My friend believes that people often experience certain themes during seasons of the year. He says summer can be a very challenging time for people, fall is often a time of adjusting to new things, (winter I can't recall what he thought). But I remember spring was something having to do with new experiences and refreshing/flourishing. I rarely look to horoscopes or any predictative type of things, but I've noticed a similar pattern in my life. Last spring was the first time in a very long time that I met someone who I really felt that 'incredibly great friend' connection with as well as the physical attraction. It didn't develop into the love of my life, but it was a fresh experience that stretched my expectations. I started to believe that I COULD hope for an amazing match for me--possibility. The year before was something similar on a smaller scale. This year there are no great guys asking me out on dates. But its really okay. I'm not fretting over that,
but at times it's unnerving to only get asked out by terribly unattractive guys. (Another post for another day hehe...)

 

You know how little kids will look up to older people with a sense of awe-- looking at them with that wonder in their eyes? I think it has to do with hope. As a kid if I found someone who I thought was incredibly 'cool' or talented or amazing in some right, somewhere inside I wanted to believe that I could be like them someday. And if I could get close enough to understand what made them special, maybe I could find it too. Nowadays, I think my criteria for that kind of admiration is quite different. But once in a rare while I find someone whose talents and heart I deeply admire. I have someone like that now and much to my surprise, it's been turning into a friendship that I never would have imagined I could have. At times it's like having a drink with a favorite author or sitting next to the lead singer of a band you could only dream of meeting. To admire someone from afar and then to experience a friendship with them is oddly surreal thing. But it pushes me to believe that pie in the sky dreams can come true, as cheesy disney movie message as that sounds.

 

For the past few years, I've experienced a mindset stretching experience each spring. That may just be coincidence. But the impact is the same. These kinds of experiences are amazing and bring such vividness to my ability to dream, but they also come with fears. What if I aim high and fall harder than I bargain for?
What if I my faults outshine whatever good qualities I have? My high hopes come with high standards for myself. I don't know how to get around that. I think that's why I'm kicking myself a little for saying things today that reveal pieces of the 'faulty' side of me. The side that I try to keep to myself, secretly hoping it'll go away with time-- like one of the seasons, it'll just pass. But it seems that faults have a way of coming back to the forefront in time...and the fall is back again before we can even see it coming.

I only have 15 minutes to jot down a few things so I'll try to be ultra succint. I think habits are increasingly difficult to change. I used to get irritated when I was little, about 8 or 9, and my mom told me that people don't really change their habits despite all of her hope that bit by bit, they could. I thought that was a pecissmistic cop out, but I guess there is truth to the difficulty of changing one's habits. I know that my habit of getting overwhelmed for reasonable amounts of time (usually 2 weeks of overscheduling, overtime, and finals) that lead to eliminating everything resembling personal time (e.g. this blog) lead to about an additional month of neglect of those things after the storm has subsided. That is the mundane truth behind why it's so hard for me to maintain momentum with this blog. And for that, I'm truly sorry when I do get my chance to login and I see the inspiring comments people take the time to write. I love being able to write and being able to hear other people's ideas and responses. Something inside of me says that it's a piece of something so worthwhile and fundamental to our impact on each other-- to communicate. So bit by bit, I hope to change my habit of neglect despite many many failures to do so.

 

Chris: Somedays I think I could post some pictures, but the whole nature of the online world being able to view me as a photo and not an acquaintance kind of freaks me out. I think a part of me still subscribes to the belief that I've encountered growing up that many people will automatically find you ugly if you are not white. Pathetic, I know. Yet still a part of my semiconscious.

 

David: I totally understand your move to the private blogging for a while. The only thing is I used my work email for my msn login, which is a bad move, because I found out later that I can't let anyone outside of work obtain it or I could get in trouble. Will I leak that out if I request access?

 

I'm running out the door... to be continued!