Ageism

So much is happening in the world at large and even in my own world.  It is hard to believe that good still exists in a world so crazy.  The wage gap between the rich and the poor is widening.  The unemployment rate of recent college grads is something like 50%.  House Republicans have threatened to shut down the government  if they can not repeal Obamacare like the last three dozen times they've attempted to do so.  A war on women's reproductive rights has been waged all over the country and some douchebag county clerk in California is refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.  The divide is deep and troublesome between ideals and nothing is getting done, the recovery is slow, no one is to blame and everyone is to blame.  The whole thing just feels somehow rotten and dire.

But at the same time, in the same world, existing in the same space are people doing real and tangible good.  They are able to do this in spite of the world we live in, not because of it.  And these things are coming from a generation of people who the major news outlets have deemed lazy, addicted to technology, too idealistic, not starting our lives soon enough, destroying the world with our casual sex and our refusal to produce babies and buy houses and drive cars because clearly, our parents' transition into adulthood is the only noble transition into adulthood.

When I find myself, my generation of cohorts lambasted by a generation who created us for doing things differently than they do, for wanting different things, for being too idealistic and liberal or whatever else it is we as a generation are doing incorrectly, I fall victim to ageism.  I get bitter when old people come to bitch about car sharing at the city council meeting.  I assume these people are old and losing their wits and quite frankly should go ahead and sit down.  They had their chance to make their mark on the world and turned it into what we see now.  They let all of our social safety nets dissolve.  They let us get into the mess we are in and are hereby exempt from having any more influence or opinion.  And I know this is ridiculous and disrespectful and casting this net over an entire generation makes me guilty of doing the exact same thing I'm pissed they have done to me.  So I'm attempting to be more open minded about other people's opinions.  Especially the opinions I don't agree with.

The good news is time doesn't stop for anyone.  The bad news is time doesn't stop for anyone and eventually, I may find myself as the raving old person with antiquated bad ideas.  But until that happens, I will do my damndest to make a mark on the world that I live in now.

I Trim My Lion Claws

Every day the news feed bombards me with news of people shooting each other and running each over with their cars or just being awful in general.  All of this violence, and what the news fails to mention day after night, as they provide their viewing audiences with foder for anxiety and hatred, is that these events are outliers to the general human condition.  And though there is tragedy and empathy to be recognized in knowing of the pain another human is experiencing, we are not focused on the loss of another human but the oddity of the perpetrator.

I'm choosing to look beyond these anomalies starting now.  People can be generally awful, but now that I don't have the negativity of customer service to return to day after day, it is time to let go of my valued chip on my shoulder and start reaching for the positivity that I left behind when I started that job.  So many amazing things are happening both in my own world and the world at large.  

This is going to be an incredible summer and a great finish to the rest of 2013.  It hardly seems possible that I just wrapped up another semester.  Instead of lamenting what I have left to finish, I decided to celebrate what I've accomplished.  All things considered, I'm doing remarkable things with my life and to sell myself short is unfair. 

 Here is a link to a video of a jazz musician singing in an old subway car. It will make you happy.

Issues With Run On Sentences

There are some days that lend themselves well to good cries.  I get very caught up in the trivial and find myself completely freaked out about the meaning of it all.  What am I doing all of this for?  Do I have what it takes to be a grown-ass adult with real-life responsibilities.  I am starting to understand how people get caught up in customer service jobs they hate.  It is scary to think about having real responsibility.  It is scary to try.  What if I fail?  What if I go into debt and never find a job?  I spend so much time putting myself out there, allowing myself to fail that sometimes, the failure really starts to sting.  It is scary to quit customer service, as much as I hate it.  I am severing a tie with a part of my life that has been instrumental in my survival and growth that I never want to be involved with again.  It is like a bad break up.  The goal in quitting the bank is that I never have to work in customer service again.  The never part is exciting and terrifying.

With my newfound time I have some really exciting opportunities.  First, I have an internship with a local bike advocacy non-profit.  My responsibility is to develop an entire program dedicated to recognizing and promoting bike friendly business in order to incentivize bike friendly business.  Once I'm finished with my research and recommendations I am to start reassessing how to promote business and corporate membership; which if done well could really do a lot to promote bike culture and fund my advocacy group so that they can do more to invigorate the community spirit around the ideas we are working towards.  THIS is the meaningful work that I'm taking the chances I am to be a part of.  If only it were paid experience.

I have one more paper to write in the next two weeks.  This paper is going to be the paper that helps my program advisor decide if he is going to allow me an independent study to work on a thesis on the topic.  On the topic of multimodal transportation in the great Denver area, I could do some incredibly meaningful research and work, integrating BikeDenver's work that could facilitate some great opportunities for Grad school and employment.  Everything I do these days is calculated and planned.  I do not write a paper on a topic that is unrelated to what I want to do.  It is meaningless for me to write about an arbitrary topic like the history of the polio vaccine when I could be using my research time to look into topics that coincide with my Graduate studies and eventually career.  But there is a bit of experience in learning new and random things that I miss out on with my cold calculated approach.

I will be okay but after feeling as on edge and stressed as I have been this week, going out tonight would have been a fiasco for me.  Though not having a car can be very freeing most of the time, trying to get home from SOBO at night can be stressful and that kind of stress seemed over the top with everything else I'm dealing with tonight.

On a totally random note, if you look at the second story of the Tattered Cover on 16th and Wynkoop you will see an elaborate entrance on the second story.  This was because there used to be a streetcar viaduct that went over the river and into the highlands and so the second floor was a one time the main entrance.  Looking at photos of the viaduct makes me think of the Seattle highway 99 viaduct.  Though there are not any building entrances that would be affected by the Seattle viaduct coming down, the area underneath the Denver viaduct looks like it was just as sketchy as the Seattle viaduct currently is.

On a totally other random note, the Union station market idea was a much bette idea than the Union Station hotel idea; however, this is because the market was suppose to look a lot like Pike Place and Pike Place is possibly my favorite place in the whole world.  How it would have translated in a repurposed Denver train station is another story.  My 2014 birthday wish is to stay in the Union Station Hotel.

Denver is an incredibly exciting place to be right now.  I feel like I have so much emotion and advocacy wrapped up here that it would be a shame to start over somewhere else.  But the idea of us buying a place here scares the hell out me.  I have an unresolved wanderlust that seems to be calming a bit with age but has not gone away.  And what if I settle somewhere when there are so many other places to consider settling.  I have choice paralysis when it comes to choosing a place.  But I have a love for this place that runs very deep.  It would be easy to stay here and maybe that is what scares me the most.

Only time and many more run on sentences will tell.

Trips Home and Down Memory Lane

When my semester wraps up in May I'm planning to head east to BFE and spend a week in my childhood home.  Two family friends who are really like adopted great aunts are aging pretty quickly and so to make the trip more enjoyable I've offered to help them with any tasks they've been having trouble getting to.  The offer was also extended to my mother and my grandmother.  I'm also planning to bring each of these lovely ladies a late mother's day gift of a basket containing yummy tea, nova scotia oat cakes, jam and a little pot of annuals. Neither Jeannie nor Lavada have grandchildren and I love filling in as defacto family.  It reminds me that family can be chosen and that love extended to someone who needs it is returned with a gratitude that is worth the tiny effort of extension.

Yesterday I found myself wondering who I would want to be in my wedding with me.  I honestly don't know how one comes to this decision.  There are girlfriends who have come relatively recently to my life but have made a great impact, those who I have had very strenuous relationships with but whom I still consider like a sister, those who I grew up with but who have grown apart due to new developments in their own lives.

I finally found the dress I plan to wear to my brother's wedding.  I'm a little afraid it's going to be a bit too short but I have great motivation to work on my legs all summer!

Dilapidated and Abandoned

There is something inherently and hauntingly beautiful about images of abandoned property.  This has been a subject of near obsession for me since I was a little girl wondering about the beautiful, dilapidated farmhouses and the little one room school house near Uncle Wayne's farm.  What was the moment when someone last locked up these places, walked away and never came back?  What was the purpose of the building?  Why had no one bothered to dispose of the place?  Would it be dangerous for me to go in and explore?  I want to know about the people who occupied these places.  I want to know about the reasons they left these places.  I want the stories of life and love that haunt these places.  As a farm child I had a considerable amount of daydream time allotted to me and I would create these elaborate stories about these places and why they stand abandoned.  These places are complex characterizations of my imagination.  I only wish I were brave or stupid enough to explore abandoned properties.

Because I Get Worked Up Over Lawmakers Sometimes

Lawmakers are infuriating.  I'm not sure if this is just a condition of being young or naive or both but I get this feeling of dissatisfaction for the way people who are older than me think and behave.  It seems as though I'm occupying a world that has to work around the people who are in power to lift up ideas and projects that will work; that are proven to work.  I have very little respect for federal government.  I dont want to work with the other states.  I like living in my blue bubble of opportunity and ideas and not restricting other people's rights because my flying spaghetti monster had followers that wrote a book of rules to live by 6,000 years ago that I pick and choose from to satisfy my cause because if I lived by all of them, I would be seriously contradicting myself at every turn.  I don't want lawmakers from Mississippi to have a say in what I do in Colorado.  And I certainly don't want Paul Ryan to have his sticky little fingers on budget reform.  Maybe it's idealistic but I firmly believe the world will be a better place when natural selection of ideas wins out and these places that churn out these lunatics have no population replacement because they've lost their intelligence base to cities where you don't have to be an anarchist to live.  The lifestyles of these people will kill them off sooner or later.  In the meantime, I wish the squashers of ideas for progress would just stay the hell home with their opinions.

The snow is causing some serious seasonal mood disorder happenings in my household.  I don't have any interest in feeling cold so I'm skipping classes in the interest of warmth and comfort while at the same time causing cabin fever.  Tomorrow is suppose to be nicer, I think.  Then the weekend and then more snow Monday. FML.

I had an opportunity to meet with someone doing the job I'd like to someday do.  It was incredibly enlightening and he gave me some great insight into Grad school.  Then I spoke with my program advisor who clued me in on the new and improved MURP program at UC-Denver and now I'm thinking about staying again.  It would be easy to stay.  I love it here (apropos the weather this April), I have friends and family and a support network of people who have my best interest at heart, I have already started making contacts in the world I wish to work in and that alone can be it's own job, I like what the future is looking like for this city, I'm in tuned to what is happening here.  But is it in my best interest to do what is easy?  I'm thinking I'll apply at Denver, Portland and Seattle and let the chips fall where they may.  I sure as shit will be staying the hell away from any Red States until things improve in their thinking.

What to Wear and Loss of Control

September is still a few months away but I'm already on the search for what I should wear to my little brother's wedding.  I'm not thrilled that my future sister in law seems to not be my biggest fan.  And I'm not thrilled about the wedding in general; however, family means that I get to keep all of that to myself and pretend to be thrilled about this thing.  I have to pretend to be thrilled hearing about this girl stealing ideas that I had about my own potential nuptials.  But on a side note, whatever ideas she uses that I thought I might like to utilize, I realize that my tastes may change and new ideas will come along in the meantime.  Lucky for me, I will get to travel to BFE Nebraska to celebrate with people who make me cringe.  The plan is to self medicate with alcohol for the better part of the process.

What do you wear to your brother's wedding?  I Googled it.  I didn't find an answer.  I did find that white is a big no no and people have mixed feelings about black.  I assume there will be quite a bit of walking on dirt and grass so stilettos might not be in my best interest.  By September, after having run pretty seriously all summer, I'm hopping to be in really great physical shape so maybe I can rock strapless?  At any rate these pictures will be framed and in public for potentially the rest of my life and I'd like to not regret what I wore when I look at them in my future.  This makes buying a dress a bigger deal than it probably should be.

The next few months of my life are completely impossible to try and predict and just about impossible to plan for.  The hardest part for me is letting go of control long enough to just let them happen the way they will.  I just want to orchestrate the whole thing and make it go the way I want it to go.

A Day in the Life

I'm starting to have a really clear picture of what my life is unfolding for me.  I have two years until I start Grad school and a little less than a year and a half of school to complete.  I'm considering taking the full two years to finish undergrad.  For various reasons, I might as well.  It will give me a little more breathing room

It seems like the more exercise I do, the less progress I see.  However, I realize that it is unlikely that I will continue to get fatter with exercise and it simply makes me feel better physically and emotionally and that is enough, at this point, to keep me moving forward.

The future has never really looked quite as clear as it has been recently.  Every couple of years, my favorite Beatles' song changes.  It is incredible to me that they produced a discography that I can grow up to nearly 50 years later.

This might be my current favorite.

Weekly Revelations

I realized, very recently, that I'm really, really phenomenally good at pushing people too hard, too fast, too far.  Maybe I'll work on this.  Definitely I'll lay off.

The smell of my Lancome facial moisturizer if wonderful.  It's delicate and classy and not overpowering.  I need to find a perfume that smells like it.

So far, Spring has brought more snow than Winter.  Though I'm not surprised, I'm still disappointed.

Today I met with my advisor and realized that I will not be able to finish before December 2014.  Which I sort of anticipated; however, I did not realize I needed another science with lab.... Fuck that.  I also figured out that I will not qualify for honors regardless of getting all A's before I finish so that takes some pressure off.  Now I just have to make sure I finish with at least a 3.0 which is totally doable.

I've decided to focus on Portland State.  They are a transportation oriented program in an awesome city in a blue state and I can qualify for in state tuition.  Austin seems like a good choice but thought Austin is an island in a red state, it is still in a red state.  Tuition would be more expensive and outside of Austin, there is not much to see and explore.  Denver is option 3.

I'm having some serious doubts that I will have more occupancy in my apartment before the fall.  I understand but it hurts my feelings a little bit.

Tonight I will enjoy my tacos and science talk.

A Pocketful of Soul

I come back to questioning whether there is one person for each person.  Sometimes I wonder if there aren't four or five people for each person. And we find the person who fits us first and most efficiently. Today, I decide that I'm going to take care of my own needs first and foremost and if that means space, then so it goes.  Comprehensively, there are many aspects to who I am and many of those facets are some of which I have not yet explored.  Those are parts of myself that are fascinating and infuriating and confusing.  It seems that I know less of the depths of my own soul then I previously assumed.

Papers and Crosswalks

I'm working on a paper about the Denver Living Streets Initiative and in doing so, I've been reading some of the criticisms of multimodal transportation initiatives.  I do this so that I don't find myself flat-footed in a bubble of the choir planners preach to about all the amazing awesome ideas they (me someday) have to fix an entire sector of societal woes.  But some of the criticisms cause me to falter in my humanitarian faith.  It is beyond me that so many people are so quick to find criticism in new ideas without considering alternatives to those ideas.  This is one of my biggest pet peeves.  I am completely okay with constructive, well considered and thought out criticism of ideas but to simply dismiss ideas and stick to the same status quo simply because you cannot fathom the abstract idea of what change might look like is small minded.  I don't believe in not trying simply because something might fail.  Failure is an opportunity to fix the idea to become a better and more useful idea.

Doing nothing is not an idea I can come to terms with in any part of my life.  I think the people in my life have come to understand this about me.  A personality flaw or otherwise, that is who I am and I like that about me.  I am strong and opinionated.  I am compassionate and smart.  I will tell you when I think you're being shitty and I will thank you when you are kind and find a way to repay and pay forward the kindness.  I will be successful because I don't stop trying new ideas until I find something that works.  Spent costs do not phase me like they do other people; nor do regrets.

However, I do believe if one of you shitty drivers who seem to have no concept or value of human life takes my life because you do not understand that you are driving a one ton metal death machine and are oblivious to your surroundings and distractedly take my life, you will change your own life in a terrible way.  Slow down.  Look before you turn.  Understand that the crosswalk is not where you park waiting to turn and that it is very dangerous to push me into oncoming traffic because you can't stop before the giant white lines indicating cross walk.  And please, if you impede my ability to safely cross the street in a heavily pedestrian oriented crosswalk, don't flip me off as you drive away.  That makes you a giant asshole.

Sunday Morning Musings

Yesterday was one challenge after another.  Because I attended the amazing Nuggets-Thunder game the night before, I was tired at work.  There is so much tension at my job between management and it really affects the mood of the office.  Luckily one of these managers is going to another branch starting tomorrow.  At the end of the day, closing procedures were not done correctly which meant we had to stay late to fix the issue, both managers were exceptionally bitchy with blame for the other.  I'm done with this drama.  Get over yourselves.

I have an interview for an internship I'm not sure I even want.  Since it seems interesting and like it would be an incredible experience, I'm continuing with the process.  Just in this moment, I have realized that there has not been a single internship that I haven't been called to interview for.  This is something to be proud of.  Now I just need to close the deal.

There have been issues with the drains backing up.  My tub and toilet fill with nasty brown water and leave nasty brown residue when it finally drains.  I went for the longest run I've ever been on, 3.5 miles and returned to be unable to shower or use the toilet and it took until 8:00 last night for the issue to be resolved.  Though my landlord did come and clean my bathroom the whole thing was really stressful.

I've decided that I have no more room in my life for people who don't respect me enough to respect my time.  I am awesome enough for it to not be a chore to have me around and I have people in my life who know that and people who don't.  Going forward, I choose only the people who know that.

The weather is nice enough again today I can run again.  Today will be a good day.

When the Ceiling Cracks

Winter is not my best season.  I don't wear it well, though it hasn't been officially diagnosed, I believe I may have some seasonal mood disorder issues.  Lately, it's been extra special tough.  I have a boyfriend who is halfway across the country, a changing dynamic of girlfriends, a rough patch of shaken confidence and snow keeping me from getting outside and working on my fitness goals.

The quote about pulling an arrow back before it shoots forward has never felt so relevant.

So I focus.  I'm focusing on Grad school options.  I'm focusing on writing papers about GIS uses in urban passenger rail corridors and the spatial changes of Complete Streets projects, specifically the Living Streets Initiative in the Blueprint Denver master plan. And this is why I know I'm on the right track.  Researching these things is exciting.

I just wish there was something to reassure me that I will find a job someday after all this work is done. I wish there was some way to know that all the work I'm putting into everything will pay off in the end.

The People of Today

I'm a firm believer that ever person who interacts with me serves a very small or very large purpose in my life somehow.  The intricacies of how each interaction intertwines with the next is impossible to comprehend and yet so incredibly fun to try and trace.

Today was a very good day.

The people who serve an incredible purpose in my life today, may not be here tomorrow and so, for today, I am simply thankful for the interactions they provide.

Today I am happy.

I Remember When We Were Gambling to Win

I think I'm finally starting to get the upper hand of my persistent cough.  I slept almost the whole night last night and I haven't done nearly as much coughing today.

My map use and analysis class is reminding me of geometry.  And though geometry was not the worse math class I ever took, the math part of the mapping class is making my head spin.  Confidence.  I have to be confident that I am smart enough to get it.  Just because it's math does not automatically put it outside the realm of concepts I am able to grasp.  This is my opportunity to prove this to myself.  And I plan to fully engage with this challenge.  This reminds me I need to locate my calculator.

April will mark my first ever 5k.  It's exciting and scary.  It is motivation to get over this cold and start training again.  Before this thing took hold I was doing quite well with my training.

As we grow up, we grow apart.  This makes me sad but also thankful for the memories I have with people.  Lately, it seems like more people are growing away from me and me from them with these lives we work so hard to create for ourselves and I'm so very happy for all the lives of these girls who mean the world to me.  But sometimes, it feels very lonely to be in a stagnation waiting for the next thing to be happening.  The more people I talk to about this, the less crazy I feel and the more I begin to form new connections with new people whose turns have come about to play a role in my life and isn't that what life is? A never ending rotation of people who will find a way to transform your life in some small or very large ways?  This is why I try so very hard to simply be thankful for the now and why I'm working to let go of complete control and stress for the future.  Because right now is my gift and who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Also, the piano riff in this song is hauntingly beautiful.

Today I remembered that I am worth it.

The Wonder Woman Pose

I started my day by watching a TED talk about the merits of the role body language plays in your perception of yourself.  It was quite enlightening.  Tonight, immediately before I sat down to write this, I struck the wonder woman pose for a minute or so and felt immediately better about my predicaments.

My life feels out of order and out of my control which might be why I found myself in a throw stuff out and find order, control and balance in my home mood today.  And though my home feels harmonious, getting used to other people playing a role in my future is not a feeling I have found myself accustomed to enjoying.  I want the things I'm waiting for to happen now, dammit.  I want to know where I'm going to be living in the next few months.  I want to know if I will have the will power to save enough to quit my job in August.  I want to know what grades I'm going to get in my classes.  I want to know that I survive and maybe even thrive in the next year.  I'm seeing most of the hurdles that will likely challenge me in the coming months and I'm making game plans to conquer them but all this focus on my challenges has me feeling a bit defeated.

Maybe I feel the way I do because my chest cold is preventing me from moving faster than a geriatric turtle lest I find myself in a coughing fit that squeezes my lungs of every breathable drop of air.  So long fitness challenge prize...  I'd rather have healthy lungs more quickly than have the cash prize but the drop in productivity between last month and this month has me a bit bummed.

Hearing from DLR, who is expressing wanting to be friends and hang out makes me feel very lucky to have someone who I know is serious about me.  I also know that because I'm not willing to sacrifice the trust and peace I have with this someone, I feel very good about telling him that this is not a possibility. He's incredibly pushy about getting movies back to me that were borrowed about a year ago and insistent that this is his only motivation but is also telling me that he misses my insight and opinions and then threw in that he is single again.  I don't buy it.  It reeks of bullshit.  And I've had about as much bullshit as I can stand.

Sit and wait.  Patience is the word of the year.

Vapo Rub Kind of Evening

There is not a single person whom I'm keeping this secret from anymore and it feels like a breath of fresh air.  It is excruciatingly painful to say goodbye and yet I'm emotionally conflicted because every time we have to say goodbye again, it is one day closer to not having to say goodbye anymore.  Just a few more months.  In the grand scheme of it all, a few months is really nothing.

I'm exhausted.  My plane was delayed an hour, I had to take a different bus route, I barely made it back in enough time to drop my bags, make a cup of tea, eat a handful of pretzels and get back on a bus downtown to attend class.  However, I am really very excited about my class.

Losing patience with the bus

What. A. Night.

The bus.  It was a nightmare today.  The district decided (for very good reasons) to implement an electronic card system for its college pass and will be rolling it out for many other uses later.  But the shit hole bus that serves my underserved route, which is rarely on time, always overcrowded, driven by a consistently cranky and or rude driver, and most definitely always dirty has not had a working card reader all week.  NBD, the drivers are either incompetent or uncaring because they always just let me on anyway.  This evening, I got on the bus to go downtown.  Everything was normal.  The bus got there on time (according to Google maps, RTD's site listed that it was scheduled 10 minutes later than Google said it would be) I boarded, the card reader worked, it was not overcrowded and relatively quiet.  Then.  All hell breaks loose when the driver is directed to take a detour.  Some lady freaks out about it and starts pacing the aisle, talking to the driver and calling someone on the phone.  Consequently, at the same time, the drunk, cracked out couple behind me started singing at the top of their lungs.  This prompts phone lady to shush them which prompts female drunk cracked out lady to get out of her seat and threaten to kick phone lady's ass.  I happen to be sitting in front of crack seat and across the aisle from phone lady so I'm thoroughly uncomfortable with the whole mess.  It calms down, I move to the front I exclaim (under my breath) "what the fuck" the driver hears me, chastises me for my language, crack lady gets in phone lady's face 1 or 2 more times within the seemingly endless detour.  I decide I'll get off earlier than planned but crack couple decides they're getting off there too so I decide I'll wait and then they don't get off there and then I get downtown.  I have 15 minutes to walk 5 blocks, pickup and pay for a prescription and walk 2 more blocks to catch my bus home. I all but sprint to make it and my bus home is consequently 10 minutes late.  FML

The good news is I was so worn out by the whole thing I decided not to cook for myself and go to the opening night of the highly anticipated opening restaurant across the street and that was, by far, the best decision I have made all night.

Alls well that ends well.

Revealed For What It Is

The cold weather is very isolating.  The matter of my cold weather cuddle buddy being so far away and my texting/drinking/good time buddies being otherwise occupied with their own lives only compounds the loneliness of the cold weather isolation.  So here I sit, trying to warm my bones under layers of blankets deciding whether to aid my heater with my oven because the North Pole has moved to Denver and it's less than freezing by double digit degrees.  And I do so by myself, healing from the emotional drain of an afternoon in the company of the Nebraskans.

I had some thoughts this morning about the purpose of the next few months of my life.  To take my life one thing, one small win, one day at a time would be something I could stand to learn to take full advantage of and appreciate more.  2013 is hereby dedicated to the small things.  It is dedicated to hitting the pavement and building strength, emotional  and physical  It is dedicated to doing all those small things I've always wanted to do.  It is dedicated to spending on experiences and not on things.  It is dedicated to spending the time I can with the people I have in my life before I don't have the luxury to do so anymore.  And it is dedicated to taking the small measures to prepare myself for the big changes.

It is likely that I will experience some deep loss in the next 12 months.  It is likely that there will be grand moments of happiness.  It is likely that there will be small moments of bliss and frustrations and inconvenience and peace.  But they will be mine, for better or worse and to be thankful for the moments that are mine is all that I seek for the year ahead of me.

A System of Near-Infinite Complexity

Watching this woman die is by far the most powerfully painful experience I can say I've ever and may ever experience.  This disease, this degeneration of a person; the extended, prolonged goodbye to the shell that was once a vibrant strong grandmother, it's not as though you have a funeral and say goodbye and find peace.  There is no peace to be found, just nothing you can do to ease the pain.  The pain for me, for my mother watching her mother die, for my grandmother who can't even dress herself or clean up after herself or be trusted to shower without injuring herself or wandering off.  The fear that this is how I will watch my own mother die, the anticipation that I too will have this to look forward to when my time comes.  Nothing scares me more than not having the chance to do wonderful things with my life before those memories are all that I have left because I do not know anything of my present. Nothing marks the inequality and horribleness of life quite like watching someone die of dementia.

The Obviously a Bit Bitter Post

Weddings are irritating me right now.  They are causing me to spiral into childish feelings of the little girl who isn't invited to the birthday party or whose little brother is somehow beyond all things imaginable getting married before her.  Why the hell do I feel so angry about these things?  They are weddings!  I don't even know if I want a wedding for myself!  I need to have a child, a little girl to be exact, and teach her to be awesome at math and not daydream about her future wedding but do daydream about the day she cures cancer because her mother socialized her to engage in science and encouraged her to get her PhD before settling on some socially acceptable form of what a woman's life is suppose to be like.

On that note, I wish someone would have encouraged me to be better at math as a kid.  I'm smart enough.  I always have been.  I just needed for someone to take an interest in pushing me harder.  Then maybe I wouldn't be so intimidated by math now.

The good news is it looks like I should be getting a $1000 reimbursement from the government for school.  That is effing fantastic news.

2013 is shaping up to be a complete and total test of my patience and my sanity and my determination to not let it get to me.

So cheers to taking a year to grow thicker skin and to preparing for a lifetime of achievement beyond that of the girl whose biggest day is simply devoting her life to a man.  This girl has bigger dreams then that.

One Very Long Paragraph Rant on Life Plans

As much as it pains me to say this.  I think it is best if I don't apply for more internships before December of this year.  It seems like my absolute best course of action is to cool my heels at my current suck the life out of me customer service gig through the end of summer, save enough so that I don't have to work through the fall semester, bolster my credit hours for fall and be completely ready to take on an internship in the Spring next year.  This way I'll have time to focus 100% on my school work, get my grades up high enough for an honors thesis and have time to work on said honors thesis.  Clearly I'm a great candidate, both people who interviewed told me so.  After next fall not only will I have GIS classes, but I'll also have some graduate level coursework, explicitly transportation planning coursework.  I will be a dynamite candidate in a year.  A year is nothing, really, when you get down to the nitty gritty of it.  And though I really passionately dislike my soul-sucking customer service gig, I chose banking so at least I'd have bank holidays.  If I have to work customer service, I want my effing bank holidays and vacation time.  I've already requested time off in January, March, May and July.  I can always call in a mental health day in the months I couldn't request time off in.  I'll get through it.  I just have to be diligent about sticking to my budget and not spending money not accounted for ahead of time.  My goal is to quit early August.  So the countdown begins, 7 more months of soul-sucking customer service potentially for the rest of time.  When I add in the rest of time bit I can handle the 7 months part.  And each month goes by so quickly.  This will give me a reason to start looking forward to paying rent.  Each rent check I cut is another month closer to reaching my goals and starting on a new journey.  If I have to pick up another customer service gig in January I can but I anticipate taking 18 credit hours in the fall and work will not work with that.  A break from work will be good anyway.

At any rate, I'll stop publicly musing about my possible life plans at this point.  It seems reasonable that I maybe just ranted for a very long paragraph...

Feeling Like Gold

In the two years following my move, I spent a great deal of time simply saying yes to all things, people, experiences, etc.  It was my way of healing, of experiencing.  My motto has been, in that time, if it will make for a good story, there is no reason not to do it.  This has served me well for the time but it came to a tipping point over the summer where I felt out of control.  Things that seemed as though they would be a fantastic story turned out to be heartbreaking stories in the end.  The second half of the year gave me a great chance to pick up the pieces of a life I had over extended and fallen apart and put them in place.  Not just in a haphazard "store them for now" type place but in a true introspection of what I really want for my life kind of way.  The fourth quarter of my year has been my strongest, most confident and sure time of my life thus far.  I had to fall down and fall hard to find a stronghold in my life's footing.  I suppose this is the story of life.

26 came up on me in a hurry.  I see a future; a realistic future for myself like never before and it is one that makes me very happy to look forward to.  Making less reckless, more well thought out decisions suddenly seems less boring than it did not so long ago.  I want to see this one through.  The opportunity costs of not pursing my current life courses outweighs the spent costs of the stumbles and failures along the way.

I can hardly wait to start school again in a few weeks.  I will have a planning class that will focus on Denver and the course content is thrilling to me.  And after this semester I will be doing nothing but planning classes and internships and graduate school applications and planning for the possibility of another big life adventure in another wonderful city.  My next five years hold a lot of hope and promise for me and I intend to make the best of what is left of my youth.

So from the recklessness of pursuit of crazy stories I transition into making sure to chase the dreams that scare me, to find a truce with my own inner wars and battles, to never leaving words unsaid, to being so good they can't ignore me, and to living out the life that I have imagined.

For the next year my focus is on making good decisions, taking care of my health (mental and physical), continuing my quest into radical honesty, learning to trust my own instinct and making sure to love and appreciate all the friends and family who have stuck by me through good decisions and bad.

Cheers!