so, i woke up at 7 this morning and just couldn't get back to sleep--which is odd for a saturday, considering i typically sleep in until 11. i think opening at the coffee shop three times this week must have really messed up my internal clock. i've realized that i actually prefer opening shifts, however...mostly because there is a lot to do in the mornings and everything is relatively quiet and time flies by. before i know it, i'm home taking a nap by 12 or 1, while everyone else is just starting their day. also, there is something oddly calming about getting up at 3:30 in the morning in a quiet house and then driving to work on a virtually empty road. no one or no thing gets in the way and i can just be quietly by myself for a while and see what the world looks like while most people are asleep.

i think i'm going ice skating today. haven't done that in forever. i do remember though that i'm not all that bad at it. i went for the first time in middle school or something and i was able to stay up for a reasonable amount of time before falling on my ass. i think it was all that rollerblading i did in our basement as a kid that helped. now all i have to do is tackle skiing for the first time next month. that, i'm anxious about. i just don't know if i'm going to be any good.

speaking of next month, my birthday is fastly approaching. i think it's pretty cool that mike and i get to celebrate our birthdays together, his being the 6th and mine the 8th. i've never had a boyfriend's birthday be all that close to mine before. birthdays are pretty fun in their own right i suppose, but they're even more fun when you have someone else to get excited for. this year, mike's birthday falls on superbowl sunday, though....so i really can't surpass his excitement for the game. to me, the person who hates any and everything related to football, his birthday is far more important. he, on the other hand, would say otherwise. i'll have to find time to sneak in his birthday fun, somehow. damn football.

i haven't actually really even thought much about turning 24. to me, it seems like that sounds old, mostly because when i think about what my parents or other people i know have done at 24, i feel amazed that i'm actually there now. or almost. i mean, it's just another year. but man, i look at college kids now and feel so parental. it's definitely strange.

i like this writing-early-in-the-morning thing. i should do it more often, if i get the chance.

so i was just informed (via the news) that january 24th is statistically the most depressing day of the year. apparently, it's because it is typically extremely cold and dreary this time of year and people have begun to give up on their new years resolutions. eh, i guess i believe it. i have been feeling awfully unproductive and unmotivated lately. all i want to do is sleep and get warm. this weather really gets me down, man. how you people can love it, i will never understand.

i went to target the other day and looked at bathing suits. maybe, subconsciously, i was wishing for summer. of course that's what it was. i need some new bikinis to perk me up.

wintertime math:
snow + cold + shoveling = suckiness
my feet - socks = icicles
january + 2 more months of winter = depression
snow covered streets + cars = ugly, gray snow on the side of the road FOREVER.

the big snowstorm is coming tomorrow and i am fully prepared to be stuck inside all day. except this time, i won't be alone! there's nothing worse than being home with nothing to do when this kinda crap goes down. that's my own personal version of hell. so, i'm planning on getting snowed in at mike's place. i realize, though, that using the words 'plan' and 'snow' in the same sentence is stupid...but oh well. i will not let the snow take away my fun. i defy you, snow!

i had the impulse to write something. and so i'm gonna.

my back hurts. the past 2 days at work, i've spent my entire shift on bar, lifting gallons of milk jugs and twisting my body in ways i shouldn't. blech. i really could use a nice back cracking right about now. i have a cool massager thingy that mike bought me for xmas sitting here in my room, but i can't exactly use it on myself. it requires a helping hand. so there goes that idea.

so you know how you're walking along and everything is fine, and then suddenly a curb pops out of nowhere and you trip over it? yeah, that happened to me on saturday. bruised BOTH my knees and ripped a nice hole in my jeans. all i remember is i was talking and then in mid-sentence, i was flat on my stomach against the cold concrete. just when you think you're cool, right? "it was humbling...", said the humble dork with banged-up knees.

my attitude at work has changed, as of late. first off, i've decided to actively start looking for another job. i'm looking into something interesting at the moment, but don't want to talk too much about it until i find out more myself. i just need something to be motivated toward. and right now, this seems to be it. i have to get out of starbucks. i'm so worn out. i know i've been saying that for awhile now, but it's just really hitting home now. i have decided to just coast while i'm still there. i'm not going to stress out anymore or go over and above my job requirement. i'm too tired and too irritable for that. so much has changed in the last year and there are too many things i am fed up with. interestingly, i just found out that i could be fired if anyone from the company reads this and sees that i'm bad-mouthing it. heh. to me, that's laughable considering the first amendment and all. and anyway, i'm not bad-mouthing the company per se...more the way that my store is run. and just petty little things that add up after awhile.

today is jan. 17th. a year ago today marked a pretty big shift in my life. and that's all i have to say about that.

sometimes i look at myself, wherever i am, doing whatever i am, and i think about how i ended up there. in those moments, every thing seems extra-poignant; every thing is ultra present and it hits me that i'm alive and that i'm in the middle of my life. it's a lot like waking up in the middle of a dream. there were things happening before you woke up and until that exact second you opened your eyes, you didn't notice the haze you were walking in, or that it was not real. this is real. this second of your life when you're standing in a hot shower, water wrapping its comfort around you, and you don't want to be anywhere else.

in that shower, at that time, i thought about who i was. it felt strange, kind of like that first jolt of reality after anesthesia when you realize you just lost two hours of your life.

how did i get here? more precisely, how did i wind up here--in this shower, behind this opaque curtain, alone? what brought me to this point?

a similiar moment of extreme clarity and realization happened to me when i was in maine back in october. i remember we were driving up the coast, i was in the backseat singing along to elton john on the cd player with katie and justin. mike was asleep in the seat next to me, his face pressed up against the glass and his body occasionally shifting to find whatever comfort he could. i looked out the window at whirring images--houses, trees, boats, water--and i looked at myself. i was in this car, in this place, with these people and i wondered why. how had i ended up in maine, 12 hours from my home, with this guy i had only known for two months and his best friend from highschool who he was so in-love with at one time, that she inspired a twenty-some page story of which, upon reading it, made my stomach knot up at the thought of him loving someone else? how did this happen?

it felt foreign. it felt out-of-body. it felt fresh. it felt real.

this sort of thing happens to me a lot lately. it's like a cold splash of water in the face or a sucker punch in the gut. i think if we walked around living every day in such a state of poignancy, we'd collapse or something from the weight of it...from the sheer wonder. 'cause it almost hurts when you think that hard...when you feel that hard.

i think a lot about this. sometimes it feels like i'm in a film, and there's a purpose to all this but i just haven't hit the climax yet or met all the characters, so how can i even begin to understand it. i'm on camera, i'm under a microscope, i'm being watched. a perfect song exists for this moment. i can hear it playing in the background, fading in and out. it's a split-second soundtrack.

these are moments of abstraction, wrapped up in transparent paper. they come out of no where, hit me like a lightning bolt, and then it's back to...well, it's back to whatever state i'm used to existing in. clarity like this punctures the monotony; it makes a hole in the backdrop and lets some light shine through.

amazing that all this came from a hot shower.