gotta be fo me

I have no idea who still reads this thing. Even when I send the boyfriend the link to share with him one thing or another, I'm pretty sure he only skims through to see if his name is in the entry. He's like that. Maybe I'll start calling him Rick in these entries so that he never finds his name when he skims through. I would delight in that in a mean way. I'm like that.

Kidding, Rick. Love.

Being back in an environment that suits my headspace has been really soft and comfortable and feels like getting into bed after a long day of swimming and running around the park. I'm now able to be productive in personal ways that are hugely important to me and I don't feel like I'm suffocating under the weight of anyone else's insanity. That's also hugely important. I don't take so well to insanity. I'm also enjoying my life outside the work place a lot more than I was befo. It's important for a lot of reasons including things like friends and lovers.

Along with this blessing of freedom comes the curse of freedom. You who struggle with that dichotomy know what I mean. Luckily, I'm older, wiser, more patient, less angry and generally more capable than I was when I used to have the freedom of this job, so I anticipate that I will wear it better than I did before.

I've been reading a lot of blogs lately. New blogs, old blogs. It's an oh-so-favorite pastime. I love getting hooked on some unsuspecting stranger's, oh, say, May 2004 entries and reading until my eyes cross. I'm captivated by getting 'a sense' of a person. I realized this about myself last night when I began asking my friend Steve P. question after question about his father and his parents and what they're like and how they relate to him and to one another. I could ask anyone anything all day long. I thrive off asking people questions and listening to their answers and discovering that I have more questions based on what they've said. I'm curious. It's my nature. I oft (too oft) fantasize about officially conducting an interview series so that I'd feel a little less creepy about stopping Interesting Person X on the street and asking them at least ten questions about where they're going, what they're doing there, why they're making that face, if they know they're making that face, and how many siblings they have.

So the blog phenomenon (can it be called a phenomenon? i say no.) is right up my alley. I don't get to learn things on my terms necessarily, which is its own wonderful struggle, but I do get to absorb a great great deal of information about a person's experience as a human on this planet. And I can glean even more information about them based on what they haven't chosen to share. It's drool-inspiring. And if we're all lucky, they've got photos too!

But it also gives me a strange inferiority thing, the over-reading of blogs. Makes me sit and ponder whether or not I'm doing enough creatively with my own writing. Makes me wonder whether or not I actually have anything interesting to contribute to this interconnectedweb or whether I'm just writing to hear the click of my own keyboard. Does it fucking matter? Naturally not. And this thing's gotta be just fo me. Ya know? I'm this. I'm this exact person.

Twenty-seven, and all of you who've been there done that can commence eye rolling now, is definitely the age which, as it approaches, has caused me the most reflection and the most well-well-well-look-who's-actually-getting-older-and-cooler sense of myself than any other approaching age has in the past. And I've probably said that every single year since I was 15 and I'll probably say it for at least the next 90.