On Life and Getting Real

My apologies to anyone who has been waiting all these months to hear about the rest of my Disneyland trip last year... I realized that trying to document my trips with so much detail was more stress than it was worth.

My dear BFF, Nikki, invited me to participate in a reading challenge with her this year. She found a list on Pinterest of book suggestions for a whole year, 51 in total. We compiled and compared our lists, and I've read a couple so far. I've realized that I'd forgotten how much I love to read. I really haven't had any fantastic reading sprees since last summer, when I decided to re-read all the Harry Potter books. I didn't even do my yearly reading of Pride and Prejudice.

It has occurred to me that I've really lost hold of a lot of my passions. It's just so easy to come home from work, brain fried from thinking too hard all day, and just get lost in whatever's on television. I don't make the effort to take part in something more productive, or even just more worthwhile. Whenever someone asks me what I enjoy doing, I still spit out the age-old "reading and writing", but really they're just forgotten hobbies that I claim to avoid having to admit that I really don't do much of anything.

It's really quite sad. I feel that I've become a shell of the former me. I think about books that I want to read, and I'm forever writing blog posts and stories in my head, but when it comes down to it, I back down and decide I'm too tired and not in the mood.

I also feel that I've stagnated in my adult life. It's kind of like my life up through college was a mountain, and I've gotten to the top of that mountain. In some ways, I'm done, but then there's this sign that says "The rest of your adult life is that mountain over there, but you have to figure out how to get to it". So I got a job and an apartment and started to build my bridge to the Mountain of Adulthood, but mostly I just like camping out at the top of Childhood Mountain. People further down see that I've gotten to the top and that I'm building a bridge and think that's great, but no one realizes that I've kind of stopped building my bridge. Of course, sometimes someone gets to the top and then we discuss the building of bridges, but then they get busy on their bridge and leave me behind.

Okay, that was a depressing and weird metaphor. But it's true. I'm not doing the things I should to be an adult. It's sad, really. The good news is that I'm realizing the sadness and am determined to do a better job. I wrote down some goals today. I hate goals, but I realize the necessity of them. So I wrote them down, and I'm trying to be responsible and make my life better.

Anyway, no one be sad for me. I'm not sad; I'm determined. I'm gathering bridge-building materials :)

Thanks for reading.