malingering...and a special blog post.

Hope you don't mind, but I don't feel like it...so I will let my friend mary do the speaking for me.
Mary and I have wonderful conversations.
And this post was a part of one of those conversations.
She is smart and funny, but she is also extremely concise...and this post is very to the point.
We were talking about the age of 17...
How you are caught between knowing everything and knowing nothing....

Here it is..with her permission.
Mary writes:

Okay, 17 might not've QUITE been that bad, but it really did suck to feel so unsure about everything, yet put on the bravado like one who knew what she was doing, thinking, feeling.
If I did go back, I'd do some things differently food and exercise-wise.
I wouldn't quite be the hermit-in-a-cave that I was at home.
Granted, I've had a lot more time to get over some things * item redacted* than I did then--time does help some with the big stuff.
Other than those things, though, I don't think I'd change anything. My friends were the most authentic people *item redacted to protect the not so innocent* could manage. ;)
The world wasn't ready for me to go to the prom with a date I actually wanted (I never did go to a prom--I always did hate frilly dresses).

My major changes would've been in college and after. I would've done more things that I was afraid to try (like my spur of the moment decision to apply for the India Fellowship--that was something I thought about for 2 years before I tried it). I would've applied for the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps after graduation like I wanted, rather than worrying about how Mom and Dad would feel. In short, I would've lived my life for me, not for them. Oh, and when I was 30 I wouldn't run into a Jeep Cherokee and mangle myself. lol

Alas, we don't get to go back and rewrite our histories. There are no do-overs in life. Still, our histories are a part of us. They made us who we are at this particular moment of our lives. We must not use the past as an anchor to weigh us down, but rather as a base to launch ourselves forward to the people we truly are.

Physically.

Emotionally.

Spiritually.

If there's one thing I've actually learned in this lifetime (for Shirley Maclaine), one cannot "hold off" being oneself until later without some major repercussions. In my case, it's about 200 pounds of fat, rampant insomnia, and prescriptions for blood pressure pills and antidepressants. It's a world without love or sex or even (especially) feeling. It's a life that is forfeit--a life not LIVED.

There, how's that for an inspiration speech (the last paragraph, anyway)?

I think it did very well as an inspirational speech.

I think I slipped into writing a blog instead of an email.
(she did and if you all could convince her to start her own you would never be disappointed)

lol If it meets your standards, feel free to use it on a night you don't feel like writing
(That would be tonight)

--you can get your art on instead. :)
(or spend a couple hundred on space heaters and spend the rest of the night placing them around my house)

Good night all,
Oh, got my run and walk in...400 calories burned..yah.hoo.
lol.
chris out.