happy birthday josh!!!
thinking about lots of stuff
but as usual, failing to write about it.
last week i was out for beers with josh, miranda, reilly, and darren and we got to talking about life and how it should be lived. very cliche, but living life to its absolute fullest, etc. miranda has been able to really take this to heart after having her accident in cuba - she could turn the whole situation into something highly negative and bemoan the fact that she won’t be able to walk this summer. what she’s chosen to do instead is realize how much worse it could have been and count herself lucky that not being able to walk for a few months is just a temporary glitch in an otherwise kick ass life.
darren too. after having a meltdown (so to speak), he has decided to do the best possible thing (and something most people would hardly even consider possible for themselves) and take the summer off work to be able to do exactly what he wants. drive across the country. visit his girlfriend lots. hike in the middle of the day. go to every possible music festival. just basically take a bunch of time for himself to figure out exactly what he wants and where he’s going.
in discussing these things, the topic of change and how important it is came up. forcing yourself to step outside your bubble and take risks and do all those things you think about doing but manage to talk yourself out of… “i don’t have time”, “i would look stupid”, “i have to do the dishes”, “i’m afraid”.
i’m a person who tends to get stuck in my routine and tends to maybe shy away a bit from change. but, as i started to say this during our conversation there was a round of protest from the table. the fact that i moved from calgary to vancouver was point number one to disagree with my statement. i became the singer in a band with my new friends. i take dance classes by myself and have for years. i started snowboarding many years ago at a time when it wasn’t nearly as popular (especially for girls) as it has become. i took on a job that i’ve never done before and have excelled. i’ve written songs. sold my car and bought a scooter and ridiculous right hand drive van. embraced my inner girly-girl, at least when dressing for work.
i still feel as though i need to push myself and do more and experience more. travel. take a ballet class. meet even more new people. kayak. buy a house. etc.
i know i’ve got lots of time, but at the same time, who knows how much? even looking at the list above, i feel as though i’m still a fairly boring and lazy person. just a couple nights ago an evening was spent entirely in front of the tv, bored and apathetic, yet apprehensive about the lack of things being done. i sat there, feeling like i should be doing something, knowing i would feel better if i did something (anything!) other than what i was doing, yet completely disregarding that feeling and instead becoming half-comatose and incredibly grumpy. it was awful and it attributed to the bad day i had yesterday.
i did, however, realize yesterday that what my body was absolutely craving was some sort of physical activity. i missed my usual monday night dance class this week because i worked late, and my body wasn’t happy about it. this is a very good thing and something that i need to pay attention to. force myself to.
and there’s so many ways to do that. i just need to force myself out of my routine bubble (which, though it includes things like hip hop classes and band practice, needs expanding) and have all those experiences i keep quietly thinking about.
my mother is ridiculous!
so are my friends! i’ll start with my mother.
i’ve been having serious space issues on my computer, so much so that i haven’t been able to download photos from my camera to it for over a month for fear of exceeding my rapidly diminishing limit (and this is after several clean-ups and purges freeing up several gigs worth of space at a time - however, when all you’re working with is 60 gb in the first place, there’s not much that can be done). then last week josh and i discovered that the trackpad had stopped working and the cd drive was acting all buggy (turns out that was actually caused by pirates, but that’s another story). so i start coming to the conclusion that perhaps a new computer is in order and make a pro/con list and whatnot, the biggest con of course being cost.
anyways! the day after discovering this, i called mom to get her advice because 1) she’s my mom and i *always* talk to my mom before making any kind of large decision, and 2) she is basically a mac guru and can tell me whether my concerns are justified or if i should just suck it up and make due with what i’ve got because it’s really not that bad (honestly, i just didn’t know and my mom can call bullshit on me anytime). so i went through everything with her, to which she immediately responded “you need a new computer, just get it”. which prompted much thinking out loud on my part about how to go about doing this since i don’t have that kind of cash just sitting around. she listened to me blather for a while about lines of credit and credit cards and savings allocated for other purposes before telling me to shut up and just put it on her credit card, don’t expect anything for christmas
WHAT?!
now, knowing mom, this really isn’t all that surprising because as she says “you’re my only kid and i can afford to spoil you, therefore i will.” but this kind of conclusion was not at all what i was expecting when i called, i mostly just wanted to bounce ideas off her. but she insisted and even managed to turn it around by pointing out that since she and dad are going on a cruise at christmas this year that it actually makes more sense for them to do this now rather than have even more large bills when december rolls around. she even got on the apple website and told me exactly what upgrades to do all the while ignoring my protests that it was too much.
she’s the best, my mom is. truly.
and my computer arrived today! white macbook, 4 gb of ram, 250 gb hard drive, SEXY. plus, the deal is even sweeter because there’s a promotion right now that when you buy a computer, you can get an ipod nano for free. this is awesome because my first generation ipod mini is dying a slow death as it’s been used pretty much excessively since i got it, so i was able to kill two birds with one stone. sorry birds! thanks mom!!
and to make a good day even better, in my email this afternoon was a message telling me that my friends were taking me out for belated birthday dinner! last month my birthday celebrating got a bit pre-empted by the fact that miranda was just getting home from cuba and having surgery and generally needing love and support by all of us. and this was absolutely totally fine by me, my birthday was not nearly as important as making sure everything was good in miranda land - there’s always next year! but i guess my friends felt kind of bad about it because they decreed that delicious sushi dinner be had tonight in honour of me getting older. they are swell!
and now to get on with configuring the new beast!
