139 "Friends"

Quick check-in on my goals for the year:
1. Play more story gaming tabletop games.

I got to go to some Saturday story gaming and play Metrofinál, which I've been wanting to play for over a year now and playtest a new story game about the garden of Eden. I think it's far enough along in the year to expand this goal to include all tabletop games. 

2. Taking hip hop classes Run a 5K.
The last four set of hip hop classes didn't go as well as the first set...I only went to one class. However, I've decided to take up doing 5Ks and am doing a training program! So I'm also going to modify this one as well. I'm not going to change it to "exercise more" because it's too vague. If I can get in some pull ups along with my running, great, but that's not the goal.

3. Going camping.

No progress on this one. I went to Antigua and they had lots of mosquitoes. It's starting to get warmer though, so I'm expecting to be able to go camping a lot more.

4. Doing the dishes after I make them dirty.

I have my pot and steamer in the sink right, but I think as long as I do them before I go to bed, it'll be fine. I think this will be more of a challenge once I move and we start cooking more.

5. Getting rid of stuff.

I'm pretty much going to be forced to get rid of things here soon, but packing up what I definitely want to keep still hasn't happened yet. I don't feel especially unmotivated to do it, but I haven't done any sorting yet either. I think the sheer mountain of a task that is going through all of the things that I've acquired throughout my life so far and taking less than half is pretty daunting. I have gotten rid of a lot of clothes and dishes so far though.

6. Playing more video games.

I've been pretty unsuccessful in this, I was going to play more Walking Dead tonight but ended up writing this blog instead. I'm also at this exact moment coordinating with W on playing Borderlands 2 next week.

7. Blogging more.

I've suddenly developed an interest in slam poetry and poetry in general. So I might do some of that here.

8. Being less jaded.
Related to the previous one, I fell out of writing poetry at some point in college, I'm not sure why anymore, but the sense that it was silly nonsense that stuck-up people wrote to be obtuse was kind of how I felt. But I've always loved e.e. cummings poems. The playfulness, the breaking of all the rules, those aspects of poetry appeal to me. And who am I to judge someone's creative outlet?


I feel like I'm in a holding pattern right now. I have this looming sense that I should be getting ready to move and am trying to spend more time at home to do whatever tasks that come with that, but so far, haven't actually done much that feels "move-y".

I've been burning off most of my moodiness with the running (though I think I'm going to need to start doing "real" runs outside at least once a week or so) but have been losing some sleep. Not because I have a hard time falling asleep, but because I've taken to lying awake, mulling over my life before I'm finally too tired to keep on thinking.

My life is full of people. Awesome and interesting people. And I count myself lucky to be included in the circles of these people. I'm constantly surprised by the insights that my friends have about me. Apparently it doesn't take long or much to realize certain truths if you start hanging out with me. Like the fact that I have a mild competitive streak. That I can be reckless. That I'm blunt, sometimes to the point of being cruel. And that I like being on the go and going to weird events, but that if I really like you, I will make time for you. Does that make me loyal? Or just good at managing my time?

Either way, I'm on the cusp of meeting a lot more people that don't fall into any of my current circles, and I'll have to think carefully if I want to spend more energy trying to merge circles, or if it's fine to naturally segregate. Mostly, I wish all of my friends got along and that way, I could hang out with everyone all the time. But alas, most activities cannot handle more than six or so people, and often even less. If everyone I knew wanted to do everything that I wanted to do, this would be a problem, but luckily, everyone has their own lives and can't be bothered to let me dictate their free time, as delicious as that would be.

Additional Chances

I was going through my GReader (soon to be RIP) and was reading Patrick Rothfuss' blog and his post on second chances inspired me to finally get something down.

But first, I should probably come to terms with the fact that this blog has disintegrated into a personal re-hashing space. I originally started it with the idea that it would provide useful commentary on the interesting things that I do and experience. And it still could be a sort of review spot, where I list all of the events, books, movies, and games that I've gone through, but since I have a bit of a completionist streak, I'd want EVERYTHING to be put down. I read six books on vacation last week, which is more than I've read in the last six months. I spent a lot of time in planes and a lot of time lounging by the pool/beach and I am so glad that I got a Paperwhite to make reading in the bright sun possible. I'm sure I could lump the book reviews into one post, and there are a few in there that are worth mentioning, but some of them were pretty lame.

Probably the one I liked the most was called To Have and To Code, which is a completely stupid title and had a somewhat confusing alt world where witches existed. And yes, it was a contemporary romance novel, but several times it hit me right in the feels. Which is probably why I continue reading them for fun.

Okay, back on topic. Originally, it seemed like a cop out to just write about personal stuff, especially since I don't go into specifics and use initials. It's like VagueBooking. But I've come to grips with the fact that this blog is mostly for me and always has been. I'm someone who doesn't usually think about things too deeply, but I'm a careful writer, in the sense that I re-read what I write, multiple times, and spend a lot of time thinking about what I actually want to say. So when something's been kicking around in my head with half formed opinions and ideas, the only way for me to muddle through it is to write it down, sentence by sentence, the way I used to write my school papers. Otherwise I just can't let go of it. It makes me feel better when it's been written down, documented, analyzed, and it feels final, something "physical" I can point people to. One of the reasons why I like having SOPs, I'm offloading my knowledge and never have to worry about forgetting some key step because I've written it down. Also, I love when someone asks me about a process or has a question and I can point them to a SOP I've written months and years ago. Now that's efficient.

But I haven't really openly advertized this blog. I somewhat recently went through and added it as a link to a few of my profiles, and while yes, I'm an attention whore and like compliments, it crosses some line for me to actively try to get people to read about what I'm thinking. But I would be the first to say that I love reading about other people's lives, especially those that I know. The little window to get inside their head is always interesting, which I guess, is a small part of the reason why I keep this online instead of offline.

My old blog from my college years was full of angst and lots and lots of posts on random stuff, I truly used that as more of a journal, since that was kind of back when Facebook was just starting up. Now I can document the funny or interesting things that happen to me on a daily basis in chunks, which pretty much just leaves this for introspection. I always think I'll go back some day and re-read posts from that era, but I tried that with a journal I kept in elementary/middle school and omg I just wanted to burn it. It was so embarrassing. I think luckily, since then, my writing has improved and I'm a lot less whiny and even more surprisingly, some of the things I've re-read I've been shocked that I actually wrote it. Which then begs the question, am I a worse writer now than I was back then? Has the creative and interesting writing been smothered by lack of writing/being too efficient? When I write creatively, I find I have to go back over and over again to fill in details and flesh out moments. Writing in a torrent has never been my style but I'm worried that I've forgotten how to make a piece of writing fun and interesting to read. Structured writing is clean and has its own style of beauty, but it's also not usually easy and fun to breeze through while on the beach. Anyway, the solution is probably just to write more creative pieces and then getting into that mindset of being loose and easy with my words will come more naturally.

Now, back to what I originally wanted to write this post about - having additional chances that I don't deserve. I find that recently I've been constantly trying to remind myself of how fortunate I am and imagining what my life looks like from an outside perspective. Some things just look better in print you know? But it's hard for it to sink in because it's not something that I feel in my heart, but that I know in my head. The one thing that I have been grateful for is additional chances. Times when I've been able try again and use the past mistakes to be better and do better instead of having them hold me back.

Adventures and vacations end. They must, and you know from the beginning that they will. It's easy to know in your head that there'll be other adventures and other vacations, but it's difficult to know in your heart that you'll ever feel the same thrill or sense of contentment that you have. I think that's what makes letting go and coming back to routine tough. No matter how many pictures you took, or souvenirs you acquired, you can never have that exact feeling. The memories are there, the impressions of how it felt, but the raw emotion...that is fleeting. All we can do is strive towards the next moment and savor each moment and the feelings it brings.

Or until technology catches up and we can have feelies.

Leaving? Or Coming Home?

I'm moving to Capitol Hill! Where specifically is still too early have a handle on, but I have four large garbage bags of clothes and accessories that I'm donating to Goodwill. And that's just the start.

No doubt it's going to be hard to downsize, and it might be really tough to have to pay mortgage and rent at the same time for an unknown amount of time, but I am so excited to finally be able to merge my living situation with my current lifestyle.

Not to mention all of the people that I vaguely knew lived on the hill that are coming out of the woodwork. The overlap in the people that I hang out with and what they know about me is nearly the same. But I still have several friends that don't know the whole picture. Granted, I can probably count them on one hand but it's annoying to have to censor what I say.

Maybe it's the tech writer in me, but I almost feel like I should send them an email or something, just so everyone is on the same page. Consistency!

And honestly, the move will probably be easier than I expect because we'll probably be using our house as a very expensive storage unit until we can get it fixed up and sold. Maybe that'll be a selling point! Comes half furnished with all this random stuff!

Things I will look forward to once I'm living on the hill:

• Ability to bus to hip hop classes
• Walking everywhere
• Broadway Sunday Farmers Market
• Thursday Story Gaming
• 20 minute commute
• Crumble & Flake
• Seeing my friends on the weekdays
• Walking the dogs
• Feeling like I fit in
• Cal Anderson Park
• Ability to go out dancing/drinking and cab/Uber home if I wanted
• So many good restaurants
• Having people come to me instead of always going to them.