repetition

i can't seem to get out of my own way.

i continue to make decisions, most of them poor. i make rash choices because i listen to everything inside of me except rationality. i don't seem to censor my own actions. when did i start to derail? have i always been like this and just never noticed?

aside from the disasters that come from my doing, i have plenty of other unpleasant things that have happened (as most of us have.) and for years now, i keep thinking that i deserve something good to happen to me. i feel like life owes me for all the things i've had to put up with. or that any day now, i'll get that one good thing that will turn my life around and reward me after all i've been through. when is my life going to be amazing like everyone else's seems to be? when do i get to be sublimely happy?

i think what i realized today is that nobody owes me anything. i don't have this event or incident coming to me that is going to alleviate all the negativity in my life. my life is not a movie, and it doesn't have that fair balance that i always hoped it did.

i don't write blogs as much as i'd like to. the entertainment factor (for me as well) is such a miniscule part of it. writing is so cathartic. i've hated my writing and, until this blog started a few years ago, i wouldn't let anyone read what i had written.

as my friend bob says, writing isn't about the end product, it's about the process - the process is what is important. and it really does feel that way. i feel elated, i write. i feel lonely, i write. full of guilt? self-loathing? in love with everything? i write. and sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not. sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. but thinking and typing and taking even the smallest time to write down how i feel makes it clear, makes me understand it more. and every once in a while, i regret getting that close to knowing how i feel.

yesterday was surreal. i worked a wedding for amanda, and helped with flowers. i was in an environment filled with super rich people who can sit around and bitch about pointless things because they are well off. a 20-something guy in a polo shirt and shorts comes riding down the hotel's course on a golf cart. he and two other guys pull up to whatever hole was in front of us, and he yells, "where the fuck is the grass on this fucking course?" there was a 5' by 5' patch near the cart path of just dirt.

i looked at him and thought, "i wish i could sit around and have nothing to worry about except what faults the 14th hole had."

i spent the evening with a group of people at the turf club, which is exactly like the minturn country club except that it's mostly a bar and the steaks aren't $20. my sirloin, if memory serves, was $6.95. and worth every penny.

everything about being there was wonderful. i laughed with some friends, and met a few others. we sat, ate and drank, talked shit, and laughed at each other without worry that we would offend or judge each other. it's one of those nights where, instead of periodically thinking about the near future, or the past, everyone was involved in the here and now.

i knew, however, that once the bartender asked me what i wanted to drink and i chose a manhattan (for whatever reason) that the night wouldn't stay perfect.

after we left the restaurant, the sharp edges of the evening started to blur.

that feeling lasted until the wee hours, and i spent most of the night quietly observing the people around me. i watched them talk, i paid attention to who looked each other in the eye when they spoke, i listen to their opinions about things and watched how they all reacted. i watched one of them, who normally reserves his sparse comments for the times when the situation calls for sarcasm, behave so unbelievably out of character that is was beautiful to watch. it was the first time i had ever seen this person smile. it blew me away to sit back and see a whole other person emerge from him. and though it was so contagious to be around, i believe it was temporary.

i don't think many people consciously realize this, but when a person is doing something that they are good at, it is true beauty. next time someone you know does what they do best, sit back and observe them. any faults, any awkwardness, disappears. for that one moment, they are beautiful and perfect. they glow.

i guess the same thing happens when people are truly happy. it happens for such a short span of time while that person worries about nothing and cares about only what is right then.

i have never seen that glow in myself, being that i have a hard time standing outside myself to see it. but i know when it happens because i know how it feels. it's so fleeting - we don't enjoy it enough while it lasts.