With a little help from my friends...

April 2008

What is going swimmingly in your life at the moment?

After all my mopey life posts this week, it's nice to finally have a prompt I have a good, solid answer for. The thing that is going swimmingly in my life right now? My friends.

Living in Oklahoma, I made friends but the ones I was closest to were in OKC. My friends in Tulsa were usually busy with work or school when I had free time. Suffice it to say, I spent a lot of lonely weekends cleaning my apartment, grocery shopping and generally being bored. It wasn't fun.

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Do you consider yourself a strong swimmer?

(Note: too much coffee and over-thinking went into this post.)

This post could very easily be one word: no.

In the metaphorical sense, no I don't think I'm a strong swimmer, and I never have been. I'm too indecisive. It takes me forever to make a decision and when I do, I worry it wasn't the best decision to make. I'm slowly learning to let go and just live. I'm way too hard on myself for decisions I made three years ago, still. This is the time in my life when it's okay to make mistakes, to make changes and figure it all out. As long as I reach some stability and eventually stay there, it's okay.

Open waters

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Are you scared of being in open water?

In a word, terrified. 

I learned how to swim at an early age. (Physically swim, that is, since many of my 'swim' posts have been a metaphorical swim.) I swam in the pool and we went to the beach open enough that I wasn't scared of the ocean. My grandparents own a lake house in Wisconsin, and I spent many summers swimming and tubing/boating on a lake where I couldn't see the bottom. As I got older and attended Girl Scout camps, I learned more advanced swimming strokes and techniques, like treading water. To pass a swim test one year, we had to tread water for three minutes without our heads going under while singing camp songs.

So to say the least, I have a very good grasp on how to keep my head above water. 

Gone swimmin'

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Where would you love to go swimming?

For me, reading a good book is much like delving into a swimming pool in the heat of summer. You take a deep breath and within five pages, you're completely submerged in the story. If I'm particularly drawn to a book, I only surface when forced - when my lunch break ends, when my eyes won't stay open anymore, when there's another obligation. There is nothing quite as satisfying as living in someone else's world for a few days.

Swim.

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Oh, little blog. How I have neglected you. Partly out of lack of time. Mostly out of fear of repercussions should anyone come across this, decide my writing a blog is grounds to fire me and...fire me. Well, been there done that and I've decided if that's the worst that could happen, bring it.

Besides, what good is a writer who does write at least a little every day - even if it is only a lame blog post about nothing that two of her friends skim? I wrote two articles for my fall issue of the magazine - the medical one which I enjoyed much more than I should have - and I realized I need to make it a point to write more. So starting tomorrow, I'm going to seriously undertake the NaBloPoMo challenge and attempt to write in this blog every day.

Mostly because the July theme caught my attention: swim. Esp. after Jack's Mannequin's song by the same name hit me like a ton of bricks today...which is one of the many reasons I love music. Sometimes you need that one song to jolt you back awake and make you realize you're completely missing your life.