M: God, why do I look so ancient?
B: You're of a certain age where you will fall apart. It's all downhill from here.
M:Thank god I have my sparkling personality to fall back on.
B:What about me? I'm screwed...
M:You are still bathing in the fountain of youth...no bags under your eyes or doughy flesh.
B:Wrong and wrong.
B: Will you promise to suffocate me with a pillow you've embroidered if it gets real real bad?
M: While singing!
This is the thing: When you hit 28 or 30, everything begins to divide. You can see very clearly two kinds of people. On one side, people who have used their 20s to learn and grow, to find … themselves and their dreams, people who know what works and what doesn’t, who have pushed through to become real live adults. Then there’s the other kind, who are hanging onto college, or high school even, with all their might. They’ve stayed in jobs they hate, because they’re too scared to get another one. They’ve stayed with men or women who are good but not great, because they don’t want to be lonely. … they mean to develop intimate friendships, they mean to stop drinking like life is one big frat party. But they don’t do those things, so they live in an extended adolescence, no closer to adulthood than when they graduated. Don’t be like that. Don’t get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don’t lose yourself at happy hour, but don’t lose yourself on the corporate ladder either. Stop every once in a while and go out to coffee or climb in bed with your journal. Ask yourself some good questions like: “Am I proud of the life I’m living? What have I tried this month? … Do the people I’m spending time with give me life, or make me feel small? Is there any brokenness in my life that’s keeping me from moving forward?” Now is your time. Walk closely with people you love, and with people who believe … life is a grand adventure. Don’t get stuck in the past, and don’t try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven’t yet earned. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life’s path.”
— Relevant magazine
Hangovers are a million times worse when while nursing it under a blanket with a cup of coffee you can't stop "shoulding" all over yourself. Not so much in the surface sense of maybe you should have known better than to drink beer followed by wine and then ended your evening with shots of vodka...sure that wasn't the smartest of moves but I rarely find myself doing such things. I pried myself out of bed this morning long enough to medicate myself with a hot shower and a cup of coffee and then stumbled to the window to read. Meanwhile, my significant other with the energy of a thousand sober people packed up his shooting bag, made lunch, cleaned up, made my coffee and zipped about the house. He asked if I wanted to join him shooting. I declined and he asked if when I was laying in my deathbed if I'd remember reading all day as something that mattered or getting off my butt and doing something.
Normally these types of talks are enough to get me off the couch and outside but I only have two more days of vacation left and then back to cramming work, school and family nonstop. This is one of the reasons I'm with him...he's relentless...in all aspects really but mostly in his expectations of me...what I'm capable of...what I could be doing better. I need that bit of spurring. Sometimes I need someone to tell me I'm good enough too but I have other people for that I suppose. His morning "push" did get my mind's gears turning. The changes I know I need to make in my life to play it smart. Mostly saving my money and paying down my student loans so that I don't emerge from grad school exhausted and perpetually broke. The thing about school is that it has changed me in alot of ways...for the better in that I have more confidence and purpose but also for the worse in that it has given me a sense of entitlement. When it first started creeping in I would remind myself that I was fortunate to even be able to go to school but 3 years later that talking point is futile. I push myself through work and then school and then the bare minimium I do around home and I reward myself with trips and books and tell myself I deserve alot more for the things I sacrifice. It doesn't help that 90% of my classmates don't work it only lends to me feeling more sorry for myself and therefore more entitled to whatever I can grasp at. So I know I should be making more sacrifices, buckling down, having a better attitude but it hasn't clicked yet....solution? Who the hell knows. More coffee please.
There is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different from anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.
Even if you think the flame has died, there's at least one lyric that'll hit that last hot spot, and then you'll find yourself as fucked as you were the day you lied and said you never wanted to see her again.
John Mayer
"I still look for your grumpy ass walking along the sidewalk to meet me for class..."
