2011-2014

I can sum up all I've learned in the last 3 years with:

Don't react.
Don't react.
Don't talk yet.
Think.
Breathe.
Think more.
Now do the thing/say the thing that will make you proud.
Build.
Smile.
Give it your all.
Love yourself.
Enjoy yourself.
Embrace others.
Treat good people well.
Lift others up.
Protect good people.
Forgive, but never forget.
Laugh....as much as you can.
Hug. Or otherwise connect appropriately.

What Reading Your Old Journal Does

1. Some worries never change.

2. Things do eventually get easier.  Or you get better dealing with them.

3. Some gripes never change and that's oddly comforting.  You realize how petty they are, merely things that get at you but won't cause you actual harm.  Sometimes these annoying things fade away only to surface once again in a few years and it will feel new again and you'll worry that you're losing your shit because he left the toilet seat up and lately that's *really* been bugging you.  But as it turns out, it bugged you 4 years ago too.  Somethings annoyances never change and those that go away can come back.  Just make peace with that shit.

5. As with annoyances above, hobbies, also, have a way of coming back around.

6. Self-defeating patterns.  I'm attached to the hubs.  I just am.  And I will always put hanging out with him ahead of time spent channeled towards a hobby. But this leaves me one-dimensional, brittle, hollow and not just a little bitchy.  I seem to have a pattern of this.  

7. I'm making progress down a road that seems to only get more fulfilling.