sitting still for too long. Maybe the human race needed a reason to step back a bit and rest from the usual distractions. A relatively misunderstood, rapidly infectious disease is a shitty catalyst for that, but it is what it is, and that seems to be the only thing that could get us to slow down like we have. Kind of a crappy deal, but here we are.

There are some very terrible things about all of this, of course. The sickness and people dying of COVID-19, the healthcare system being overwhelmed, the people who are going to lose their livelihoods, the business that will fail. Relationships that will be damaged, either from too much time together or not enough time together. The not being able to be with people when they need you.

Right now my best friend is in a hospital, alone, being operated on somewhere. Maybe Tennessee. We don’t know for certain how she is or what is happening because no one at the hospital can tell her father, who can’t be with her, WTF is going on. It’s not their fault, really, because of everything that’s happening, but that doesn’t make it easier on the people who care about her. She is not doing well, and I mean that in the sense you think I mean. That is just one of the things on my mind right now.

On a personal note, and I don’t really like to admit this, it’s also so damn lonely! I never realized just how much I distract myself from that feeling. I’ve spent the last two weeks checking on people and making sure that they have what they need, and reaching out to make dumb conversations to make sure people are ok, and making sure the church can have their services online, and that people are getting paid, and doing busy work at my other job so that I will have it to go back to when this is all over, posting funny stuff online to make people laugh and etc. Now that the initial scrabbling to get adjusted is over and things are more quiet, I’m starting to realize how isolated I am. That sounds crazy after all I talked about, but working with people doesn’t make you less alone in the most basic sense. Hell, even being married doesn’t make you less lonely sometimes. My cup is getting empty, you guys.

I think that when this is all over, a lot of personal things and feelings will have changed, and I do not look forward to it.

Anyway, that is where my brain is this morning. I told you I didn’t like being serious. Now I need some potato chips.

BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: ORLANDO, FLORIDA TO HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA, MARCH 14, 2020

I almost wet my pants.

We got up this morning and prepared to leave for the drive home, and in the haze of fatigue and pain (I swear, those damn pants rubbed a friggin hole in my leg!) I made a rookie mistake before we hit the road. I chugged an entire 16 oz bottle of water before we left the hotel room for the last time. We went to the shop in the lobby and I purchased a 16 oz bottle of protein stuff for breakfast (easier to handle in the car than food) and a 12 oz cup of iced coffee. I was finished with both before we had made it out of Orlando proper, and didn’t think anything of it until we had been driving for about 45 minutes and my body (as it does) reminded me that I can’t hold that amount of liquid forever.

Trouble was, see, was that we weren’t exactly in a place where relief was possible. The joys of driving on the interstate, no? Oh, and we hit a traffic slow down just about that time as well, so even if there had been an exit just up ahead, it wasn’t one we would have reached in a timely manner. So I persevered. It didn’t take long, however, until the situation became somewhat urgent. Steve accidentally missed the exit that would have provided relief, and then we hit a section of road under construction, and then there wasn't another exit for miles!

I don't know if you've ever had to turn calmly towards your spouse and say "You know, I'm probably, actually, going to wet my pants and I apologize that you'll have to see me like that." If not, you have not lived the humiliation I had to undergo at that moment.  Y'all, we drove, and drove, and droooooooooooooooooove, and I forced myself to exercise a level of control over myself that was, heretofore, only known to some subsets of Shaolin monks in the very highest and most isolated of mountain caves. I honestly began to weigh the pros and cons of jumping out of the car and trying to find sufficient coverage in the roadside brush, but thanks to the Lord, Steve's driving skills through clogged traffic, and the Florida DOT, we finally found a turn off and a restroom. Whew.

At this same stop, we managed to also find some locally made marmalade, oranges, horrible local souvenirs, AND an entire taxidermy alligator!  One stop shop, indeed!

After that, we went on our way, thankfully able to stop as the spirit, and our bladders, moved us.  We stopped at one Florida welcome center that warned us against venomous snakes!  There was another place called the Magnolia Plantation in Georgia that has very nice bathrooms and excellent peanut brittle. We got hit by a swarm of biting gnats at yet another Georgia rest area, and stopped at IKEA for lunch. Well, we actually stopped at IKEA to get something for Anthony, as a thank you for making sure the neighborhood stray cats didn't go hungry in my absence, but we ate in their cafeteria.

I actually like road trips, and this one (save the bathroom situation early on) was fairly smooth. Once we made it back to Alabama, we had to make a stop at a Wal-Mart to get bread so we'd have sandwiches once we got home. I was unprepared for the emptiness I was faced with once we got there, but apparently people don't like bread with seeds in it, so we did manage to get something to carry home. Yikes.

We made it home at about 9:00 PM, and Simba was very glad to see us. Apparently he thought he'd been abandoned, and needed about an hour of sitting directly on my body before he was convinced we were actually home.

It was a long, but very good trip, all things considered. I'm glad we're home, though, and I'm ready to sleep in my own bed.  Now, let's see what will happen from here!

Stay safe and healthy, you guys.

BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: ORLANDO, FLORIDA, MARCH 13, 2020

Ok, hear me out...

We went to Disney World today. It was one of the things that we’d planned to do, the tickets were bought, and it’s literally Steve’s favorite place on earth. That’s not an exaggeration. It holds a lot of sentimental value to him and the trip there meant a lot to him. I felt very weird about going, but I didn’t want to disappoint him. So we went.

I expected that it wouldn’t be crowded, because things have been getting hairy with COVID-19 since we left Huntsville last Sunday and people were being told to stay home. I’d hoped that, if it weren’t crowded, then we wouldn’t be in as much risk.  As it turns out, I was very, very wrong.

People won’t go to work. People won’t go to school. People won’t go to church, the grocery store (except to hoard toilet paper for some reason), or to the mall. But people will absolutely go to fuckin’ Disney World. They will go and take their kids, their tiny babies, their old grandmothers and pawpaws. It felt like the whole state of Florida was in those parks with us not giving one damn about anything else going in right now. It was crowded beyond anything I’ve ever seen when I've been there. It blew my mind. 

 

I’d like to think it was society bravely giving the finger to danger, but what it really is, is misplaced priorities and bad judgement. I include us in that statement.

I can’t really throw stones, since I was there too, but I genuinely thought more people would have better sense than to brings kinds and elderly people into the parks, but I give people too much credit.

Look, I enjoyed the day as much as I could. It was hot, crowded, and loud, but it was fun watching Steve have fun, and he (knowing DW is not at all my favorite place to be) wanted so badly for me to have fun with him that I did my best to oblige. We rode in the Millennium Falcon and had blue milk in Galaxy’s Edge, we went all around the world in Epcot, and we went into the miserably packed Magic Kingdom and only managed to get on one ride before we had to leave. I did begin to lose my sense of humor about being there around the time I got packed into a queue line with roughly a million other people to ride Pirates of the Caribbean, and that was the end of our day. I just couldn’t deal anymore. We made one last stop at a shop and then hopped a bus back to the car to drive out to our final hotel near the airport.  

I had fun, I truly did, and I am so glad Steve had fun, but I’m not going to lie: I felt like an asshole for going to that theme park. I knew I was exposing myself to a potential illness that I could pass on to someone else, and it seems so dumb in hindsight. Earlier in the week, I didn’t feel so much that way, but after being inundated with everything going on in social media, and people getting asked to stay home from, well, everything, and finding out even Disney would be closing next week, in the end, I really, genuinely felt like an asshole for the possibility of what could happen. I still do.

Ah well, nothing can be changed now. I’ll have to deal with the fallout if it happens. I don’t expect sympathy if it does. Maybe I really am just an asshole.

Two funny things happened: 1) Steve and I were riding the sky bucket/gondolas things from one park to another, and four other people got into our pod. Since we are in the South, of course pollen was super thick there. I have awful seasonal allergies, and had taken medicine to help, but I got a tickle in my throat while in that pod. I knew if I coughed, it would scare those folks, so I had to stifle it. Have you ever tried not to cough? It is impossible! I finally had to turn to the people (who were eyeing me quite warily by this point) and say “Sorry! Don’t be scared! I swear I’m just allergic to pine trees!” They laughed and seemed to relax, but I felt so bad!  2) Steve and I had lunch at the Rose & Crown restaurant, which is located in the UK part of EPCOT. (Aside: will they remove England from that part of EPCOT after Brexit?) It was hot, and we were pretty dehydrated by that point, but I ordered something called a Welsh Dragon, which was electric green and mildly (I thought) alcoholic. Apparently, being dehydrated and drinking booze is a bad mix. By the time we were done, and in the Canadian pavilion “Circlevision” show, I almost lost the ability to stand under my own power. Luckily, though, I got a hold of myself before face planting in the theater. Also, just FYI, being slightly (or more) tipsy makes Disney much more fun! Hehe!

 

One very not funny thing happened and it was possibly karmic in nature. I wore a pair of baggy linen pants to the park. During the course of the day, they got wet (as pants do in theme parks with water and such) and I don’t know if it was a problem with the inner seam, or because of the way they fit, or what, but they chafed my legs so badly that it drew blood! Oh, dear heavens, I’ve never had that kind of pain with walking in my life before! It was like walking with knives stabbing me right in the thigh! If you ever want to know about places your body rubs up against itself that you had no idea about, let me know and I’ll let you know where to get pants like that! Youch. 

 

Tomorrow we drive home. I'm going to miss being in Florida, but I think I"ll feel better not having to go out into crowds for a bit until all the craziness dies down.

BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: TAMPA, FLORIDA, MARCH 12, 2020

I decided that I was going to hang out at the Hotel today instead of driving anywhere on my own. It’s a combination of laziness, not wanting to drive in Tampa traffic (which is nuts), and not really knowing what I’d do once I was out there anyway. My main plan was to go to the beach, but since we went yesterday, and since I couldn’t really swim or have a place to clean up or anything, I’m cool not going. Plus, it means Steve will have the car instead of calling an Uber, so he can have a little more freedom while he’s at his conference. When I first decided not to go anywhere on my own, I felt like I was being cowardly, but after some internal searching, I realize I just want to be on my own today. I’m feeling hermity. Hehe.

I think it’s great that Steve got invited to speak at this event. He is considered a cyber security expert, so not only will he speak, he will be on a panel. I’m actually curious to see if many people will be there after all, though. 

I spent the day in the room watching Amazon Prime stuff, mainly. I did go to the vending machine at some point, but mostly just enjoyed myself in the room in various ways until Steve texted me with plans for when his conference would be over. 

The only thing of note that I did today was go have dinner at a swanky hotel restaurant with one of Steve’s coworkers and his wife, which was a lot of fun. It was the hotel where the New York Yankees and the Detroit Lions were staying during their spring training. Unfortunately, they had all gone by the time we got there because of their training being cancelled. BOO!!!! But we had some good food, fun conversation, and beautiful scenery anyways. 

 

Not a bad way to end the day! 

BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: TAMPA, FLORIDA, MARCH 11, 2020

Today we didn’t know what we were going to do. Steve had to stop by a convention for a bit. He is due to speak and be on a panel discussion about Cybersecurity tomorrow, but he needed to meet with the lady who set up the conference to get some information. They have no way of knowing if people who signed up to be at the conference will actually come a5 this point, but the show must go on, I guess.

Since I’m going to be on my own for most of the day tomorrow, I asked Steve to go with me today after his obligations were fulfilled, so I’d know where the beaches are, in case I decide to drive out there myself while he was at his thing. I know that is what GPS is for, but I didn’t think it could hurt to have a dry run! 

We drove over Tampa Bay and into St. Petersburg. Well actually, we ended up in a place called Treasure Island, but I never found out if that was a town, or the name of a neighborhood. It was so cute! There were a lot of very well preserved, old hotels along the beach, maybe from the 50’s or 60’s? I dunno, but we drove around until we ended up in Madeira Beach, and Steve and I took a walk so I could find some seashells! That is one of my very favorite activities, so I was excited to do it. I found my firs pieces of urchin shell in the wild, and a few mostly whole pin shells!  We walked for about an hour and then drove around some more. We looked for cheesy beach shops to see what kind of awful souvenirs that were out this year, but surprisingly, we didn’t find much. I guess St. Pete must be a nicer sort of place? Eh, oh well.

Steve had a phone meeting to attend, so we came back to the hotel to get cleaned up, because after his meeting, we indeed went back to the Colombian Restaurant! We weren’t just going back for the food, but we were also went back to see the Flamenco show they have. It was so cool! It doesn’t look like a hard dance to learn, but I think that’s the trick. I know I’d never be able to do it! The dancers were very good, and we had a great time. The food was still excellent, although I ate way too much -but who can resist churros?-  and I’m very glad I was told about the place!

By the time we got back, again, we were so tired that we went straight to bed. However, we both woke up in the middle of the night. Not cool. Save the first day, this whole trip has been a series of being tired, and not being able to sleep well, which makes us tired, but doesn’t let us sleep well. It’s weird. It also doesn’t help that since I’ve been up, I’ve been inundated with panic posts/articles about the Coronavirus and now I feel guilty for not being home, hiding in my house. I’m stuck between wanting to be careful and wanting to live my damn life. Ugh. Well, we’ll be living our damn lives this week. People will probably think we’re a couple of assholes for that, I guess.

Sigh.

BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY ORLANDO TO TAMPA, FLORIDA, MARCH 10, 2020

Ok, first off, do not judge me. 

Colleges are stopping in person classes in favor of online work. Conferences, concerts, and other large group activities are being cancelled left and right. People are now being urged to work from home. We’ve had friends lose hundreds of dollars by simply not going to events that they’ve already paid for because there would be a crowd of people in one place. It’s kind of crazy, but an understandable kind of crazy, because right now, no one really knows the scope, incubation, and transmission rate of the Coronavirus. All of this makes sense to me. But guess what we did today?

Universal Studios. 

Shut. up.

Ok, hear me out... yeah, I really don’t know why we did this either, but damn the torpedoes, I guess.*shrug*

If it sounds weird that we took a day in the middle of a work trip to go to a theme park (during a budding pandemic, no less)  it all came down to timing. Originally, Steve was going to fly down here today, and so had no work planned. At the last minute, a meeting with a client got added On Monday, so we drove down on Sunday, and with that out of the way, we had Tuesday (Today) free. Get it? Got it? Good! 

You’d think that, with the afore mentioned pandemic, places like Universal Studios would be much less crowded. To be fair, maybe it was, but it didn’t look like it. We didn’t have to wait in extremely long lines, but there were still a lot of people there. I spent a great amount of time trying not to touch railings, handles, and surfaces, and I took the chance to wash my hands whenever I could, but let’s face it. I was at a theme park in Florida. If I don’t come home with Coronavirus, there is a good chance I got measles or second hand syphilis from someone we stood next to in line. I don’t know. Half of me is horrified that we went, and half of me knows you can’t live your life terrified of what ifs, and the other half of me (I’m a big woman, so yeah) is wondering if I’ll get sick and die myself, or accidentally kill someone with germs and knowing I’ll never forgive myself if it happens.

We actually had fun, all things considered. We rode the rides, we visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (my fave) and just enjoyed the day. The weather was amazing, the park had a Mardi Gras celebration going on, and we got to eat at an award winning theme park restaurant! Hehe, yes, that is what the sign said! My food (I ordered gnocchi bolognese) was not so great. It tasted EXACTLY, and I mean exactly, like canned ravioli. This leaves me with two unsettling possibilities: 1) We paid theme park food prices (stupid high) for canned Italian food in a fancy plate. Or 2) If a trained chef, or cook, or whatever, wins awards for making food like that, we have not been giving Chef Boyardee enough credit for his excellent food! 

I was completely exhausted by the time we were finished for the day, so we stopped by Voodoo Donuts for some sugar and caffeine, and then it the road for Tampa, where we will be for the next couple of days.

We finally got there (it seemed to take forever) and then took some excellent advice and had dinner at the Columbia Restaurant, which is the oldest restaurants in Florida. It is family owned and serves Spanish food. It was delish, and we already think we will go back tomorrow to try some other stuff and watch the Flamenco show! 

Now we’re back and I’m so tired and ready for bed! 

BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: ORLANDO, FLORIDA, MARCH 9, 2020

Steve had to go to work this morning. I was awake while he got ready, and so he explained Uber to me since I’ve never used it, in case I wanted to go somewhere. We are basically across the street from UCF, and maybe some shops, but I couldn’t think of anywhere around here I wanted to go that couldn’t wait until he got back. Once he was gone, I Basically I spent a cozy, sleepy, even slightly hedonistic morning buried in puffy hotel blankets and fifty giant pillows. Like God intended.  

Ok, actually, my hedonism got a little out of hand. I fell asleep again until almost noon. I regret nothing. I finally made myself get up and shower, so I could go get something to eat. I wasn’t hungry, but I knew if I waited, I’d end up hangry, and no one wants that. Steve actually got finished with his work for the day just after 1:00, so he and I had lunch together and came back to the room so he could finish some work stuff before a deadline.  

After he was done, we took a drive around where we are staying. Ostensibly, we were looking for a Publix so we could get a toll pass (hastared toll roads are everywhere) but we also stopped at a place called Kung Fu Tea and got boba. What I really wanted to do was go find the gift shop for UCF so I could buy a sweatshirt, but we never found it! If we did find it, we never found where we could park. It was so freaking frustrating. I mean, the campus is basically a series of concentric circles, so it shouldn’t have been hard, but it was. We basically followed the rule of “don’t make it hard for us to spend our money at your establishment” and we gave up. 

Today ended up being very chill and uneventful, but I didn’t mind. This isn’t a normal vacation, after all, and we have other stuff planned for the week, so it will get more exciting, I think! 

Addendum: My allergies have kicked in high gear. I don’t know what it is I’m allergic to, but I’ve been sniffing, sneezing, and coughing all day. I’m afraid that I’m going to get tackled by strangers and taken to a CDC facility before I can explain that I’m just allergic to the outside.

BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: ORLANDO, FLORIDA MARCH 8, 2020

Since mid February, Steve has been traveling for work quite a bit. He was in California for a couple of weeks (he finally got to go to the OG Disneyland!) and was scheduled to fly to Orlando, FL last Sunday for a job that would keep him there for a week...as well as give him a chance to go to Disney World. Let’s not pretend that wasn’t on the table. Hehe 

Of course, we all know the panic the US has been living under for the past few weeks about COVID-19, and how the idea of flying has been collectively giving us all the willies, so as Steve was beginning to pack for his new trip, I casually mentioned that it was too bad he wasn’t driving. He’d done it before, lots of times, and although it’s a roughly 9 hour and change drive, he never seemed to mind it. Plus...being in a car alone reduces the chances some germ laden stranger would cough on him. I also, just joking, said that if he drove, I could go too! 

To my surprise, he warmed to the idea! Well, we warmed to the idea of driving, and almost immediately decided that would be what he’d do. Then, slowly, we started circling the idea of me going as well. Going along on someone else’s work trips can be a bit tricky. They will be working, which leaves you on your own during the day, usually without a vehicle. Plus, if there are meetings, or client dinners, that can cause some issues after work hours. We talked about me going along for while and, although he seemed amenable to the idea, I asked him Pointedly if he wanted me to go to make sure I wouldn’t be in the way, and he said “You can do it if you want.”

Ok, let me stop here for a moment and go on a tangent. If there is a phrase used in the process of making plans that I hate more than just about anything, it’s “you can if you want to.” That is as frustrating and non-commital as you can get, and if a person (like myself) wants to know how someone else feels about a particular idea, that phrase is completely loaded. Of course I can go if I want to. We live in America! I can do almost anything I want! However, I want to know if YOU want me to do something, and that is a completely different thing. I recognize that the other person is giving me the freedom to make a choice, which is good, but I also need feedback. I live in perpetual fear that I am going to end up someplace where I’m not wanted. That is not a joke. It is one of those weird glitches in my brain, but I have an actual, deeply instilled fear of intruding into things/getting other people involved in things they don’t want to do. I may be one of the few people in the world where you can say you don’t want me someplace who won’t get wildly insulted. Seriously, about ten years ago I went to a wedding that I asked if I should come, was told “you can come if you want to” and against every instinctive had, I went, and I haven’t ever been able to shake the feeling I crashed it. You can ask the groom if you don’t believe me. It plagues me!

Anyways, Let’s circle back to the subject. Hehe!

I did consider not going along, to be quite honest. When Steve goes out of town, there are certain activities I enjoy having the freedom to do. I can watch whatever I want on TV, eat when and what I feel like, go to bed at 7:30 just to watch Netflix under the covers until I fall asleep, as well as other stuff that I guess would fall under the category of guilty pleasures, but let’s be real, I don’t ever feel guilty about the things that give me pleasure! :) I’d even sent some feelers out to a friend about getting together, but hadn’t heard back from them yet. Sometimes it’s nice to have the house to yourself for a couple of days, but also, I do love a good road trip! I also love to visit other places and try new stuff, and although I would be visiting Disney World (*Forrest Gump Voice*) AGAIN, I decided that a trip was just what I needed.  

So that is how I found myself in the passenger seat of a rented Camero, driving south, and on an adventure! The drive somehow felt simultaneously fast, and as if it took forever. With our busy Saturday and losing an hour, I was running on three hours of sleep and in a state of half asleep almost the whole way. We stopped quite a bit for different reasons, and of course we washed our hands at every place we visited. My go to washing song is the chorus to”The Gambler.” If sung at tempo, it lasts 23 seconds, which gives you time to rinse! I was going to learn “Jolene” but that song makes me too angry. Gurl, if your husband is in love with Jolene, it’s your husband you need to talk to. Oy.

By the time we got to our hotel, I was on the edge of exhaustion. We went out for dinner (at an excellent Mexican restaurant with a mariachi band, and while the music was great, it was so loud. The trumpet player was right by our table, and I felt like he was slapping me with music!) and came back to the hotel* and went to bed. It was a long, but fun, day!

*The family in the next room have what sounds like twelve screaming kids in there. We called the front desk and complained because we could clearly hear everything they were saying through the walls. I felt like a jerk to complain, but it was either that, or try and sleep while their three year old screamed directly into the vent that went between our rooms. Thankfully, after someone from the front desk went to talk to them, they quieted down. Whew.

THREE THINGS

I'm afraid I've been kind of irritating on Twitter lately.

I don't know why I think it's irritating, exactly, except that I know some people tend to think any kind of (I'm having trouble thinking of the term I'm looking for, but when you go out of your way to be cheerful or whatever) is cheesy.  Maybe I'm projecting.  Hehe.

Anyways, I happened to be reading an article that linked to a Reddit thread asking about what things made people glad to be alive. I like things like that, because you can learn a lot about people and what they enjoy that way. There were a lot of answers, some sweet, some kind of...ick...but then again, it's Reddit, so you have to expect that. I decided to add my own two cents into the mix and instead of Reddit, I put them on Twitter.  Off the top of my head, I thought of these:

1) Walking the beach and finding cool seashells. 2) Slow, hot, deep kisses that set every cell in your body on fire. 3) Dogs. Sometimes cats. Mostly dogs.

Now, obviously, to me those are some pretty damn good things; things that aren't common.

As an exercise, that was kind of fun, but it also made me think about my everyday life.

I don't talk about it much, and that's for a reason, but I've been struggling a bit these days. When you're a kid, and you think about being a grown-up, you always think you'll have everything together.  Most people think they'll have a great job, lots of friends, family, money...whatever. If we're lucky, we might have some or all of those things, in one degree or another.

But no one ever really prepares you for how hard it can be sometimes, even for the most privileged of us. Don't misunderstand, I know that I have it better than 99% of the rest of the world (I think, I didn't check that statistic) but I'm not talking about material things. I'm talking about, just, life.

No one tells you how hard it is to go to work everyday (if you have a job) and do stuff that you aren't passionate about. My jobs are great and I'm beyond grateful I have them, but working reception and in office admin isn't what my heart wants to do everyday. The fact that I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up scares the shit out of me sometimes. I should have some idea, shouldn't I?

No one tells you how lonely it can be when your friends are all over the place and how bitter it can make you. Not bitter at your friends, obviously, because it isn't their fault, but bitter at the universe for taking them away. Of course, you can always go out and make new friends, they say, but it's not the same as having the people you love the most, the people that are a part of your heart, out of arms reach.  Sometimes it feels like you're holding a bunch of balloon strings as tight as you can, but every once in a while one slips out of your hand and it breaks your heart because you can't catch it no matter how hard you try. I'm so glad for social media, and texting, and other things like that, because I've been able to keep my friends virtually nearby, if not physically.

No one tells you that sometimes you'll just be so freaking BORED. That you'll try to find a million things to do to fill your time, but sometimes you don't want to do any of it. You'll wind up sitting on your couch, looking at the internet, or staring at the TV and not really paying attention. If anyone had ever told me that one day I'd rather stay in bed with my iPad all day rather than making something, or going someplace, I'd have thought it was a lie, but it happens sometimes. Also, I never knew that there would be times when the only thing to look forward to would be eating, and how that has wreaked havoc on my physical self. I mean, dude...

But all that being said, it doesn't mean my life is bad. I have a pretty good life on the whole, actually, and I'm glad for that. I also know I'm not the only one who feels that way sometimes. There are days, though, that feel so heavy and gray and as flavorless as old gum. I struggle with depression sometimes, and I know myself well enough that if I can't shake my brain loose from it, I'll sink way down and stick there for weeks, only really living in fits and starts. During this time of year (and for some reason during the month of June) it's easier to fall into that than other times, and recently I've been feeling that way more than usual. Is it a mid life crisis?  Maybe. Who knows?

So, I've said all of that to explain why I've begun trying to find at least three things every day that make me glad to be alive. Some of those things are big, but most of them are tiny, seemingly insignificant, things that no one else might ever notice, but they add just a little light into my day. Sometimes it's a message from one of my far away friends, sometimes it's ice cream, and sometimes it's talking to the nice lady at my gym that makes my workout feel faster. I put them on Twitter because I hope that someone else who might be struggling, can be reminded that little things in their own lives can be really great things too!

I also hope that, if you're reading this and you're feeling down, that you can find three, or even just one, thing every day that makes you glad to still be here. They're out there, I promise.