I do this thing where I go through the alphabet in my head when I am trying to remember someone’s name and the letter on my “mental chalkboard” gets really big and bold so I know that is what letter their name starts with. So I’m laying in bed last night and I’m going “a, b, c, d…” you get it, the fucking alphabet. However when I got to “h” I seriously lost my shit when I realized “i” was after and that “hi” was in the alphabet. Imagine, as I kept on and realized, we are also blessed with “no”! This is the point at which I started the alphabet over again to be certain this was real, questioned how the actual fuck I never noticed, and then told myself very sternly, it was time to go to bed. I also never remembered until now that I was originally trying to figure out someone’s name. Oh well, it’s not like they don’t have one as a result. 

I have taken some time away from writing. I started this Open Journal with the intent of writing every other day. Sometimes I am hard on myself for not keeping up with it and then I remember a friend telling me before I had even started to go into it with the intent to just enjoy it, to write when I felt like it, and that there were no rules. This always saves me. I know it seems pretty normal but sometimes that is hard for me to apply to myself in anything I do. I have discussed how hard I am on myself before so here I am saying it again. My follow-through sucks. I start something and then I get distracted or disinterested and change my course.

I spent last weekend in Dallas with a girlfriend and our sons. In one of our very interesting Uber rides, a man shared with us his struggles in life as an older man. The fucker had me in the backseat bawling my eyes out and gripping the back of the front seat holding my breath for what was next. He sounded like me, and my son recognized my voice in him as well. He shared with me that I reminded him of this man after he did not shut up for twenty minutes straight and told us mid-driving that he had forgotten what he was doing and where we were but reassured us we were safe. My man! I feel you so solid in that statement and I now know I am in good hands.

When we got to our resort, he walked around and opened my door. I jumped out and up and threw my arms around him. I squeezed the living shit out of this man. I thanked him for being so honest and open about his life because it was nice to hear my thoughts come out of someone else’s mouth. There is so much to be said about finding like-minded people and the comfort that comes with being understood without saying a word. He was not attempting to relate to me as I had said nothing. He was just sharing and with almost everything he said, I had to shake my head and make sure I was not making this whole thing up…you never know with my fancy imagination… He cried when I stopped hugging him and shared with me that I had no idea how much he needed that hug. Naturally, a little twang came out in my voice as I told him “Well in that case you get another one!” Remember, I don’t hug like that often, it is a genuine energy exchange, but we both needed it…so I hit him with another! 

Ubes went on his way and I stood in the hotel lobby behind the entry just waving at him as he drove off expressing how thankful I was for that moment in my life. We all went up to the room, changed into our pj’s, and walked the halls of the hotel. I refrained from stealing plastic cups, miniature ketchup and Tabasco bottles, and any other tempting goody I often stock up on. I am a sucker for this. Ask anyone who has traveled with me. Ask any hotel that put a cute little jam jar out and don’t you dare tempt me with a good pool towel or ten. As we walked around and I held my own hands under arrest, I kept bringing this man up. I could not let him go. And to be honest, I still cannot. I send good thoughts his way randomly throughout the day and do this little thing I do where I crawl into his mind and try to push out so much positive light from his eyes in whatever it is he is seeing at the moment. I do this for a lot of folks, so now would be the moment to say thank you for letting me invade your mind space without permission, and now also seems like the appropriate time to thank all the hotels out there for giving me a variety of miniature goodies and plush towels to choose from.

I got a banging bookmark at my birthday sleepover from our hotel suite (I usually just use receipts or some form of small paper that had importance the day I started the book). I am pretty sure the bookmark was meant to be taken, so I should not “brag” too much. I have “sticky fingers” for weird things that are technically free but they rely on you to be an adult and only take what you need, if you need… apparently, I am just like one of my girlfriend’s grandmas so I am told. I guess that’s why I could not let go of the Uber driver that night either. Sticky finger old lady. Ew.

To wrap this up I guess what I would like to say is how amazing our lives really are and how they work for one another without even knowing. How we all spend this time surviving and experiencing things in our own way and then at some point our paths will cross. Sometimes for a brief moment, and other times for what I hope is eternity. We come together, we grow apart, we find our way back to each other again…you know, Ribbit Ribbon. But my absolute favorite fucking part of it all is the moments we get to share the real of it all. When we hear the truth in others’ stories, their struggles, their strengths, their value, self-worth, insecurities, and the tape they play inside of their heads every day. The one we cannot hear playing while we see them kicking ass and succeeding, smiling and making our lives better, walking tall and looking amazing. The one that resonates with the track we play in our head. The mean shit we tell ourselves when we have a real talk in the mirror, the reasons we tell ourselves we won’t be good at something, the absolute bullshit each of us has to carry, and the inevitable human real-life aspect of our day-to-day duties in this world.

There is not one person who cannot relate to this in some aspect if they are being honest with themselves. This in my world and my opinion is what makes us so fucking beautiful, imperfect, and humanly lovable. Look, I tell myself I am fucking looking old and have never finished anything I said I would. And so far, it is true. Ubes said the same thing about himself and it sounded like it too was true for him even though I thought he was cool as hell. But when I thought and felt from my spiritual self and hugged the fuck out of him, I also knew we both know and believe it is ok for those things to exist and also possible to change them if we so wished. But my wise-ass kicked in and since I felt like Ubes and I were looking into a mirror with one another, I settled on we canceled out each other looking old and feeling unaccomplished and so fuckkkkkk it, let’s keep on living life to the max in every little way possible and start something new. So I have started online classes and that’s the reason why I am not writing so much.