Suck it up and keep rolling.

Ok, so I literally just finished writing out an epic "I feel sorry for myself because all of my friends are too busy with their adult lives to come out and play" post, but as I sat here rereading it I starting thinking that I really don't want to waste anyone's time with self-pity stories when I know damn well that the reason things haven't been the same lately is because things change, whether you want them to or not, and you have to learn to suck it up and play the cards you're dealt because there's no folding in the game of life, only bluffs. Fake it til you make it and even then you might still have to fake it. At the end of the day the only thing that matters is that you can look in the mirror after you finish brushing your teeth (if you still have them) and be completely and utterly satisfied with the person who is staring back. 

So on that note, I'd like to dedicate this post to my sister.

On the 7th day of July in 1986 at approximately 11:04pm, Megan showed me that the world was safe and that I didn't have anything to worry about. Two minutes later, I followed her lead and was born at 11:06. In nearly 27 years, things haven't changed much. Although I've come a long way in the worry department, I still have slip-ups, and for each and every slip-up, she's been there, telling me that it's ok, it happens, and life moves on; no harm done. And she's been right, every single time. 

Recently, I've been going through a bit of a difficult "adjustment phase" in my life. Much as with the story of me coming into this world, I've always seemed to be "just a couple of minutes" behind everyone else. Never in my life has this been as true as over the past couple years. It seems like every time I blink another friend is getting married, or having a baby, or buying a house, or getting a promotion, or a great job. And as happy as I am for them, it seems like with each and every advancement in one of my friends' lives, it's just one more advancement further away from me and where I am in my world. Throw in my impatience factor and voila, you've got a grade A anxiety case.

[Enter Megan]

Between working a full-time job during the day, completing her Masters, and apparently being the all-time East Coast wedding attendance leader, she manages to always have some effective (although not always eloquent) way of telling me to "get it together and start making it happen!". And not to say that she's always the most motivational of people either, because she's still my sister and I'm still her "little brother" and sometimes heads will roll. But let's face it, it's the tough love that sticks with you the most, whether or not you realize it at the time.

To try and stay on track with my thought here, I've been struggling a lot recently with my job and have been feeling a little low on the "self-worth" spectrum. Things have just seemed to be a never-ending cycle of the same old daily routine of "praise-less" work at basically the lowest of wages of most professions in New York State (don't get me wrong, I love my work but we're just underfunded and not appreciated very much by the people we try to help). To say the least, I haven't been happy. But somewhere in the past few days, at what has seemed to be the height of my frustrations, something made me stop and take notice of a few important things in my world that I kind of overlooked in my moment of self-pity. Megan had posted several dozen photos from throughout the winter. Photos of friends. Photos of the Holidays. But most importantly, photos of family. 

Although I'm sure she was simply posting the photos because she hadn't had time to up until that point, something kind of made me feel like it was the time that I needed to see them the most, as a kind of simple reminder to me to stop and see that the world is ok, and that I'm ok, and that no matter what, the people and times in those photos will still be there.

Many things happen throughout a person's life. Some of it we can control. A lot of it we can't. But that should never be something to get upset over. It's life. It happens. And there's no reason to waste time dwelling. Suck it up and keep rolling.