Today: Then and Now

So a little while ago, I wrote a series of posts (the first one is here) based on a Facebook note I found buried in my file of “things that may one day possibly be of some interest”. Those twenty-five random things provided me with hours of funny reminiscing, much very happy thinking about how my life has changed in two years, and nearly a full week’s worth of blog material – plus led to a slew of interesting comments from people who knew me then and more than a few who didn’t… Well, I enjoyed that process rather a lot, so I went hunting to see what else was in the ol’ Facebook notes file.

This one is also from 2009 – this time November, the day before my mother’s birthday, actually! It consisted of a series of sentence beginnings that some friend had completed and forwarded to me; I had to replace their answers with my own and pass the note along. Many of them are pretty random again, and a few are pretty funny. Some of them are still true; many are not. And I’m REALLY glad about both of those things!

So here again are a bunch of random tidbits about me. This time I’m not going with annotations, but just showing you what was said then and what I say now. Enjoy!

Today
Originally published on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 12:45pm

1. I’ve come to realize that my last kiss …

• 2009: was a mistake. Some things just aren’t meant to be.
• 2011: was too long ago – and “too long” can be translated as “occurred more than ten minutes ago”, so I am going to promptly do something about that and plant one on The Fiancee… 😉

2. I am listening to …

• 2009: the washing machine/dryer – I HATE doing laundry!
• 2011: the 20th Century Fox intro song, because The Hub family movie is about to begin and it’s a kid weekend – hooray! Incidentally, I still hate doing laundry.

3. I talk …

• 2009: way too much. But I listen more than people realize.
• 2011: way too much (still true). And I don’t listen as well as I should – although I do still listen more than most people would think or that it may seem like I do. This is one of those where I need to work on quality, not quantity, though, unfortunately…

4. I love funny…

• 2009: everything.
• 2011: people, books, movies, situations, writing coming out of my own head… So yeah, I guess still pretty much everything!

5. My best friend/s …

• 2009: have been around for a very long time and know me better than I know myself!
• 2011: have been my best friends forever – which is a great and amazing thing to me, and something I value an insane amount. I truly would not be here without my Mimi and my Lynnford!

6. My first real kiss …

• 2009: signaled the beginning of the end. (Not the first actual kiss, but the first one I thought really meant something)
• 2011: signaled the beginning of Everything. You see, the first one I thought really meant something back in 2009 turned out to mean nothing. The first Real one, with a capital R, occurred in 2010 and it put me on the path to my upcoming October wedding! 🙂

7. Love is …

• 2009: a complete and total friggin’ mystery to me.
• 2011: the most amazing, world-changing, mysterious, powerful, reality-altering drug on earth. Seriously. Hooray!!

8. Marriage is…

• 2009: even more mysterious than love! 😉
• 2011: completely not scary to comprehend anymore. It sounds trite, but when you find the right person, everything is so easy. Of course, I say this as a person with three-ish months to her wedding – maybe I’m completely wrong and the marriage itself will be very scary. Because maybe I’m living in a horror story or mystery novel and nothing really is what it seems and there is some horrifying twist awaiting me on October 9, once the wedding is over. But I really doubt it. Wow. I must be growing as a person – I’m no longer a paranoid pessimist! 😉

9. Somewhere, someone is thinking …

• 2009: “does this girl EVER work?!” and the answer is, “not any more.” 🙂
• 2011: that I need to get a “real” job. Sadly, someone is probably still thinking that I never work, because I get the impression many people don’t consider what I’m doing to be “work” since it doesn’t occur in an office or require a commute or regular hours. But don’t kid yourself – writing and blogging definitely constitutes work! This clever badinage doesn’t write itself, you know… 😉

10. I’ll always …

• 2009: like to be by myself. Not all the time, but on a regular basis. I need it, the way other people need oxygen.
• 2011: need occasional bursts of quiet. I’ve come to realize that it is perhaps the quiet, rather than the absence of other people, that I’ve always thrived on and needed. It is the time to think through my day, my life, my head, my neuroses that I need – and I don’t need to be alone to think, I just need to have a few moments here and there that are either physically or psychologically quiet… That’s enough to maintain my sanity (or at least whatever semblances I have managed to scrape together).

Well what do you know – even without annotations/long and convoluted explanations about why something did/did not still apply, this still got too long for one post. So I’m going to stop here so you don’t get bored and/or bleary-eyed… Check back later this week for the rest!