Love and Survival

Sometimes the best inspiration for writing a new blog post is reading another blog which hits you in all the right spots. This happened to me recently when a dear friend of mine wrote this and it really connected with me. The power of the written word is something else. I’ve been writing a lot lately, short stories and letters and journal entries. It’s been really therapeutic and while a lot of these things will probably never be shared with the general public (sorry, readers), they have really helped me to grasp some perspective about my life right now.

The fact is this: I’ve been feeling fairly self-pitying lately but I’ve been trying to cover it up with a thin layer of bravado and comic relief. That’s kind of my MO – don’t feel things completely. Put on a happy face and shimmy around the house to some big band tunes and forget your woes. Buy things that make you happy (even if you can’t afford them). Watch a lot of TV and read a lot of books and get lost in the fantastical. Go for long walks on the beach with your dog – staying up late enough to see the sunrise and making sure you catch the sunset as well. Find complicated recipes to try out. Hang out with your friends and stay distracted – always stay distracted.

But eventually… eventually you have to stop moving. Eventually you have to look life right in the face and deal with what it’s giving you. Eventually you have to stop the smiling and the laughing and the dancing and the strolling. Eventually you can’t run anymore. I’ve never been good at that bit – the stopping and the dealing. The consequences for this flaw are varied – but whatever the results have been, they’ve rarely been good.

So here I am. Staring into the eye of the storm. Forcing myself to stop and letting it sweep me away. But really, who’s to say that’s a bad thing?

I’m going to be really nerdy for a second but bear with me and I’ll try to make sense of it all.

Recently, as a means to distract myself (please note above section of post), I have been watching a lot of a little show you may have heard of – Doctor Who. I had never watched this show before now. I’d resisted it for a long time for a number of unimportant reasons but then finally decided to give it a chance because there were enough episodes to keep me occupied for a while and because it seemed like a complete farce and I am a huge fan of escapism, especially in times of distress. Now, that being said, I took to this show quickly and completely. At first I thought it was just because, as previously stated, I’m pretty nerdy and this sort of thing tends to appeal to me. I mean, two of my favorite shows in the world are Battlestar Galactica and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Doctor Who, I figured, should be right up my alley.

I breezed through the first four series (and I mean starting when it was brought back in 2005 – none of that crazy quirky overly British stuff from the 70s) and I was utterly captivated. Every episode kept me not only on the edge of my seat, but touched that part of me – the part I know that I get from my dad – with an itch to just…. fly away to somewhere new. (Also, David Tennant is a complete babe, so there’s that.)

However, the more I watched, the more I realized that there had to be something else that I was connecting to. I mean, I tend to get obsessed with shows sometimes for reasons no deeper than pure entertainment value (New Girl, I’m looking at you) but there was something different here. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it for a while but eventually it hit me: somewhere between the third and fourth series, I realized that the recurring theme of humanity’s continued crazy impossible absolutely mad ability to survive despite everything standing against them… there was something beautiful in that. Sometimes the need to survive brings out the worst in us – an ugly side that this show does not shy away from – but the instinct itself isn’t evil. It’s just who we are if you strip everything else away, if you break us down to the most basic part of ourselves. We survive when we shouldn’t. I think of things like the Crusades, the Holocaust, the atrocities in Sierra Leone, the Civil War – and it amazes me how despite everything that human beings are put through (and put themselves through), they just keep going. Isn’t that something? Isn’t that maddening? The resilience of the human spirit is probably the most awesome thing I can think of.

I suppose all this got me thinking about what it means to be human and the legacies that we leave behind. My mom has been emailing me a lot recently about our ancestors and our family’s history and it’s been great learning about my mom’s house (outside of Florence, in Stia) and how it was built by my ancestors in the early 1800s, by three brothers who had lost so much of their family and friends to the Black Death. They had survived but then what? What would be their mark in the world? That house – and after about two hundred years, it’s still standing. It’s still surviving.

And really this all comes down to the one thing that keeps floating in my mind over the last couple of years: how do we continue to survive when our bodies give out on us, when our souls are gone? I guess I’m getting a little existential here; I hope you can forgive me. It’s hard not to get lost in spiritual complexities when death is literally following you everywhere you go. I just can’t help but wonder what it all means and how it all matters and if parts of ourselves really stay behind when we appear to vanish.

I have to be honest here and I hope that people don’t get terribly offended when I say this but I do think there is a good chunk of the population that wants to have kids because they feel like if they have a physical piece of themselves in the world, they’ve left a contribution that will continue through time forever. Something about that has always seemed kind of disturbing to me but I guess it just keeps going back to that natural instinct… to keep surviving in one way or another. But in what other ways can we do this, as a species, as communities, as soul-bearing vessels? I think it’s more than leaving patches of DNA behind. I think it’s the non-physical imprints that we leave behind that truly stand the test of time. That first smell of Autumn – like… woodchips and cinnamon… that smell will always make me think of fall trips to the Cape with my dad and collecting leaves of red and orange and my mom’s fresh baked biscotti with vanilla-laced hot chocolate. Otis Redding is wonderful in so many ways but I love him as much as I do partially because listening to his music takes me back to a time when my parents were happy and danced in the kitchen while my mom was baking ziti and filling the house with warmth. There are a million other examples and I guess my point is… we never really leave, not completely. Parts of us continue to survive, in the way that we love and care for each other and create memories even when we don’t even realize those memories are happening. Our ability to love – that’s what makes us amazing creatures. Love and survival and connecting to one another. Even when we’re gone, our imprints remain forever – it is borderline magical. It’s magnificent. It’s awe inspiring.

And yes, my friends – these are thoughts that have come to me thanks to Doctor Who so I guess I owe the creators of that show a debt of gratitude!

Essentially, it’s nice to know that when our bodies go – as well as the bodies of our loved ones – and it feels like we have nothing left to hold on to… there are pieces that will stick around even if we can’t always feel it. Sometimes in tiny drops. Sometimes it’ll come in waves. But it’s always there, underneath the surface. So today, it’s okay to face the storm and feel the pain and the sorrow and the anger and the indignity of it all because who knows when the next wave of joy and beauty will overtake us? Could be tomorrow so we have to keep on moving until we meet that wave again – and survive another day, and maybe create a few more memories to leave behind.  

Medicinal Cinema

Spending time with someone who isn't able to speak (or easily communicate in any way) can be difficult. Throw into the mix that it's someone you love and you're used to being able to speak to about almost anything for hours on end... then there's a whole new level of melancholy. Partial paralysis takes out the option for playing cards or checkers. There are no karaoke nights in our horizon or drinks & tamales at Ponce's. No late night strolls on the beach or Motown singalongs next to a roaring bonfire. No more surfing lessons or running around the backyard with Lee and a water hose (yes yes, I'm the meanest doggy owner/mom ever).

There's just us and an ocean of silence that cannot be remedied. I come in with homemade pudding, with books to read my father while he rests (I've gotten halfway through the Adventures of Kavalier and Clay), with news about the Red Sox continuing to be awesome, with Miles Davis playing in the background as we take naps together. All of these things, however, on some level... I think they remind him of what he can't do. He can't feed himself. He can't play music anymore. And being read to? He's supposed to be the dad, not the child... Perhaps I was reading too much into it but it's clear that he is pained and I'm trying to find ways to show that he's not weak, he's not an invalid - that we all need help and we all need to lean on someone at one time or another. So I found the one thing my father and I have always shared, have always bonded over, have always loved: film.

We have watched Goldfinger and Carmen Jones and Roman Holiday and His Girl Friday and one of my dad's personal favorites, In the Heat of the Night. Cary Grant was the first thing to make my dad smile since he's woken up - and maybe it was fleeting and maybe if I hadn't glanced at him at the exact right moment, I never would have seen it at all but it was there nonetheless.

I've said it many times and I'll say it again: film has the ability to transform us, to shake us, to move us, to make us feel things that we need to feel. Film has always been one of those things I've turned to in dark times and good. Singing in the Rain? Breakfast at Tiffany's? Pretty much ANYTHING by Julie Andrews? Even The Sound of Music, which I admit became a lot less happy go lucky for me when I got older and realized what that movie was really about. Or - and I cannot stress enough in saying how much joy this movie has brought into my life over the years - The Princess Bride, the only flick in history to make this stone cold cynic honestly believe that maybe true love isn't the most lame sounding thing in the whole world.

How can movies do that? How can they make me feel like life is okay when life itself is telling me something entirely different? How is it possible that after the horrific year - well, the last two years really - that I've had, watching Audrey Hepburn running through the rain, desperately searching for Cat, can make me cry tears of honest joy? How can I be laughing when my world is falling apart just because Dick Van Dyke is singing about chimneys? I am a strong believer in the idea of escapism, that's why. Sometimes it's all I have to keep on standing, to keep on hoping, to keep on breathing.

When I was a kid, before I moved to the east coast and settled into life here and I was growing up in San Diego, I can fully admit that I didn't have a whole lot of friends. It wasn't really until I was twelve or so that I actually started socializing with kids my own age - playing little league baseball, joining the pep squad (yes, that knowledge is a freebie, enjoy it), and eventually trips to Fashion Valley and even to L.A. for late night flicks at the Cinerama on Sunset Blvd or Tijuana for weekend getaways (which were mostly just for the delicious food and inexpensive housing options). Before that time, it was just me and my movies - and my dad. My closet friends were Audrey Hepburn and Howard Hawks and Diane Keaton and Harrison Ford. They were my heroes, my trailblazers, my soul mates, my court jesters. My dad understood - it was the same for him - so I was happy to spend my weekends on the couch with him getting lost in another story, another world, another galaxy and we never needed to blather on and on about how these pictures made us feel because we just both got it. And I feel like only a special kind of person really gets it.

Cinema is magic. That's all there is to it. It made a lonely little nine year old girl feel a little less alone in the world, even for a little while. And it has alleviated current tragic life circumstances enough to make my father smile for even half a second. How can you call that anything else but pure magic?

Life is still turning. Things haven't changed. But at least I know that there will always be a place that my dad and I can go to where the sky isn't always falling and reality fades to black for at least a couple hours.

Our Worth

Mary Oliver once wrote, about approaching death:

"When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world"

How do any of us really know the impact that we have made? How do any of us know how much we really matter? It's all relative any way - our definitions on what makes one matter. I guess we all matter, we all make an impact - no one comes into this world and then leaves it without touching someone, somehow, for better or for worse.

It's all the pressure we put on ourselves to accomplish this or accomplish that. Anyone who read my last blog post probably knows that I've been struggling with this - living a life that matters, living a life that's mine. I've fallen into this weird loop of living for everyone around me and not for myself. But I don't want to get into all that again. The thing is, now that I recognize that in myself, what's next?

I am currently in the middle of watching a person I love fall out of this earth, losing his body to disease, and to say that this is the most painful time in my life would be beyond an understatement. To say that I'm in a bad place right now would be the same. But - I am surrounded by family, constantly receiving words of love and encouragement from friends and colleagues alike, and I have the California sunshine embracing me in its warmth. Pretty soon I will need a lot to heal - I am  trying to prepare myself but really, you can never prepare for anything like this. However, it's good to know that when the darkest days arrive, when I'm in my worst moment, I will have people there ready to try and pull me out of it if I drift too far away.

Is that the way you measure your worth? By the love you have gained and given? If so, I guess in one way, this year has been great - because it's helped me see that I do have a lot of love in my life, even though it doesn't feel that way most days.

So what now? I'm sitting in limbo. I'm on the edge of something I can't speak out loud. I can see its face. I can hear its name. It's so close and I don't know how to make it go away - because there is no making it go away. You can't stop a storm. You can't stop the world from turning. It's what you do with the time you've got left - that's what it all comes down to. Thinking beyond this moment in time is too hard so simply being here and living is all we can do.

The Thirty Spiral

Sometimes it’s weird when I think about the end of my 20s. Nineteen year old me steps outside of my body and looks at 29 year old me and it’s hard to believe I’m not that same kid who lived in a house with seven people, living off of spaghetti, cheap vodka, and Marlboro menthol lights. I journaled regularly, I traveled, I went to a different concert almost every night, and I was open to just about any new experience life threw at me. I was convinced that I was going to save the world. I knew where I was going, and I knew how I was gonna get there. Life was nothing but a series of open doors and it was up to me to decide which ones I wanted to walk through.

It’s ten years later, and if I have to be perfectly honest, I feel like most doors are being closed and locked and I’m just standing here without any keys.

I don’t want to get into all of my sorrows but I’ll say that this has been a troubling few months for me and it’s getting hard for me to stay focused on the things I want to do. I don’t volunteer much these days and I attribute that to a) my exhaustion and b) my lack of motivation for pretty much anything outside of trying to keep my head above water – which I kind of feel like I’m barely doing most days.

And then there’s that 30^th birthday looming over me. I never thought I’d be that person who wrapped up all my hopes and dreams in that stupid number. I never thought I’d care about turning 30 – it’s just a number, right? It doesn’t mean anything, does it?

I have a lot of friends who happen to be older than me and it’s difficult to communicate around them what it feels like for me, turning 30, because I feel like it’s just indulgent whining and it’s always met with, “30 is nothing!” or “You’re still young.” I suppose that’s all probably true, but the fact of the matter is, I wanted to be in a certain place by now. I admit it – I have targeted expectations for my life and I feel like I haven’t met them. Ten years ago, work was such a low priority for me. Not to say that I didn’t care about work – more like my focuses were firmly placed in enriching my everyday life with art and community activism and nature. And I’m so far away from all of that. I always believed that by this point in my life, I’d be living in some flat in a different country – probably Italy – with a not-too-stressful job, having casual dinner parties and regularly visiting vineyards in the countryside. Or at the very least, I thought I’d be on the West Coast, which I’ve always considered my real home, watching the sunset against the Pacific Ocean every night and going on weekend adventures to Mexico because why the hell not.

My life looks very different than how I’d always imagined it but not completely unsatisfying. It’s the people I have in my life that make it worthwhile – work friends who are always down for happy hours & roof top lunches filled with laughter; the Clacker folks who keep things interesting, always; Rachel, Jeff, and Mike, who I don’t get to see often but still my second family; the Club Dumas, who inspire me beyond all reason, even when they are not with me; and even my Virginia guys, who are all living their own separate lives in all different directions but still provide me without some of the best memories from my post-college days.

The problem is… I’ve stopped and looked at my life and I feel like I am living it for all of these people and not for me. My life has become less about what I want to do with it and more about doing what’s best for those I love. There’s nothing wrong with that, theoretically, but I don’t even feel like I have a life of my own anymore. I’m a spectator, watching everyone else move forward, while I’m in the world’s longest rut, trapping myself in a world that I don’t truly want to be in. But what does one do when she need to make a drastic change in her life? I guess the answer would be to summon the bravery to take a risk.

But would changing everything I know about my life really make me happy? What is happiness really? How does a person really achieve that? I don’t know the answers and so I’m stuck, just watching everyone – and I just keep wondering how does everyone have it figured out and I’m still flopping around, confused and scared? I’m not even content. I’m restless. I’m restless and bored and sick of sitting down – I want to jump on a plane and just take off, someplace, somewhere, sometime, without plans or itineraries. I want to wake up every morning knowing that I am doing exactly what I want to be doing and feeling so happy that I’m contributing something that matters to this society. I want to welcome art and music into my life – not to look at it and hear it, but really be immersed in it somehow.

When did I stop being that person that took chances? I know that as an adult, you have to make sacrifices. You have responsibilities, and they are real and you have to reshape your life somewhat to meet them. I see friends with husbands and wives and mortgages and babies and I know that I don’t want those things because while I am so happy for them for having the things that make them feel complete, I honestly just see them as giant anchors taking away even more of my life choices. But then I get caught in a spiral – if I choose to turn my back on these things, what’s going to happen in another 30 years? I am probably about the most independent person there is, but I’m actually starting to wonder… when I’m old, and all of my friends are in their family bubbles, am I going to be sitting here, still alone? I hate myself for even caring about this. I hate myself for letting the fact that I’m turning 30 transform me into this person I’ve never been. But I can’t turn my thoughts off.

The uncertainty in my family right now is also contributing to all of these fears and it’s also making me questions a lot of things in my own belief system. I have two strong feelings that are constantly fighting each other right now: living life to the fullest, because life is short versus what’s the point of it all? It’s playing a lot of crazy games in my head right now and it’s making me feel kind of like I’m going crazy. I wake up one day, thinking that I’m going to make the best of a horrible situation and the next day, it takes everything inside of me just to get out of bed and get through the day without crying every ten minutes.

Naturally, being me, I’ve decided to put all of my “feels” into a playlist because music has always ALWAYS been the one thing that I can count on to pull me out of the darkness. Music is the best therapist I’ve ever had. So, I pulled up my iTunes, and created a group of 30 songs (because I’m nerdy like that) which all represent a lot of what I’m going through right now and I’ve been listening to it a lot. I’ve also been reading some of my old journals and flipping through pictures from college and high school, considering that maybe there are pieces of younger me that I can still incorporate into 30 year old me’s life.

For now, the journey continues, and I’ll try to get through it the best I can without losing the best parts of myself.

And I suppose I’ll close with my “30 Songs for Turning 30” playlist, in no particular order:

·         “Under Pressure” by Queen & David Bowie

·         “Forever Young” by Alphaville

·         “Hang On” by Dr. Dog

·         “Home” (from The Wiz) by Stephanie Mills

·         “We Use to Wait” by Arcade Fire

·         “A House Is Not a Home” by Field Music

·         “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” by The Beach Boys

·         “God” by John Lennon

·         “There’s Never Enough Time” by The Postal Service

·         “Where Have All the Good Times Gone” by David Bowie

·         “Shake It Out” by Florence + The Machine

·         “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” by Arcade Fire

·         “Beware of Darkness” by George Harrison

·         “Here Comes a Regular” by The Replacements

·         “Just Do You” by India.Arie

·         “How It Ends” by Devotchka

·         “Light & Day / Reach for the Sun” by The Polyphonic Spree

·         “Stand By Me” by Otis Redding

·         “I’ve Gotta Be Me” by Sammy Davis, Jr.

·         “Some Days Are Diamonds” as sung by Amos Lee

·         “You Only Live Twice” by Nancy Sinatra

·         “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” by Nina Simone

·         “Supply & Demand” by Amos Lee

·         “Inner Revolution” by Adrian Belew

·         “I Shall Be Released” as sung by Nina Simone

·         “Hungry Heart” by Bruce Springsteen

·         “That’s Life” by Frank Sinatra

·         “This Is the Day” by The The

·         “To Build a Home” bye The Cinematic Orchestra ft. Patrick Watson

·         “You Get What You Give” by New Radicals

Much love,

N

"Little Things Mean A Lot"

Today's blog post is inspired by my beautiful, amazing friend Lindsay and her absolutely delightful blog Smells Like Sunshine (which, by the way, was nominated for an AWARD for how awesome it is). I don't post nearly enough and sometimes it's hard for me to come up with new and fresh topics. Part of the problem is that I write so much for work and now school again that when it comes time for "personal" writing, I go blank. What do I write that isn't just more of the same ol' same ol'... or even worse - and even more pathetically - what do I write when I'm pretty much not being told what to write? Yikes, amirite? What kind of journalism grad am I?

But wonderful bloggers like Lindsay give me hope that maybe JUST MAYBE... I can keep this blog going. So that's what I'm going to do.

As previously posted, most of my friends will be out of town this week. Plus I have limited funds anyway, which is why I opted not to go out of town this weekend with my friends. So this is going to be one of those weekends where I actually have very little distractions preventing me from doing the following:

*Cleaning my apartment, which is a total sty
*Looking up fun new recipes to try (I've got a chicken summer salad that I am dying to make)
*Making a dent in one of the three books I'm reading right now (I swear I'm going to finish Dance With Dragons one of these days)
*Maybe visiting the record shop and get a couple of new goodies?? (I'm jonesing for some old folk albums because sunshine always puts me in the mood for some old fashioned folk. Margo Smith, anybody? I need some of her in my life right now.)
*Starting to set up my yardless backyard (with chairs, potted plants, hanging lamps!!!)
*Going on a journey around Meridian Hill Park with Lee and hoping that he doesn't steal anyone's lunch this time
*Taking myself to the movies - and yes, I will be seeing The Great Gatsby, duh

My brother wanted me to come out to Woodbridge again to hang, but honestly I'm exhausted with making my lazy ass travel out to the boonies every weekend. So this is going to be the Weekend of Natacia (WoN) where I only do things that I want to do. I think I've earned it - classes have ended, I have no work to take home (knock on wood), and my family is currently enjoying a period of stability (GASP!) - and thus I am taking some time for me.

Is it sad that I'm really really excited about cleaning my oven and folding my laundry? Yeah, probably.

Oh, back to the Great Gatsby - words cannot convey how excited I am for that movie! Have I mentioned how much I love that book and how many times I've read it? But really, mention it because early this morning I was horrified to learn on Twitter that Levar Burton has NEVER READ IT. Mr. Reading Rainbow Himself has never read one of the greatest novels of our time?! Is anyone else horrified? I'm horrified. I think I may have to write a letter to him about this travesty. A tweet is not enough.

....Though he did praise Carey Mulligan and since I have a huge girl crush on her, I mean, maybe I can forgive him or something.

Still a travesty, though.

Whew! Lindsay, how do you do this so often?!

Quiet Times & Little Changes

So here I am – again, after far too much time – but as it turns out, grad school sucks up a lot of time. However, as much time as it sucks up, I do need an outlet… lest I start randomly bursting into tears or becoming hysterical.

My first semester of my current program is at an end and I am happy that I a) survived and b) stuck with it. I am, however, taking a break on classes over the summer – I need some time to decompress and really assess how my schedule will work in the fall because this spring was brutal and I need to make some very serious lifestyle changes.

It’s difficult because I want to be with my family and friends all of the time – but I can’t. I’m learning that. Things cannot stay the same. I tried to maintain my life the same and all that did was make me feel constantly stressed out all. My sleeping has become increasingly erratic and my headaches have returned. My stress eating is off the chain. But I mean, I don’t want it to seem like I’ve been miserable – I love my program. Plus, I’m getting to know my new neighborhood (Columbia Heights/U Street, what what) and I’m kind of falling in love with everything from the dog parks to the 11^th street district to my new favorite coffee shop, the Blind Dog Café. Lee and I are settling nicely, and I’m really digging how much more space I have in my new apartment. I’m even – gasp! – having people over occasionally!!! So I have a few things to be grateful for and happy about.

One thing that I do really miss is the movies. I haven’t been in forever in months. What has become of me? However, the upside: this weekend, the Great Gatsby comes out in theaters and I’ll be there watching it, even if it means taking myself on a date. With most of my friends gone this weekend, it’ll be a good opportunity to just… relax. And I plan on doing just that.

I’ve been hanging out with myself more lately in the last couple of weeks and I think it’s been good for me to take a step back from a lot of things. While I don’t feel less stressed necessarily, I feel less… pressured. If that makes any sense.

I guess the catch is making sure that I'm not actually taking so much time by myself that I end up completely alone. I have a history of this and then I get a little too comfortable in the silence.

For now, I think I'm on the right track and I'm feeling good about where I'm at. Now to get back on a decent diet track....

Contributing to Joy: Why It's Challenging but Necessary

OK, so it's been a REALLY long time since I've posted. Like two months or something? First of all, I want to apologize, I swore I wasn't going to do this again... but let me try and explain myself.

I want my blog to be a place of positive reinforcement - both for myself and others - but over the last couple of months, things have been rough in my world. I don't want to go into great detail about everything but I will just say that my father's state of health has worsened, school has intensified, and work is... well, work is (as always) very time consuming and stressful. Truth be told, I haven't really had a whole lot of positive things to say lately - I was in a serious funk, which I tend to fall into from time to time. My "funks" sometimes last for weeks, maybe months, and they involve me not really want to interact with people and also being super sad all the time. The worst thing about when I get like that is no one can really pull me out of it. I have to be ready to pull myself out. I'm sure this is frustrating for my friends - even though they'll never admit it - because there are few things worse than watching someone you love fall into misery while all you can do is just stand by and watch it happen.

But good news! I am out of my dark period, and feeling better about things. Spring is in the air in DC (finally, after winter flat out REFUSED to get the fuck out for a long while) and I am seeing good things in front of me. A recent dinner with my advisor really helped me out, she gave me some sound advice that really struck a chord in me: "Strive to succeed but don't be afraid to fail and don't live in your fear. People fail sometimes, and it's OK. The world won't end."

And that's the rub because I am always TERRIFIED of failing and of letting everyone down. My family, my friends, my boss, my colleagues, my professors. I put an unbelievable amount of pressure on myself and then I hate myself for not being perfect at everything. It's crazy, and I know it's crazy, but what can I do? I just need to give myself a fucking break already. I know I keep saying that and I'm sure if you go back and look at my other blogs I've probably said this same thing over and over again but it's so hard not to fall into that pattern over and over again.

Anyway, while things definitely have been rough, they haven't been all bad. My dad has started chemotherapy and radiation and the doctors are very optimistic about his chances. He didn't want to go this route, treatment-wise, and fought it for a long time (and in fact is still bitter that he's doing it now) but I think he realizes that he wants to live long enough to watch his kids and his grandkids grow and succeed. He wants to get married and live with his new love for as long as possible. He wants to be a really old man sitting on his rocking chair on the back porch, watching the Pacific ocean waves crash against the sand at dawn. And I'm so relieved! He's fighting to live and thank God for that.

School has become more manageable once I got serious about it - in the sense that I was feeling overly confident in those first couple of months, thinking I could handle it all and keep the same lifestyle I've had over the last few years. And just so you all know, I cannot. For one, classes aren't cheap and I'm not rolling in cash. For two... and this is the big one.... I just don't have the time. I just flat out don't. I can't do a bunch of happy hours. I can't party all weekend. And frankly, I don't have the energy to stay up all night reading because I decided I wanted to have a late night dinner with friends. The amount of reading I have to do for my law class is outrageous and good lord, will I be happy when it's fucking over (which will be very soon) but that's the way it is and I need to accept that. And my excess time will decrease with each passing semester.

Though, at the same time, I cannot isolate myself because when I do that, I become sad and lonely. So it's all about finding a balance and hopefully I'll get better at that.

Also! I am moving from Logan Circle to Columbia Heights. A slightly bigger place (though not as nice, with no hardwood floors and no dishwasher and no W/D in the unit) closer to most of my friends in the city. Closer to my gym. And right down the street from Satellite, 930 Club, Town, and Nellie's. In fact, I timed it yesterday, and it takes me approximately 7 minutes to walk to that awesome corner of U Street. Holla! That could be dangerous for me - my love for gay men, live music, and alcoholic smoothies knows no bounds.

So things are looking up. Fun projects like painting my new apartment (which wow, how are my friends awesome enough to want to help me out with this?) and planning a charity event to raise money for Whitman-Walker's AIDS Walk are helping me to be creative and stable in their own ways.

And now... I have finally posted something on my blog. I'll end it with a quote from the amazing Roger Ebert, who lost his battle with cancer this week but will always always always be an inspiration in my life:

"I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out."

Much love, you guys.

-N