Surprise Visit!

When I rolled out of bed this morning around 10:20, my husband told me that someone had called my phone half an hour before. I checked my voice mail and was surprised with the news that an old friend would be in town for today only. I haven't seen this friend since my wedding two and half years ago, and we have rarely spoken on the phone. The phone thing is completely my fault. I am terrible about calling people, and phone conversations make me very anxious.

When I learned that he would be in town around 12:30, I was super excited. We picked him up at his hotel and went straight to lunch. Then I kidnapped him at gunpoint and forced him to come back to our house with us. Not really, but if it had come down to it...I just might have done that. I have seriously been in need of some time with my true friends. In the past six years, that time has become much more precious to me because it has become so much more scarce.

He stayed and played with me until 8 tonight. He had to get back to his hotel for a crack of dawn flight in the morning, and I miss him already. I am thinking that I really need to get some close friends together for a good, long road trip at some point in the next six months. I don't know how easy that will be to do, but I feel like it would make a huge impact on my life in a very good way.

A sign?

I've been cleaning house today, looking forward to a visit from my sister and her family.  While trying to organize some papers, I came across stories I wrote for a creative writing class back in 2003.  I decided to sit down and read them again, and as I did I was surprised that it was my own writing.  The subject matter was almost all dark and a little disturbing.  The notes that my teacher left on these stories were so nice, I was shocked.  With all of these final drafts, I found a paper he had included for a contest for student writers, noting that I should send some of my work in.  Now I wish I had taken him up on that advice.  I don't know why I didn't.  I guess I've never really liked my own work.  Artwork.  Writing.  Knitting.  Photos.  It doesn't matter what it is.  I can never impress myself.

Anyway, it felt a little like a sign finding those today after starting this blog yesterday.  Maybe I will write some new stories and poems and post them.  I think that I've decided I am definitely going to go back to school.  I'm not completely psyched about the schools in this area (at least not the ones that I can afford).  I'm going to start looking, though.  Maybe it will help me to get excited about some things again.  Hopefully it will help me to meet some people in this city.  I've lived here for 9 months, and I haven't really met anyone.  That has to change.

Speaking of change, I should change the name of my blog.  I think it's going to be more about writing than knitting.  

This New Blog of Mine

Writing used to be my passion.  Somewhere in between finding myself in a happy relationship, moving 6 times in the past 7 years, and becoming an adult I seem to have lost the drive.  I have journals filled with my words, yet I can't honestly remember the last time I sat down to just write.  I'm out of practice.

Now I find myself in a city where I don't know anyone.  I find myself in a new job where I "write" for a living (albeit not the kind of writing I'd prefer).  I find myself unsure of who I am and what my true passions are.  There was a line in a movie this morning that shook me.  "It's never too late to become what you might have been."  It was in the film Away From Her.  I immediately started thinking about these words, and what they mean to me.  I'm not sure, but I know that they are the main reason I decided to come over here and start blogging.

The funny thing is that it's not the first time a movie quote has really taken over in my life.  For years, when i was a bit younger, I followed the advice of a quote from the movie Legend. Embarrassing, I know.  It was, "The dreams of youth are the regrets of maturity."  Go ahead.  Read that again.  I am struck with how similar the quotes are, and by the fact that they are saying the exact opposite of each other.  Maybe that's the difference in youth and maturity.

I won't always write about writing.  I'm not planning on blogging about movie quotes, either.  If this will help me to actually write, I just plan on actually writing.