The days come and go of their own accord, with emotions and thought patterns, actions and germs, along with plenty of others, all jumping on board from time to time, so that they, too, can do their work in and make their marks in the world… like the possible germs who hooked onto yesterday or today, to bring me what feels like the beginning of a painful fever… 😛
Post-a-day 2018
A morning prayer can really save the day. ❤
Post-a-day 2018
Tonight, I am well and good exhausted. Why is it that plans all happen right around the same time as one another? For weeks, I grow lonesome in the world, with everyone being unavailable or uninterested in doing anything together, and my having loads of free time. And then, the one week that I am suddenly booked for work, so many things happen, and people reach out wanting to do things. Of course, I want to go do those things with those people, and so, even though I don’t do them all, the ones I do do are totally exhausting after the already booked work schedule of the week.
Crazy.
Also, I love this scene from “Clueless”, a movie based on Emma, a novel by Jane Austen. We talked about it tonight while having more cobbler and ice cream back at the house, after midnight, and after we’d already gone to a play-plex to be semi-children for the celebration of our birthdays.
Post-a-day 2018
Ever feel like you’re secretly an amazing artist, and you just have to set up your life so that you start creating the art, and the world will follow suit by tossing gobs of money your way to encourage more art to be shared with the world? I totally do. And I felt a lot of the pull today towards doing that with my life. It has been a spectacular end of and beginning of these two different years of my life today. My brain is sleepy from so much back-and-forth thought patterns and emotions, but thrilled at prospects that feel ever nearer. 🙂 I have happy hopes and intentions for this year.
Post-a-day 2018
Thus ends the longest year of my life. 🙂
In my twentieth year of life, right at the end of it, I spent some time living and studying in France. My birthday came and went while living there, effectively making my twentieth year of life shorter than any previous year – think birthday to birthday – by a full seven hours. By the end of my twenty-first year, I had already spent several months living in the USA again, thereby making my twenty-first year seven hours longer – birthday to birthday – than the average year so far in my life (and 14 hours longer than my shortest year of life, which had been the year before it).
Last year, I found myself living half of my year (birthday to birthday year) in Japan. Therefore, when my birthday came around in 2017, I completed my shortest year of life, its being a full 15 hours shorter than the usual (and eight hours shorter than my shortest year to that point). Therefore, as I reach my birthday at midnight tonight, living again in the USA, I will be completing the longest year of my life – birthday to birthday, of course – with a full 15 hours more than usual (and 30 hours longer than my shortest year).
Cool, huh?
P.S. Yes, of course I am excluding leap days, because they ruin the fun, and they don’t even make any sense in the first place. A year is all about the Earth’s revolution around our sun, and a leap day is just a way to make up for the fact that it takes 365.25 (I think it’s actually 365.242189 to be exact) days to go ’round our sun, not just 365. So, I’m just counting the approximate .25 with every year, instead of adding a whole extra day every fourth year. Even if I did include leap days, then every leap day would cause the longest year of my life to be that year (and each of those would be equal to one another). However, the shortest years of my life (still talking birthday to birthday) would remain the same, as they did not contain leap days. To anyone with a birthday on February 29th – I mean you no injustice or discredit.
Post-a-day 2018
‘Why couldn’t you just let me be happy?’ I believe that is the question she asks her friend Betty, who has recently been incredibly harsh, before walking off, leaving Betty sitting speechless and alone on the steps (“Mona Lisa Smile”). At the time, Betty was in a marriage she had just begun – with incredibly high hopes and expectations – , but that was falling to extreme pieces. Her husband clearly did not love her, and was rather uninterested in her in general, but she didn’t know what to do. All she could do was continue her school work, and unintentionally let out her suppressed panic in the form of nastiness toward her friends.
As I thought more and more tonight about this little scenario that is within the film “Mona Lisa Smile”, I began to relate it directly to my own life. Betty couldn’t let her friend Connie be happy, because Betty was so miserable. How could she help herself against being bitter and angry that Connie’s love life was blooming, when her own – one she had until very recently believed to be perfect – was falling apart? It made perfect sense to me. And so I wondered where I have done that in my own life (or at least wanted to do it).
Talking with a friend the other night, she was sharing how much she had loved her Japan job. It made me want to be angry, because I was miserable in my job in Japan. What does one have to do with the other?! I found myself asking… myself. So what if she enjoyed her job? That’s a wonderful thing! And yet the desire persisted every so gently, to the point where I still have to let it go over and over again (though it is much easier than it was at first). This is the same as Betty Warren’s problem, really. I was unhappy, so it was almost wrong of someone else to be happy in that comparable situation. (I’m not saying this as fact, of course, but as the feeling behind it all for myself.)
When I have been making not-very-much money in recent years, I grow annoyed at the former classmates who are buying their wonderful, large houses. Not having a significant other (or anything similar, beyond a (married) best friend across the ocean), I sometimes feel sick when I see yet another engagement announced on Facebook by people in my age group. And the list goes on for all sorts of things… wonderful pets, trips to beautiful or cool places, exercise…
While my initial responses were similar to pure anger and jealousy (as if their getting a house or getting married has any deprivation effects on my life), upon seeing or hearing about the various happy events in other people’s lives, they have developed to a calmed state of slight discomfort and longing instead. (It just felt wrong to be angry at such things, so I made a genuine effort to look at what was behind it all for me, and to manage a healthy response for myself, as well as for the people who are celebrating – I don’t want to be sending them angry vibes, ya know?) 😛 But that changes nothing from the Betty Warren within me – it still takes an effort to allow others to be happy in a situation in which I am not happy. Granted, my responses are much improved and I do not shed bitterness and nasty comments the way she did. However, the discomfort still remains for the situations.
I don’t know what I wanted to say about this all – I think I just wanted to say that. That I can relate very easily to poor Betty Warren and her inability to let her friend be happy in an area of life where she, herself, was so unhappy (despite what likely was a genuine love for her friend and desire for her friend to be happy in life). We do that in our own lives quite often, it feels. From the greatest to the smallest of things, when we are unhappy with a specific aspect of our own lives, we struggle to see others be happy in that same aspect of their lives. I don’t want to give out a solution to this behavior – I just want us to notice that we have it, really. Simply noticing it, bringing awareness to it, makes more of a difference than we could imagine, anyway. Betty seemed utterly shocked when Connie accused her with the question. To that point, even if she had realized what she was doing, it is likely that she was unable to admit it to herself…
Yeah… I want to look even more into the smallest nooks and crannies of my life to see where else I have been in this rut-based hatred/anger in the past. I want to let all of that go. And I want to be free of it all for the future, and to be able to wish others well with ease, no matter my own current situation.
Post-a-day 2018
I had forgotten until recently that I used to play street hockey with one of my brothers. We just would rollerblade together and pass the ball or puck to each other, or practice rollerblading with the sticks as fast as we could and then with the sticks and ball/puck. It was fun. And, you see, I remembered this, because I was trying to figure out how I had been so good at floor hockey in gym class in ninth grade, even though I had never done it in school before then. And I thought of that memory, because I saw at the YMCA the other girl in that freshman gym/health class who was really good at floor hockey (and definitely more intense about it than anyone else), which had been our first sport of the school year. Her name is Kristina. It was really good having someone else in that class who enjoyed sports for the sport of them, and who was naturally good at most sports, and who didn’t get an attitude about any of it. We didn’t really become friends outside of that class, but she’s always held a little sweet space in my heart and memory because of our initial floor hockey awesomeness bond. 😛
Post-a-day 2018
I did awesome stuff today. And I am very tired. And I really don’t feel like writing right now.
Post-a-day 2018
My head aches and aches and aches. All I did was have a wonderful day and drink less than three liters of water. How is it normal for someone to have such a result? I guess my body in just in synch with the weirdness of my mind and personality. Gotta be crazy all over, not just in one area of life. Oh, no. 😛
Though, oddly enough, I drank very little water today, even though I was surrounded by it with all the rain we’ve had today and tonight. I was even out in it for a while earlier today. Crazy.
How much water do You drink on average in a day? I average a minimum of three liters, and have done up to five on desperate days back in Japan.
Post-a-day 2018
Another letter I found regarding my early time in Japan. I’m not so sure that I ever sent this one either. I think they both were intended as drafts, but time kept passing and more kept happening, making me want to add even more… and so I never sent anything. 😛
………………………………
hannah ananas 