Day Fourteen

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Today was one of those days where it became perfectly evident to me that I have, in fact, made progress. A lot of times it's near impossible to tell unless you've got some kind of reference point--something that draws attention to the gap between the way you were then and the way you are now. But every once in a while, we'll get one of those moments of clarity, where we don't need a picture or an old journal or someone telling us, "You're different." We just realize that somewhere along the line, we've changed. 

• Show two people how much they mean to me

(1). Asked a girl/new friend from one of my classes to come eat lunch with me today. Covered her coffee and we ended up talking for almost two and a half hours. Turns out we've got a lot more in common than I ever could've hoped. I think I'm finally meeting the down-to-earth, optimistic, search-for-their-own-happiness people that I came here for. 

(2). Picked up Emily's shopping list and went to the  grocery store for her; she needed a bunch of stuff before the storm hits tomorrow, but she had a six to midnight shift and didn't think she'd have time to swing both work and shopping. 

• Help out a stranger

Put a quarter in a random meter that was about to expire. Hands down worst thing is coming back to your car after hours of classes and finding a ticket chilling on your windshield. 

• Live instead of sleeping

I am completely unembarrassed to say that I stayed in bed until eleven thirty this morning and I don't regret one second of it. 

• Do something good for myself, by myself

Finally took a couple minutes to pick up the clothes off my floor, gather my 23712398 textbooks into one precise pile, make my bed, and organize my shelves. It's come to my attention that I'm a really shitty college kid. Not only does beer fail to accelerate my creative-process and all-nighters to elongate my productivity, but messes stress me the hell out. I'll just check myself into an old people's home now. 

Yeah, stuffed carrot man on my bed. Pimpin'. Nbd. 

• Write here and write elsewhere

Yeah, and, if an hour-long journal post for Honors in US Debates counts, then also yeah. Who am I kidding with this whole fiction-writer thing; I'll just abandon that and make a career out of writing big-worded academic essays comparing and contrasting the political views of dead guy number 1 with those of dead guy number 2. That's my sarcastic voice and I miss half-assed I'm-gonna-make-stuff-up-now writing. 

• Make a conscious decision to leave my comfort zone

So in all honesty, this has been an ongoing effort, but as of this particular evening, I'm done for good. I realized tonight that I went a full twenty-four hours without thinking of this kid, or feeling inferior because of this kid, or feeling like I could've done something different with this kid, or  thinking that every white Hyundai I see might be this kid, and that thought--that idea that I've finally let go--is something so far out of my comfort zone, I could shit bricks right now. For the longest time I was under the impression that things didn't get fixed unless I fixed them, but really, I could not have been more wrong. This world has a way of healing itself, and if you can help speed the process along, great. But if you can't--if all you can do is learn to sit back and let things unravel and be okay with any and all outcomes--then that's great, too. In fact, it might even take more courage than trying to steer things yourself. 

• Take three pictures of three beautiful things.

(1). See above. 
(2). See below. 
(3). See this bumper sticker that I recently put on Finn the Elantra. Finnception. I'm gonna keep making that joke til someone tells me to stop. 

• Meditate

I'll get this done before bed tonight. 

• Look up at the sky 

A couple minutes after sunset, the sky looked like this: 

And then, three hours later when I went to leave my apartment again, there wasn't a single cloud in the sky and every single star was out. Weird to think that sometime between now and eight AM tomorrow, every cloud in America is going to have gathered over New Paltz and will be crapping frozen precipitation all over my weekend plans. Then again, I guess it says a whole lot about the tendencies of change. 

"Look at the sky. We so rarely look at the sky. We so rarely note how different it is from moment to moment, with clouds coming and going. We just think of the weather, and even with the weather we don't think of all the different nuances of weather. We just think of good weather and bad weather. This day, right now, is unique weather, maybe a kind that will never exactly in that form come again. The formation of clouds in the sky will never be the same... Open your eyes; look at that." -David Steindl-Rast

Maybe, if people thought of their lives like this, they'd be way less inclined to think that they could ever be stuck where they are. 

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