Beige Rainbow

On my drive home - after dark, windows down, chilly night air bringing in the smell of honeysuckles while I blasted rap mashups out - I got caught in a weird spiral of trying to motivate myself with positive thoughts, only to find these positive thoughts all tied back to bad memories. The other day I tried to start writing a series of cute anecdotes about traveling abroad to celebrate my return to Germany, but I couldn't keep the motivation.

Looking forward to my sister's wedding is a complicated thing. I'm happy for her and want her to be happy and have the life she wants... I guess I just wish that life was planned a little closer to home. We won't have the same name any more, and before long I'm sure she will tie herself overseas more with German/Swedish/American hybrid babies with stern, falling-melody cries.

My life hasn't varied much in the details we use to delineate stages of our lives. I don't have a grad school phase, an Insert Different Town period, no changes in address and I kind of just quit bothering with Facebook relationship statuses because of opportunistic idiots who jump right in as soon as you change it back to single. My life, to somebody who went to high school with me or otherwise doesn't know me well, will read as unchanged and probably kind of sad. Even the fat, sad-looking women my former classmates have turned into at least have families, children to raise and make a mark on the world. I have dogs who prefer to sleep with my mom at night. And oh yeah, I'm sleeping in the same house I've lived in since I was born.

But when I look at myself, listen to myself think, I am blown away at all the things my brain has done. The different people I've been, the different ways of thinking that have come and gone, how I never stop being overwhelmed by new information every day, wondering at what point I will just shatter under the pressure of the depth and amazingness that just makes it to my head. I'm listening to rap now, and I never would have seen that coming. And I'm appreciating it sincerely and on levels I didn't know were available. I listen to songs I once loved, that seemed to mean something, and they are cheaper and more plastic now. And yet some old things only get better and better with time. I can understand all the sexual innuendo in Rocko's Modern Life.

So yeah, I've been having all kinds of ideas for getting into a blogging pattern more resembling something actually enjoyable like the one I has that did well, but my head is just in too many places, and I'm trying very hard to make it sound more uplifting than it actually feels. Maybe after this trip I will be a better person and magic will happen all over the place.

Oh man, I'm going to miss my car so much while I'm gone.