i'll take ya to the candy shop

if a running brain could cause weight loss, i'd be a skinny as an olsen twin. i am, by nature, an annoyingly contemplative person, but this fall/winter has been especially contemplative. i feel as though i have lists of questions streaming through my brain, and i have another stream of possible answers, but i can't for the life of me match the answers to the questions. throw a birthday, the holidays, and the death of a friend in the mix, and the questions and contemplation multiply.

i struggle a lot with the pressure i put on myself to live a full life. my recent analogy is feeling like i'm in a candy store, and i look around and see hundreds of great options (for me, these are in the form of places to live and places to travel). i'm so overwhelmed by the options that i just freeze and fear that i'll end up walking out of the store having bought nothing (i.e. ending up being 90 and having done nothing in fear of doing the wrong something).

it's a struggle for me to understand what's most important in life: planting roots and fostering face-to-face relationships with people who know and love you or traveling and experiencing the world. while i've proven to myself that face-to-face relationships can be made and fostered across the world, there is something to be said for fostering the relationships that have formed you (i.e. family, long-time friends, etc). and i struggle to find a happy medium.

there are so many things i don't know, and i feel as though i can't even articulate how i feel right now. but what i do know is that we get one life. one. and i know i won't be young forever. and i also know that i'll hate myself if i wake up at 95 having regrets. i have a feeling that a 95 year-old version of myself should not be trifled with.

so my brain continues to run. mile after mile after bloody mile. but i take solace knowing that i will figure it out. i will. i must. 

*insert appropriate title here (disclaimer: tired and emotional)

to have a successful blog, one is supposed to blog frequently. if one doesn't, people lose interest, and they stop checking back. thankfully, i don't blog for others. i blog to process. and if others read, well, that's just humbling.

truth is, there has been nothing that i have wanted to share about recently. these last few months have been rough, and i didn't exactly feel like documenting about my inability to get out of bed some days. while i know i've gone through the last couple months for a reason, yada yada yada, it hasn't been a time worth sharing with anyone else.

and i don't know that i have much more to share tonight. but i needed to write.

tonight i attended the wedding of a dear high school friend. it was a much more emotional night than i had anticipated. first, i was ushered in by boys i once babysat. they're grown men now, yet i feel as though i have not grown up at all. spooky. then i saw my friend's grandma enter without her husband by her side. he had passed on since i'd last been home. they were a commonplace duo during the time that i've known my friend and her twin, and it made me so sad to see her without him.

but what was most emotional for me was to have a grave realization as to how much our friendship has changed since it began in fifth grade. to go from inseparable for most of our lives to not even knowing the man she was marrying. it broke my heart.

i know friendships naturally change. it's part of life. but sometimes i mourn the loss of friendships as seriously as a death. some people leave an empty hollow in your heart that no time or person can fill. there are things i wish i would have said. there are thousands of things i wish i could say. but i didn't. and i don't.

leaving the reception hall tonight, i thought of all that's changed over the years. i'm not a person who believes in regrets. i'm not. but sometimes i wonder what life would be like if some aspects of my life were different. would things be better? worse? it's impossible to know. so i'll just keep trying to trudge forward, one breath, one footstep, one heartbeat at a time. and when i get to the other side, i hope my regrets are few.

run

lots of downtime=and insane amount of self-reflection. 

i've reflected so much that i put most mirrors to shame. i'm still left with so many questions though. 

a trip to the therapist today only created more questions, but in a good way. she knows me well enough to know that when i find the answer, i'll run with it. 

i'm ready to run. 

my life as an amateur yogi

last saturday, my friend M and i went to a yoga studio in oak park to take advantage of their "one week free" promotion. i like free things, so i was all game. this studio only does "hot" yoga. classes range anywhere from 90-105 degrees. it's...hot. well, i loved the class so much, that i've gone for the past three days by my own volition. i love it. not only do i leave feeling calm, but i'm so damn sweaty that i feel like i really accomplished something (which is saying a lot these days). let me share with you some observations/experiences as an amateur yogi:

-it turns out that yogis don't wear running shorts, running shirts (i sported my Shamrock Shuffle 5K! shirt), or cotton shirts that show sweat. having worn all of these items over the past three days, i'm slowly learning how to fit in as a yogi.

-another thing yogis don't do? bring beach towels to lay down on top of mats. i wanted to bring SOMETHING to put down over my mat, as i had just given it a good washing after power washing it with my sweat the past few days. however, my brightly colored beach towel, complete with palm trees and beach umbrellas, didn't really fit in. additionally, it honestly distracted me. i couldn't balance all night.

-however. the not-being-able-to-balance well thing may have been a result of the fact that tonight's class was conducted by candlelight. good lord. i thought it'd be all spiritual and meditative. instead i found i couldn't focus my eyes and did all i could just to stand up straight. light rocks.

-i have determined my DREAM JOB is to make yoga session playlists. each class i've gone to has had a stellar line-up. many of the songs were some of my favs, which kinda tells me i seek out calm, meditative tunes. i also find it kind of distracting when songs like the lumineers' "ho hey" come on. it's hard to tap your toes in tree pose.

-tonight, the instructor said, "next, we will do sha na ho ne ka hashim (ok. i made that up. something yogi-ish). sit-ups." being told to do sit-ups in another language makes them sound so much more exciting and much less painful.

-many yogis have often wondered, "i wonder what the WORST meal you could eat before doing yoga is." well, look no further. about an hour and a half before i went to yoga tonight, i had homemade pizza, salad, beer, and trader joe jo-jo cookies. turns out, sweating and contorting is not fun when you have blue moon and frosting rolling around in your belly.

-some yogis like to breathe REALLY loudly. tonight i was by a man who had all sorts of grunts, yawns, and even a few farts. i felt as though i was listening to someone having sex or sleeping.

while i'm a long ways from complete zen, i'm enjoying all these new lessons. i'm working really hard to be more curious in my life, and this has been a great first step.

namaste, ya'll.

outsider's heart

"I think, at the end of the day, I have an outsider's heart. You always hope that you're going to find that place where you belong — you know, you follow the map or the playbook that everyone in the world seems to have, or understand, and you will arrive at the place where things make sense. And I think ... that's a little naive, and that you have to build that place yourself. And that's a lonely thing to realize, but also an exciting one."-Tift Merritt

amen, sister. 

listen to the whole interview HERE.

bringing me back to myself

sometimes it's friends that bring us back to ourselves. here's just a few of the ways i've been humbled by friends this past week:

lunch with Mr. M

last weekend i had lunch in oak park with mr. m. he and i go back to my days at the bowling magazine when i first moved to chicago. while mr. m and i don't talk a lot, he's one of those people who, when we do talk, always brightens my day.

so after many attempts of getting together since i got back to the states, we finally made it happen, his beautiful daughter in tow. as i've ho-hummingly shared in my previous posts, i've been in a serious funk lately, so i came to lunch with mr. m anxious about any conversations surrounding jobs. i just didn't want to talk about it, and i didn't want to seem like a pathetic wet rag to my upbeat friend.

as we were talking, he shared some of the hard stuff he's been going through lately. he then said, "you're one of the most positive, optimistic people i've ever met. i knew seeing you would be good for me right now." whoa. WHAT? in my current state, i felt like the LEAST optimistic or positive person EVER. i didn't even feel like being around myself at the moment, so him saying this meant the world. it's amazing what one person sharing his/her perceptions of us can do to a soul. for me, it gave me hope and made my heart happier than it had been in days.

regurgitated advice of MJ

MJ is a friend i met in spain. she now lives in texas, and we have been each others' rocks through this hard transitionary time. we've been leading oddly parallel lives since we got home. i have no doubt that i couldn't have made it this far without her.

however, MJ is a tricky biscuit. she has this amazing ability to remember every piece of advice i've ever given to her and spit it right back at me right when i need it most. i find this both endearing and annoying. just when i'm starting to enjoy wallowing in my own self pity, she'll say, "well, legel, didn't you tell me once that?" yep. yep i did, MJ. she's really, REALLY taught me that if i'm going to give advice, i need to take the advice i give. noted. 

a talk with my heart-warmer, E

E is a friend from my camp counselor days. like Mr. M, we don't talk all that frequently, but she's one of those people who i know i could call at any time and tell her anything in the whole world, and she'd have my back and then some. well, E and i finally talked tonight for the first time since i don't know when. what i love about E is that she always, no matter what, calms my heart-through her words, through her sharing, and through the mere tone of her voice. she somehow seems to bring me back to myself, and i couldn't be more thankful.

this past week i just had to get away, so i went to madison to spend time with some dear friends. last night P and his band played some songs in the living room, one of which was the song sang at little miss J's baptism. the song has many notable lyrics, none of which i really remember verbatim, but the song speaks to the fact nothing else really matters in life but our friends in family. today i'm thankful as ever for friends who remind me who i am when i can't quite remember. what-oh-what would i do without such dear people in my life? 

blips

contemplating where-
to live
to work
to focus

pondering what-
to do
pondering how-
to do it

wishing i could-
pick myself up
start
stop