feels like gravity ain’t got no hold on me

It’s been a good week. Sure, the Packers ticket thing may not have happened. It sucks, but I’ll get to Lambeau for a game eventually & hopefully get to visit my Wisconsin fam again soon. The Midwest pulled through in all ways aside from the semi-catastrophic lack of Packers tickets, so enough good stuff went down to outweigh the sad for sure. And call me old or lame if you will, but it was kinda nice to end the week with a relaxing Friday night in, watching Ocean’s Eleven after a mini-Joss Stone karaoke session in my apt (where no one else has to hear haha). Forgot how much I love her music. She was pretty much my life soundtrack during my Manhattan commute from Roosevelt Island to Tiffany’s back in the day. Woah. That was 2006. Way back. Flashbacks.

As for classes, I’m ready for the semester to be over. Love my program and all, but I’m already ready to get back to a 9-5 job again. Just realized as I wrote that that I haven’t really worked a 9-5 job for about 2 years… HarperCollins was more like a 9-9 job and in my semi-retirement, I rarely worked more than one 5 hour day a week. Hmm… Either way, I’m trying not to rush the whole grad school experience, but I’m ready for real life ish. I’ll get a blip of it during my (hopeful UW-Madison athletics) internship this summer to some extent and hope my plan for that continues to go well as well as it has this week.

For those in Raleigh keeping up with the craziness, I’m excited to be back for about a week around Christmas (tentatively the 22^nd-30^th) to visit everyone! Lunches & Bad Lights Night are already being booked, but I’m hoping to go to the Canes games on the 23^rd, 26^th &/or 29^th with all who would like to join, and a Rudino’s trip to visit my favorite bartender… and by visit I mean give him enough shit to make up for the season of football & college bball he’ll be missing. If anyone wants to play for any of that (or anything else… swanky bowling, perhaps?), shoot me an email or something and let me know. I have such a short time to cram in so much, and of course, spend some time with the madre, too.

In general, I’m glad the calm from the sunrise beach trip has kept going & ready for the fun stuff coming up in the next month ish. Life is so much better when things are semi-effortlessly going well :)

just a shot in the dark

If I learned 1 lesson from life in the real world, it’s that time spent on anything other than what makes you happy (or working toward it) is silly. I’m not saying ditch all responsibility and go party all the time. More like figure out what makes you happy and who you’re happiest around, then go do those things and spend time with those people. Life is too short to be upset with your situation- career, social, relationship, location, whatever. I’ve made my rule as an adult that I can’t complain or be upset about something unless I’m working to change it.  It may involve taking a risk, making myself vulnerable, extra work or a sacrifice somehow, but the way I see it, if whatever makes you happy is really worth it, you should take that chance and go for it.

I’m not always the best at practicing what I preach, though. Whenever life stuff gets in the way and I get caught up in the stupid crap that doesn’t matter, heading to the nearest large body of water, especially to watch the sun rise or set (beach is by far the best, but big lakes are a good substitute when land locked :) ) helps me put things in perspective and realize what really matters. I think it’s something about being 1 of very few people in a wide open, seemingly infinite space (going somewhere where you can see the stars really clearly is awesome, too) that makes you realize how small and insignificant some of the stuff you’re stressing over really is and then you can shift your priorities back to what you care about most. Whatever it is, I kinda needed it this weekend. I wasn’t particularly stressed, but had a lot on my mind about a bunch of different things, and decided to hop in the car to Orlando where I picked up one of my closest friends, then headed to the coast after a 4 hour nap.

Putting my toes in the sand and watching the (giant) waves crash with that being pretty much the only sound out there did the trick. Definitely calmed my nerves and helped clear my mind. Fantastic brunch with good friends followed, which made the trip that much more awesome. Yay for spontaneous sunrise beach trips :)

Getting lighter, but still no sun... stupid clouds

Sunrise for real!