lay a whisper on my pillow

If there's anything the voyage to Nova Scotia sold me on was the opportunity to get away for a bit and be to myself without working and whatnot and spend some time to myself thinking and trying to pore over some things in my mind. Admittedly it was somewhat lonely being up there, no one really to talk to aside from my parents-which in itself was a good thing; it was a wonderful chance to spend more quality and meaningful time with my parents, on the trip to and from, and especially my father while we were there-we would manage to slip out for coffee and shopping while my mother was at home with my grandmother-it was really nice. My evenings would be spent trying to stay cool in my grandmother's non-air-conditioned house and playing GBA games like Golden Sun and Zelda: A Link to the Past for GBA, and a host of others I bought before the trip. Watching anime on the laptop I managed to take with me and getting some much needed sleep seemed to be my activities in the evenings. This isn't to say that it wasn't really nice up there-it was pleasantly warm during the days and nights, and always a wonderful temperature-the weather was wonderful and the scenery is beautiful, water everywhere and trees for miles; the occassional town or city here, or cottage on the water, but for the most part it's no sprawling metropolis, which has it's downs(no internet access) but it also has it's ups(clean air and beautiful skies). All in all, it was a nice trip. Beautiful drive, beautiful country, beautiful people. And it's only a few hours from the Maine border. I'd love to go back sometime and enjoy the sights to see and the things to do-we only really got out to do the touristy thing in Halifax one day, but it was a really nice day-we wandered around town seeing sights, took a wanter and land tour of the city...it's a really cool place, I wouldn't mind living there someday if there were a tech sector in the region whatsoever.

But being away for a while gave me time to get things sorted through in my head, wanting to do more with myself, wanting to trust people a little more in my life, wanting to reach out to people a little more and thinking that some of them maybe, just maybe, will reach back a little bit. Trying to exert a little more effort and not to so lazy with regard to a lot of things; being social, getting out, talking to people, spinning more, eating healthier, a lot of things-not things I haven't done already or started to do, not things I've been doing badly, but all things I like doing, want to keep doing, and enjoy doing. I've made a lot of progress on a lot of things, so don't think this is some self-depreciating rant about how I haven't accomplished anything, but it's more of a "I've done a lot for myself, and now I need to keep going and set my sights higher." For example, I'm really happy to have registered for grad school classes for the fall(although I'm not looking forward to buying textbooks), and now am all set to take my A+ certification exams as well as a couple of Apple certification exams, so things are looking up. Now all I have to do is tackle that list in the back of my mind...road trip...find my own apartment...call old friends...look at a new car...save money in the process...you know the drill.

At the same time as I can attest to being mildly depressed at times, I thank my lucky stars that I've been so lucky in my endeavors to date-school, jobs, life, the works. It's something else being up in Canada let me remember; that some people have less sense and less in life than I do, but some people have more and there's always something to shoot for, so there's no reason to stop-not for an instant-because time's a bitch when you take her for granted. Being away from friends that long makes you nostalgic at the same time, and not that I'm a nostalgic person or anything(who me? oh nooooo!) but I realized that with regard to my friendships and relationships of the past I tend to take this attitude that time heals all wounds and that maybe if I let time pass and then come back with an apology, trying to mend tears made years ago would work wonders and I would find myself in the blissful past again-that all I needed to get that person I left behind back in my life is to send a heartfelt apology and tell them that a lot has changed and it wouldn't be a bad idea to talk again...but that's because that's the kind of person I am-I try to be forgiving, I try to make amends, and while I tend not to forget trespasses, I try to be soft-hearted and kind about the people I've cared for, even if it was at some far-gone point in time.

So I have the mindset that if I just make it known that I really REALLY care and that I'm sorry for whatever might have gone wrong, that things will be better. The trouble with that is that it's led me into trouble in the past. See, something I've learned about old friendships and relationships is thatthen they go south or sour, it's easy to simply get angry and hate the person who's offended you, to just be mad and despise them without regard. That's the easy way out-because then you can just hate the other person for making you feel awful about them and about yourself, for taking something that was, at least at some point, happy and wonderful and making it something poisioned and unhappy to remember, and you can blame it all on them. And one day when I was looking out the window in my grandmother's house and I thought to myself that if I ever really wanted to have a healthy relationship with someone, that if I ever wanted a friendship with soemone I had seen, or ever wanted to be at all close to someone I had been close to and fell out with, then that was a mentality I would have to get past. Every relationship has people in it-it's their decisions that make it, that keep it alive, and that end it, and it's shortsighted to think that the results or course of it is determined solely by any one person in it. Now admittedly there are exceptions to the rule-the battered wife doesn't ask for her relationship to be abusive, and you can't tell her that a better attitude about it would make things better, but you can tell someone who despises their exgirlfriend that they probably weren't completely innocent in the fallout of their relationship, regardless of how it ended. No one's an angel, and no one's a devil either. God gave us neither horns nor wings. We're in the middle.

Listening to redneck radio and driving through the thick fog on the way home through Maine, early in the morning, hoping to get home quickly, I thought to myself that maybe a little more trust was in order on my life; maybe a little more faith in the people close to me, maybe I should be a little more believing. This is something I have to continually remind myself of, to be honest-it's so easy to be either depressed or somewhat unhappy when people don't behave to your expectations, especially when you work to meet your own, or at least find ways to get cracking on them. But part of that trust, of course, is to remember people have to find their own path, and that your expecactions are just that-yours. And to others, they're meaningless. To require someone to live up to what you want them to be is selfish and unfair, and probably one of the most horrible things you can do to someone you profess to care for. Some patience, some trust, some honesty, and introspection, and hopefully things will shape up even more than they already have. Hey, it's a road, you gotta keep on walkin on it, right?

The things you learn by spending a week in Canada.