Everything is different

Life really does move quickly. Its may, i work full time at baxter. I think a lot about growing things and how to get people to care about food and what it meAns for health and family relationships. I spend time on farms or reading about farms or thinking about how to make farms fun for teens. I raise money for things i care about at baxter but stil struggle with the pshycology behind radising money and is it all ok. (more on all of that later). I write a lot for my job and sometimes worry that i am losing my authenticity in the mess of nonprofit lingo that is supposed to draw people in.

I never write in here because no one ever reads it. But no one ever reads it because no one knows about it. My fault, my loss. I just spent an hour catching up on my friend annies blog. She is funny and quirky and honest. She usually has more pictures than words, which i love. She talks about little stuff and big stuff. The way she writes makes me feek like we are hanging out, even though she actually just drove all the way to yellowstone to work there for the summer. By herself. She just up and went, which is awesome but i miss her.

Anyways. Who cares if. No one readsd this? Its good just to hear my own voice in writing without re-reading it ten times to make sure its compelling, well structured, and grammatically correct. I do enough of that at work- this is my new rambling space. A space to reignite my love to write.

There will be a lot of typos because i am writing this on an ipad, but i am saving up for a laptop. Or ill post at work on my lunch breaks.

I am also going to start each day writing a letter to someone. Snal mail is a lost art ive always appreciated receiving but selfishly havent participated in much. Until now. So if you do read this and i dont have your address give it toe and ill send you something.

Thats all for now. This was really just to get me motivated. Ill post something interesting and fun later.

Red

I haven't been very good about writing, have I? As I caught up tonight on the adventures and struggles of all of my far-away friends, and as I re-read my own journal premier, I realized I had been unappreciative of life here in Grand Rapids. Even without spreading our wings and flying away, Jeff and I have had more than our fair share of adjustments to get used to, but being married has been an incredible blessing. not perfect, and we both have a lot to learn about patience--he leaves his dishes out, I never pick up my shoes, he stays up until who knows when and I hop out of bed in the morning like a Pop Tart. Even so, having someone to share every day life stuff with, the good, the bad, and the mundane, has been more of a comfort than I would have ever thought. Even though we live together, we've both been pretty busy, and its actually been possible to miss him. Go figure. When we are together, we're often with friends, playing catch up from when we both fell off the planet around wedding-time.

But I have a long weekend, and yesterday we slept in, had chinese downtown with his brother, then Jeff got a haircut while I read at Madcap. It sounds so normal but it was really nice to just be together for the whole day, without work or chores or bills getting in the way. Admittedly, I'm sure house chores and bills could have used some attention, but we decided to save those for another day.

After lunch, we spent the afternoon thrift-store hopping and bought about a million old picture frames. We spent the evening spray-painting them all red, and now we've hung the mismatched collection on the stair wall leading up to our room.  It was a simple project, but it was fun to create something together. We spent the evening getting spray-paint all over the garage and our hands, and for the first time in awhile, it was just the two of us, talking and doing one more small thing to make this crazy house more like our home.

A New Beginning

I am not even willing to admit how many blogs I have began and deserted in my lifetime. Remember Livejournal, anyone? Zanga? But this is different.

Snap! We're graduated. Snap! Got a job. Snap! I'm married. Snap! My friends have gone to Honduras, Korea, Malaysia, China, Laos, and here I sit. In Grand Rapids. Not exactly alone, thanks to the new other half.

Life is good, but a bit mundane. Work, laundry, sleep, work. Sometimes we cook. Sometimes we see his friends. And life keeps going. Is it selfish to covet the adventures of my former compatriots? Probably. I don't regret staying here; marrying the man I love means I didn't have a choice, actually. A sacrifice worth making.
But a girl can't help being a little jealous.

All of you (I refer to my adventures friends, since they are probably the only ones that will ever read this) got to fly across the world and start blogs.

Well, at least I can start a blog.

Hello, written world.