Greatest Hits

I haven’t blogged in 524 days. And I feel a lot of pressure to re-enter the blog world with something pretty phenomenal. Like if I haven’t been blogging, I should have at least been spending all those days drafting some mind-blowing post that’s going to change the way you view yourself and the world, and will act as a key to life with the power to solve all the great mysteries like the purpose of being, what happened to Amelia Earhart, and, most importantly, why Meg Ryan and I never became best friends. I’ve drafted this post (obviously), but something tells me the world isn’t quite ready for it yet. So, I guess I have to settle for playing some catch up. A lot can happen in 524 days.

I was talking to my friend Christie the other day as I sat on the bleachers of the little league field at Lents Park, and she said when you don’t talk on a daily basis, you really just have to focus on the greatest hits of your life. So, I've decided to write about the greatest hits since I last posted. (Though, to be clear, by greatest hits I mean big events, not necessarily good events. Some of this stuff was pretty terrible.)

I got a promotion.
Last April I got promoted from Marketing Assistant to Marketing Specialist. Don’t know the difference? Yeah, me neither. But since I’ve spent approximately 2,664 hours at work in the past 524 days (cue internal weeping), it seems like something work-related deserves a shout out on my greatest hits.

I bought a house.
After years of dreaming about building a tiny house, I somehow found myself buying a giant, normal-people house with two bedrooms and a yard. (Ok, so not exactly giant, but definitely too much space for me.) I’m still a little confused by how this happened. No, wait. I know exactly how it happened. It was the loft. The moment I walked into this house and saw the loft with the tiny door to my bedroom, I became a giddy 10-year-old ready to discover secret passageways and hidden treasures and lost all capacity for rational thought. So I bought it. And now I’m sitting in my living room as I type this with Harry Potter 7.1 playing in the background, eating a banana Laffy Taffy, feeling like such an adult.

It’s a pretty great house. (Refer to previous paragraph about the loft!) I probably could've created an entire DIY blog to document all my projects and victories. Some highlights: I painted every surface, put in new kitchen and bathroom floors, got rid of the cat smell (mostly), and actually went grocery shopping, so I have flour and at least 3 canned goods in my pantry (again, such an adult).

I came out.
As an introvert. Just kidding—this isn’t a David Archuleta bait and switch. I came out as gay! (You know, for those of you I haven’t told.) This was a little bit terrible and terrifying. But also really great. There are a lot of stories to be told with this one, but for now I’ll just say that I feel pretty happy to understand myself and relationships better, and to actually see the possibility for happiness in my future. I’m painfully aware that this doesn’t come as good news to a lot of people. But I’m ready to move forward with my life. And I’m finally really happy.

My dad passed away.
This was incredibly terrible. And shocking. And unexpected. It only happened a few months ago, so I’m not very eager to talk about it. Except to say how insanely bizarre death is. I can’t think about the concept for too long before it starts rattling my understanding of reality. And also to say that I miss my dad. I miss going over to my parents’ house and finding him sitting on the back deck with his iPad in hand watching the bird feeders. I miss going on long hikes where he’d tell me it was going to be 4-6 miles then it would end up being more like 10. I miss being able to ask him all the photography questions (I guess now I need to figure out what this whole Google thing is all about). It’s a weird feeling when someone is gone. I’m still trying to grapple with it.

Ok, whew. That got real. 524 days in 731 words.

Now the pressure is off and I can go back to writing about TV and social anxiety. I’m back!

(PS, I'm pretty exhausted by how much math went into this post. Numbers! It's all a little much for this English major.)