Update

A few days ago, I got a short email from Alex -- basically that I had been quiet and that he was just checking up on me to see if everything was ok. As I take a look back at my blog in recent weeks, I suppose one might ask a similar question. That is, while I love hot beeves and all, I had never really intended that it only be a forum for posting pictures of hot guys and haiku. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Several years ago, I went back to grad school because I wanted to take a different direction in my life. I wanted to be able to help people instead of making my living off the conflict that is the legal system and being miserable along the way.

When I finished my program, I came to a realization -- how can I help people change their lives for the better when I'm not really sure how to do it with my own? How do you teach what you don't know? The last few years have been a slow process of getting rid of the things that didn't work and searching for things that are a better fit.

And through it all, I've been waiting, waiting for that thing to come along that finally shifts things -- a new job I can really jump into and feel good about, someone special in my life, a big break somewhere else. On the rare occasion that those things seemed to come across my path, while they'd shimmer and glow, they'd always turn to dust before I was able to get my arms around them. Its painful enough to have happen once, it seems downright cruel when it happens over and over again. It takes its toll.

What's worse is that life seemed like it had been reduced to simply passing time -- waiting for something to happen... that and regretting the things that hadn't worked out. If you're waiting for something, that's probably the worst way to go about it -- resenting so many of the moments in my life because they're just reminders that I do not have what I want and may never get it. All the while life happens while I wait and stand on the sidelines. That pretty much sucks. Through it all, I've tried playing my part to change that, but so many times I'd just end up frustrated when it seemed like I wasn't getting anywhere. Kind of like a kid shouting to the Universe, "Are we there yet?" Yeah, sometimes I wanted to slap myself too.

So in the past few months I'd finally come to the decision to spend less time finding reasons to be dissatisfied and more time finding reasons to enjoy what's around me. I know its cliche and sounds Pollyanna but in practice its more difficult than it seems... its not enough to look around and say the words that I'm really happy. I've found that it requires me to be much more honest with myself and I'm realizing how often I was willing to tell myself that I felt fine when something was bothering me.

Part of the deal has been spending less time noticing things that would get me off-kilter, whether that's the news, politics, celebrities or the everyday bitchiness that still pops up. On top of it I've been making more of an effort to find the things in my life, past and present, that have gone right. Of course, the truth is that there's a shit load of them but I've spent so much time overlooking them.

On the blog front, that's meant that I've been purposely spending less time finding some of the things I used to share before and I'm left wondering what's left. On one level, my life isn't particularly newsworthy at the moment -- I've tried to disengage from much of the drama that was left and I've stepped back from trying to be witty or edgy. Like the world really needs another bitter queen, right? At the same time, I'm finding more of those moments of satisfaction that I had been missing before. Maybe its the equivalent of trying to master the nuances of vanilla ice cream but in the scheme of things, I guess its not a bad place to start. Oh and I still love beeves.