Tag: adulting

Kid Friends

(I imagine I have shared this here already, but it is on my mind yet again, and so I will share it again.  😛 )

Do you remember what it was like to make new friends as a little kid?  Perhaps it was different by generation, but, in my generation, it was really simple:
“You wanna be friends?!”
“Yeah, okay!”
And that was that – you’ve got a new friend, possibly even a best friend.  Nowadays, as an adult, I feel as though people think I’m totally nuts and unfortunately childish whenever I present a similar conversation… I’m starting to realize that I don’t really care.  Sure, I want the new friend, but perhaps we aren’t meant to be friends if the person is put off by my question of wanting to be friends.  You know what I mean?  Because asking just like little kids ask is natural to me; it’s part of being true to myself.  I’m not being purposely childish and avoiding being an adult when I ask – I’m genuinely excited at the prospect, and hoping that the person will be just as excited as I am at having a new friend.

I also mean it, too, about being actual friends.  Not just Facebook friends or any of that nonsense – actual friends who talk with one another and do things together and enjoy and explore life together; friends who help one another become the best version of themselves.  A friend is someone who helps you be the best person you can be.  A priest actually said that once to a group of us, and I’ve always remembered it.  And that‘s the kind of friend I’m always looking for, asking for, and also wanting to be for others.  My best friend and I are like that with one another, and it’s wonderful.  However, we definitely don’t live near one another (try 4,811 miles apart, approximately), so it’s nice to have other people around, closer, who can be friends, too.  🙂

I’m not so sure why people seem so uninterested in that kind of relationship with me, though.  Perhaps I scare them… I am a bit much to take in under certain circumstances, especially when it comes to my saying openly things that people often are not straight about.  (Not like I’m vulgar and offensive, because I really don’t promote cursing or vulgarity at all… but I answer honestly when someone asks how I’m doing, or what I think of the food, or even how an outfit looks on someone… it just isn’t worth it to me to lie.  I don’t want my friend to go out looking horrendous in some dress making her look fat and lumpy, do I?  [No, I do not.]  And I don’t have to be mean about saying it, but I do have to tell the truth.  At least, I strive always to tell the truth, as well as to be appropriate with how I express it.)  I don’t know… I guess the right people will show up in the right places at the right times.  Maybe they’ll even ask me if I want to be friends with them, instead of the other way around.

Here’s to finding spectacular friends, y’all.  😀

Post-a-day 2018

Saturday nights

I dedicate tonight to the people in our lives with whom we can easily live, and well…

I spent the evening first playing board games with people I don’t really know, but who also lived and worked in Japan, and then with a friend and her dog and cat, just hanging together at her apartment.

At no point in the evening did a television (or Netflix or whatever) come into play – for eight hours of enjoyment, I spent time with people, and we all had a wonderful time… and, you know, I didn’t even notice the whole tv part until just now…. cool…

How often are these normal evenings for us nowadays, let alone Saturday nights?

Driving home, I passed through the drunken playground that seems to be the Washington Avenue bar strip here on a Saturday night, and I was practically bombarded with the stupidity and danger that comes with the mixture alcohol, newly adulting stress, and the desire to be liked, all so prevalent in our early-twenties folks right now…

I was not disappointed at having missed out on that scene (not only tonight, but ever)…, and I might even have felt a hint of – was it pity? – something for many of the people I saw.

Post-a-day 2018

Work

I’m not at a place to turn down a work-for-money opportunity, really, and so I’m going in tomorrow to work, though it wasn’t on the schedule until late this afternoon….

I usually love getting to go in to work, though – I genuinely enjoy it…

And the funny thing is that I’ve felt more and more down and out since I agreed to go in tomorrow…

… and I’m really not sure why…

Post-a-day 2018

Photography life insights

Attending all these weddings has been a unique experience…

I wander between delight with joyous tears and skeptical wondering… how lovely that they love each other so much to be marrying… I wonder if they have any idea of how long they’ll live (and therefore if they realize for how long they have committed to being together with their vows)… how magical to have someone to love mutually like that… I wonder if they still will be married in three years… five… ten… one…

I also wonder at the decorative and stylistic choices of just about everything at these weddings… I see and attend and analyze enough of them, that I notice the actual difference this or that makes for just about every detail… if I ever have a wedding, it’ll be a unique affair, and not one to be missed, I can assure that… (however, if I ever have a wedding in the first place, I don’t see myself throwing loads of cash at it, so very few people will be in attendance).

Post-a-day 2018

Life being Nuts

It almost magical how much something seemingly permanency can change in a short time.

Just two weeks ago, I was noticing how few guys seemed to be in my life (not dating-wise, but just at all), and how I missed having males around.

As of tonight, it feels as though guys are overflowing in my life, and in various ways (though surprisingly many of them have made clear efforts to date me).

Life is crazy (as though I don’t already know that), and totally worth it (I’ve know that one for quite a while, too). 🙂

Post-a-day 2018

Where we belong

Today, I was reminded that I am exactly where I belong right now… Just like when I let go of things having to look a certain way when I lived in France – when I acknowledged that the exact French life was not for me, because, well, I’m not French – and I could just be myself (while, of course, still being respectful of and to those around me), I ran into the people whom I liked best.  I started going where I liked to go and doing what I liked to do, and friends showed up.  I had failed at making friends by trying to be French, so I stuck with being myself truly, and friends popped up all over the place, better than I ever could have expected.

And today was just like that, but on a miniature scale.  I was doing what I felt was the right thing for me to be doing, and I followed my heart and intuition while doing it… and that led me to a wonderful person (someone about whom I have been wondering a lot lately, but whom I haven’t seen in years!).  As we chatted, walking together to the person’s yoga class, I felt as though this one encounter was perfect for me and my life, and that it had a positive impact on that person’s day and life, too.  It was like one of those feel-good movie moments, those “meet-cute” situations, where the music is happy and everyone leaves the scene feeling better than ever about life in general.  My being the main character of the scene, I especially felt wonderful about life – things are still totally insane right now, but I can see that that’s really okay for right now.  It’s going to be even more amazing than I ever could have imagined, and so I just need to stick with moving forward in what feels right, and let go of being so tear-prone angsty and totally freaking out on such a regular basis (except actually… that’s no joke, though it totally makes me laugh).

Yeah… so I’m trusting what feels like the right path, even though it’s terrifying right now. It serves no one when I am so stressed and panicky as I have been, least of all myself.  And I want to take care of myself, so that I can do all of these extraordinary things I’ve been dreaming up, and better.  😉

Post-a-day 2018

Tears of fear and laughter

I was all set to write something good, using my computer…, but the internet is, yet again, not working properly, so I got pushed back to my phone for a short bit of thumb tapping instead (because I like two spaces after my periods in writing, and the phone application doesn’t allow such a thing).

Life can be tough and miserable, or it can be tough and comical… I think I’ll aim for the latter this week, since this small incident is one tiny straw on this bundle that feels like it’s breaking my camel’s back…

Post-a-day 2018

Crazy lady travels free

I was just thinking about when my coworker and I took a group of kids to England and France a few summers ago, and things associated with that.  At the end of the trip, I stayed in France to go visit my old stomping grounds down south, and so I left the group to go home on a flight with my coworker (per our own full agreement and arrangement ahead of time).  I waited too long to decide to do that, so I had to pay $350 for the flight change (Ugh).  We also each had to pay $937.50 for the trip in the first place (Meh).  Therefore, I had to pay a total of $1287.50 for a 10-day trip that included all accommodations, food, tours, and transport, and another ten days on location at my own expense, which is really not bad at all.  At all.

However – and this is a BIG however – as part of our arranging and hosting this trip in the first place, the tour company gave us each a training trip.

Mine, as I selected it, was a long weekend trip, with food, housing, tours, and transportation included, to downtown Rome, Italy.  Therefore, my just-under 1300 dollars actually got me two separate trips to Europe, with almost all expenses paid for most of the time on the trips.

I really do come up with the craziest stuff to have happen in my life.  And – what is possibly the best part of this all – I don’t even seem to notice how absurd it all is, until I find myself ruminating on this and thats one afternoon, years later, and it suddenly hits me that, say, taking a free trip to Europe is not a normal thing in life.  I take this moment to nod my head to my cousin for the question she exasperatedly declared one evening at my apartment a few years ago: “Hannah, do you even know what real life is like?”

Indeed, fair cousin, it seems I do not know that most of the time – reality bites, so I live somewhere else, and I love it.  🙂

Post-a-day 2018

What Hannah Found

I began reading last night a book that I had loved as a young girl… and I have found many similarities between myself and the main character…

Have I developed myself based on this character, though most of the details had long been forgotten, or did I originally like the book because I already related so much to the main character?

It kind of feels like I’m asking myself the deepest of psychological questions…

But it also feels like I’m asking myself a ‘chicken or the egg’ kind of question…

Post-a-day 2018