jMcJohnson

This has been the year of endings and beginnings.

I start my new job (for real) on Tuesday. I have my last day of training the new girl for my old job tomorrow. My new job gives me more responsibility and is more challenging (which gives me diarrhea just thinking about it). My old job was fun, but relatively mindless; heck, half the time I fantasized about quitting, however, when I was cleaning out my desk and moving my box of oatmeal to my new desk (in a different part of the office) I felt sad.

I hope this new job will help me work on my horrible lack of confidence/self-doubt. I think it will.

Ryan and I traded in the first (reallysmall reallycheap) car we bought as married people. We bought a shiny new car with power everything and XM radio. I love it, but in some weird way, I find myself waxing nostalgic about our old (did I mention it was reallysmall and had power NOTHING?) car. I actually visited it on the used car lot a couple weeks ago. It made me feel sad. I thought about where it came from (Florida) and all the fun road trips we took in it and how now it was just sitting in the dark alone with a SUPER CLEAN sticker on the windshield.

(I often, weirdly, find myself feeling sorry for inanimate objects.)
I wonder who will own my old car next?

My twenties are over. My thirties are in full swing. So far, so good.

My friend group is quietly, slowly, seismically shifting. It basically sucks. I have no control over it and that pisses me off. I haven’t mastered making new friends yet. I am realizing (to quote a friend) “I sort of hate something about everyone.”

So many people I know (in my opinion) qualify as functioning alcoholics. It’s very funny to me how when people are drunk they think they are witty and deep, when in fact, they sound like giant assholes. (myself included.) Some of my friends drink to deal with their lives, they can’t open up to anyone without it.

That’s scary/annoying to me.

Tonight, when I went for my walk, I listened to this song on my ipod. I like it. It’s kinda where I’m at today.

Wilco/Either Way

Maybe the sun will shine today
The clouds will blow away
Maybe I won’t feel so afraid
I will try to understand either way

Maybe you still love me maybe you don’t
Either you will or you won’t
Maybe you just need some time alone
I will try to understand
Everything has its plan
Either way I’m going to stay right for you

Maybe the sun will shine today
The clouds will roll away
Maybe I won’t be so afraid
I will understand
Everything has its plan either way

Morgan rides the Night Train. All aboard for Hoboville!

Knitted beer tab purse or medieval battle gear?

Nothing says maturity like wearing a beer box that says “asshole.”

Gun show.

After Joe and I had a huge Mexican Feast (where we Feasted upon Mexicans) and Joe had a giant beer, I made him come to Gordman’s with me. Here are the results:

Ooh la la!

Shortly after I took this picture, Joe punched a grizzly bear in the nuts.

This picture…words fail.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how much I miss all of my friends. Now, before I explain this, let me say that the friends I have that are local are amazing. I love them, they make me happy, but I want everyone here. Now. Maybe even all at once. I feel like arranging a quickie wedding for someone just to get everyone all in one place. Maybe a Friend Reunion? I don’t know. I mean, of course we can visit, of course holidays will come, (that still doesn’t bring everyone I love to one place) of course if we all were here all the time it would be less special, etc. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting people here on a random Saturday night that can’t get here fast enough.

In my (sometimes) childlike mind it’s hard for me to understand why we all have to even be apart. Couldn’t we pick a city? Someone used to tell me about pioneers and how they moved as a unit (family and all) and how they stayed together for life, just moving on all together when one person needed to. I know that’s unrealistic, but I still love the idea. I feel the ties that bind us all loosening over time and I hate it. I don’t think anyone will ever truly fall off the radar (unless they want to) but the more days that pass between friends that are separated, the more little things happen that you don’t tell them about. Then big things start to happen and you don’t tell them about it. You can’t get together for drinks anymore, you never run into each other in the grocery store, you don’t have the chance to go to their house on a Tuesday to watch some mindless reality show and have dinner. Even your memories seem to recede a bit. People look different when you see them next. They act different. They are different. You’re different. New chapters have been started in their lives and you are still a hundred pages back. It’s so hard to catch up. To really catch up. There are a million reasons why this happens. Some of them are your fault, some are other people’s. Most are just things being the way they happen to be.

Life is feeling a little lonely right now.

Whoever you are, if you are reading this, chances are I miss you.

I love these…

Only losers hit a milestone birthday and don’t get a tattoo…

Pre:

Post:

The phrase is from E. E. Cummings:
“Born into a Unitarian family, Cummings exhibited transcendental leanings his entire life. His journals are replete with references to “le bon Dieu” and as well prayers for inspiration in his poetry and artwork (such as “Bon Dieu! may I some day do something truly great. amen.”). Cummings “also prayed for strength to be his essential self (’may I be I is the only prayer–not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong’), and for relief of spirit in times of depression (’almighty God! I thank thee for my soul; & may I never die spiritually into a mere mind through disease of loneliness’).”

Also by Cummings:

“I thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes”

Such is my prayer in this, my thirtieth year.