Here We Go

"Here We Go" - Mat Kearney

I get that this is a "romantical" song, but I'm taking it somewhere else, just so you know.

I've been pondering the friend thing a lot lately, and I guess I'm going to continue to ponder it because it's been on my mind.

"Oh, oh, here we go again, I know how I lost a friend."

People aren't lying when they say that it's so much harder to make friends as you get older (i.e. out of school). I've read articles and blogs and who-knows-what-else all talking about how it's just so different out in the world of making friends in adulthood.

I was really, really lucky to have had the first job I had out of school - I worked with one of the most incredible people, and it showed me how much having a friend to work with makes your job so much easier. She and I just clicked for some reason. We had similar interests and, I like to think, a similar outlook on life. We knew when things were important and mostly we knew how to cut up with each other. Many fun girls-nights-out were had and many laughs were shared. Then we both got different jobs, and staying in touch has become so much harder.

Again, that's where this whole issue of time and energy and me being a crappy friend comes into play. Where are all the hours in the day?! Why do they go by so fast?

So, flash-forward to current job circa three days ago, and I get blindsided.

The person who has trained me, and for all intents and purposes is the only person I really work with, has found another job. Still with the same company but in a different department. It was like a punch to the gut. I felt sick the entire day after she told me, and I tried all day not to start bawling at work.

It's all cyclical. My good friend from my first job had to leave because of financial reasons, and my job went south not too long after that. Then, I turned and left once a new person was hired. Not intentionally planned that way, but also for financial reasons.

So, with my friend now leaving at my current job, I see it as a kind of karma since I had done the same thing before taking this job.

I shouldn't take it personally, but it's hard to think that it's not something that I did. I feel like it's somehow my fault. And then there's the whole thing about how I'm going to be the one that people ask questions now. And I don't feel uber comfortable with that.

It's been stressful and emotional.

And I'm getting more and more nervous about National Novel Writing Month. When I first found out about my friend leaving, I immediately thought about all the overtime hours I'm going to have to work and how that will definitely cut into my writing time and zap my energy. But I NEED to do this. I HAVE to do this. And If I'm only getting 3 hours of sleep a night in November, so be it. This damn novel has got to be written.


Postscript: "Here She Comes" by Low Millions got skipped over tonight because I just wasn't feeling it right now. Honorable mention, I guess.

Here Is Gone

"Here Is Gone" - Goo Goo Dolls

(Subtitled in Spanish, no less)

My love for the Goo Goo Dolls has waxed and waned over the years, mainly waning with some of the newer stuff they've put out. But I've always loved their older stuff. This one fell kind of in the middle, and for some reason, I've always seen it as one of their darker songs.

"I thought I'd lost you somewhere, but you were never really ever there at all."

I've been thinking a lot about the people we are and the people we create around us. One of the strangest moments in my life was spending a good amount of time with someone that I thought I was getting to know pretty well, and then spent a 45-minute car ride with them and never felt further from anyone in my life. I had no previous experience or feeling to attach it to. It was such an unknown feeling to me - the physical distance so small but the connection between us so far apart.

I think a lot about people I've known and don't keep in contact with anymore. Funny thing is, one of my friends was just recently talking about this same thing. It's so difficult to maintain friendships over time and distance. It's not that the feelings necessarily lessen, but time wedges its way between you, and before you know it, it's weeks or months or years since you've spoken.

Why do we let life get in the way? I have no good excuse for it. All I know is that it's so hard to have the energy to do damn near anything after spending eight and a half hours at work, coming home, attempting to get the house in order and cooking dinner. It's pretty much snoozefest from there on out.

On some level, too, I guess I'm a bit embarrassed that I'm not really doing anything too exciting with my life at the moment. What big news do I have to share? What great things am I doing with my life? Well, nothing, really. I don't want to be the Debbie Downer of the conversation.

Someone close to me is going through a breakup right now, and I wish I had better advice. Or maybe that I'd be a better listener or be able to support them in just the right way. I don't, I'm not, and I'm probably not doing that either, but I'm trying. We've all been there. And it's so hard to see beyond that moment. Nothing else matters, you start to obsess over it, you stop doing basic things like eating regularly. It's horrid, really. But it just takes time, I think. There's no way that you can wake up the next morning and feel great. You just can't. And you want to help your friend and you want to give just the right advice, but in the end, time is the only thing that can really heal.

Heal and destroy all at once. Isn't that funny?

Here I Go Again

"Here I Go Again" - Whitesnake

"This is my JAM" is probably one of my most-used phrases, right up there with "Cool beans," and "What the shit?" But when I say, "This is my jam" about this song, I really mean it.

Back in the days of my good ol' 97 Mercury Tracer, this song made the mixtape that played in the tape deck. (Yes, you heard that right - tape deck). I started a lot of mornings driving to high school with this song blaring out of the one speaker that actually worked.

You see, in all actuality, I'm pretty much the opposite of a badass. I'm pretty much a square. I follow the rules, drive the speed limit, listen to (most of) what my Mom says, and generally just worry too much about what other people think of me or worry if I'm doing something right. What can I say? I'm driven by a need to not be a screw-up.

But this song makes me forget all that. I listen to this song, and I'm a badass.

Yeah..."Here I go again on my own, going down the only road I've ever known. Like a drifter I was born to walk alone, and I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time, here I go again."

Life kicks you down. You get back up, and you kick life right back. That's what I take from this song, anyway. AND I LOVE IT.

Song Project - Hannah

It's the first day of October, and I haven't blogged in a century.

I've been listening to my music library on my iPod at work, song by song, in alphabetical order. I'm not sure when I started, but I'm currently in the Os. When I hit H, I decided I should start writing down the songs that really stuck out to me, for any number of reasons. And then I thought, "Well, I'm sitting here for seven and a half hours every day having these thoughts about all these songs, why not write them down?" And so developed the idea of the song-based blog.

Not a new idea, really. I'm sure if you followed me in the past, you know I have a history of blogging about songs. But it's been a damn long time since I've done it and never this extensively. I feel I need to show a little love to the songs that I don't give quite as much attention to, and of course, to the ones that I shout about from the mountaintops, too.

It has been far, far, far too long since I've really sat down and written. I think about writing pen-and-paper style every single day, but somehow that seems more intimate and frightening than blogging. Go figure. Guess I'm not quite brave enough to be alone with my own thoughts, yet.

However, this is the first of October, and that means that the first of November is one month away. Ever since hearing about NaNoWriMo from my friend Rena in college, I have always wanted to do it, and it starts the first of November. As I haven't flexed my writing muscles in ages, I thought a good ol' blog-post-a-day would help warm them up a bit and maybe get me prepared to start on National Novel Writing Month. Who knows if I'll finish, but I just have to try.

I think about writing every single day, but there's something that just so intimidating about it. Probably because I'm trying to look at it on the whole instead of in tiny pieces. It's pretty terrifying to think about having a novel written and how badly it will probably turn out at the end, but I've just got to do it. Once the first one is out of the way, all the rest will be easy, right?

Another major stumbling block has been what to write about. I have several ideas, of course, but they all are going to require more than just skimming the surface. They're going to require some digging under the foundation, some excavating, and you better believe some skeletons are going to be unearthed. That's pretty damn scary, if you ask me.

So, anyway, back to the song project. Something I've been known to do in the past, something I plan to do in earnest, at least in the next month, to prepare me for getting that first book written. Of course, I won't get through all the songs I've written down if I only write about one song every day, but hopefully I'll come back 'round to it once NaNoWriMo is complete.

And so...

Hannah - Ray LaMontagne

I re-organized and integrated some still-boxed-up CDs last night and started reflecting on how much music my friends have given me. It's incredible, really. A whole, whole lot of music has been passed on to me by others, and Ray LaMontagne is no exception. This song was on a mixed CD I was given, and as it started playing after some other just okay songs, I thought, "Wait. Stop. What was that? Play it again". As I do with songs I immediately connect with, I listened to it over and over and over.

I can't pretend to know what the story is about, and for as many times as I've listened to it, I honestly still haven't figured it out. But the sorrow and the hope.

"I'd walk one mile on just broken glass, to fall down at your feet."

It puts you on both sides of the song almost all at once. You feel for him, and you are him. You've been there. You feel his sorrow, and it's your sorrow at the same time.

It's a song that seems intensely personal to the writer but is open enough to have the listener pour their own experiences into it.

And that's some damn good songwriting, if you ask me.

A Saturday in August

When I was younger,  I strongly believed that I was the same person I always had been. I had grown up, but I hadn't really changed. I felt connected to my younger self and that I had continued along the path that my younger self had always thought I would. I guess it made that thought pattern easy to believe.

Now, I'm not so sure. I can't say that I haven't remained true to myself and ideals and beliefs. That, I have done. But the amount of time that has passed between now and then makes me feel so much...older.

Birthday 25 is coming up soon, and it's been really, really hard for me to wrap my mind around. No one has really sympathized or understood where I'm coming from. Then again, my whole life has been a series of minor crises, so I'm probably just crying wolf again. But somehow, this one feels different.

Twenty-five seems so old to me. I realize it's not THAT old, but it feels like it. For some reason, I've always had the idea that I would have my life together by 25. By 25, I should have changed the damn world and become a millionaire. I should have invented something that makes everyone's life better.

But I haven't.

I spent the last two weeks acting and believing the damn world was near an end because I was getting my window cubicle taken away. It sure felt like the world was ending, anyway. After a wonderful but tiring beach vacation and then a 4-day summertime sickness, I was in a bad way. Everything was going wrong, and it really just dragged me down.

Then, I learned about Robin Williams, which broke my heart.

Then, I heard what was going on in Ferguson, and it's hard not to be just downright in despair at the state of the world.

I've spent the last 15 minutes or so re-reading posts from my Xanga circa 2007. Back then, social media was still somewhat new, but the rules were already set - make your life look awesome. Every. Single. Day.

Maybe my life was awesome, but reading those posts makes me roll my eyes at best and throw up a little in my mouth at the worst. Of course, there were a ton of fun moments in my life, but I just sounded downright braggy. Gross.

The world has been changing me more than I have been changing the world.

This shit's got to change.

A Love Letter to My First Home

I still remember sitting in the newsroom when my phone rang, Sean on the other line. I didn't think too much of it, but it was a phone call that shaped the direction of our life - we'd be moving to Kansas City for Sean to start his new job. I ran out of the room elated, asking him all kinds of questions about his new position, the salary, and on and on. Wow. The City. We'd tried hard to find jobs in Columbia, but there weren't many, or any for that matter. Kansas City had always been one of my favorite cities and we'd spend our college Spring Breaks running around downtown, the Legends, and exploring all that the city had to offer. I couldn't believe it would soon be our home.

The Craigslist search began, and it was pretty disheartening. Some places looked like they should be condemned, others were well over our budget. The buck didn't go near as far for rental square footage as it did in our old town. Luckily, we had a friend who was eager to help and sent us two listings that we ended up going to see that same day.

The first house was a duplex, and it smelled. The tiles that covered the kitchen countertop were busted and jagged, the drawers didn't close. There was standing water in the basement garage, and pets weren't allowed in the upstairs bedrooms. It clearly wasn't going to work out.

We went to the second, and there was no comparison. Everything looked nicer and newer, and it even had a built-in bookshelf in the living room - fate. Two bedrooms, one bath. A basement. A kitchen with a bar. It was the one, and we did everything we could to get an offer in that same night.

When I look at stages of my life, I've never been one to get too attached. I remember the feeling of elation I had at eighth grade graduation - no sentimentality for my elementary and middle school, I'd be going to high school! On to bigger and better things! And the same, mostly for the transition from high school to college. Too much excitement to think about anything I'd miss from high school. And so, when it came time to move out of our duplex that we shared with our two college friends, I shouldn't have been surprised but was a little disconcerted that I wasn't more emotional about it all. I loved college and I loved our duplex - but it was time for bigger and better things.

It took me awhile to formulate feelings about our new neighborhood. Our friend had described it as "working class." I called it "shady." We were in a good enough area, but the drive from the highway to where we lived was somewhat questionable.

What you never seem to notice is how something slowly seeps into your being - that feeling of comfort and home. I can't pinpoint a time when I thought, "This is it. I love living here," but as we prepared to leave, it was a feeling I couldn't shake. I started telling people how hard I thought it was going to be for me to leave, and every day brought almost a sense of dread - of having to say goodbye and never return. Maybe for visits, sure, but it's just not the same.

There are so many little things that became a part of who I was in that neighborhood. The gas station on the corner where we would buy big ass sodas and candy bars and ice cream and Skittles. The Chipotle on the corner that we ate at on average of at least twice a week. The Walgreens where we bought our groceries when we first moved in because we didn't know where the nearest grocery store was. And our sweet old Santa Claus cashier named Joe that would always chat with us about Mizzou and the weather and how good Walgreens' BBQ chicken pizza was. Braving the more-than-a-foot deep snows to walk there for cookies and milk. Our questionable neighbors. The trail where we took walk after walk, especially that first spring when we moved in. Spending a whole Saturday walking to the Plaza to spend time at Barnes & Noble and people watch and see all the high-dollar cars.

Our poor cat didn't acclimate quite so well at first, hiding between the shower curtains for days on end. Once she decided it was her house, there was no going back, though, and you could hear her come bounding through the house when she realized a window was opening for her to jump into.

It was also the house where I spent four months basically alone as Sean went through Police Academy in a city four hours away. Sometimes I look back on it and still don't know how I did it - just me and my less-than-protective Australian Shepard. It was the house that Ringo and I became best buds in because we only really had each other. The daily walks, even in the snow, and he would get so excited and race around the house and fall on the hardwood floor because he had no traction.

We watched hundreds of movies, danced in the small kitchen, and learned how to be grownups. I probably took years off of my life worrying about the huge tree that was hanging over power lines in the backyard and how our house might go up in flames. Or how the house was literally caving in upon itself and the floor would eventually just bottom out because there was clearly no support system, and the subfloor was rotted.

We even had a mouse that we met in the first few weeks of living there that we named Maurice. He was never seen again, though, after we moved our cat Lola up with us. I still worried about mice living in the walls and chewing the wiring, though. I mean, who wouldn't worry about that kind of thing, right?

I had countless migraines and sick days spent in that house, and much drama as always seems to follow me (not that I tend to create it or anything). We started our first "real" jobs while living in that house, and I had my first freelance translation project that saw me sitting at the kitchen table for hours on end working and working to get it finished (and playing several hundred rounds of Candy Crush during my breaks).

We had to put half of our clothes in tubs in the basement because the closets were so small, and we barely had enough room to turn around in the bathroom, the hallway or the kitchen. Our 50-pound dog sure wasn't helping matters either. He shrunk the space by at least a quarter. We banged our knees on the bar so many times trying to step over him while he was eating, and I sustained multiple toe and foot injuries on the coffee table all thanks to him and our teeny tiny square footage.

I can't even begin to recount or recall all the memories that were created in that house, because so many have already passed through me. But what I realized as I was fixing the blinds that were destroyed by our cat and wiping our dog's snot off the walls is how much I came to love that house. Truly and deeply. Every single part of it had memories attached to it. Big and small things that had happened in our lives that changed us in so many ways. Things we learned to live with in the house and things we simply couldn't live with any more.

I had my reasons for leaving, but the closer and closer it came to time, I questioned if I really wanted to leave. I questioned if another house could ever mean as much to me as this one did. If I could ever have as much fun in one single place or ever create as many memories.

I wept. I wept because I knew that I was leaving a huge part of me in that house, and that even if we ever went back to see it, it wouldn't be our house again. I wept because it was empty and because in taking away everything we had created, we had taken away the house I knew and loved so deeply. I wept because I was moving on, and I didn't want to.

I still can't believe the attachment I feel for that one certain place - our piece of the world and our first place that we learned to grow up.

We drove by a couple days ago, and the string lights and windchime no longer hang from the porch. There are bicycles and potted plants everywhere.

It's no longer our house.

But it will always, always be our first home, at least in my memory.