Runaway Train

I have had this song in my head for a week now: Soul Asylum's Runaway Train. This verse, in particular, has been resonating with me:

Can you help me remember how to smile,
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile,
How on earth did I get so jaded?
Life's mystery seems so faded.

I've written a lot of posts along the line of "Men make plans and God laughs." But how do you judge if your plans are successful in the first place? Some plans just ache to fail. (e.g. my marriage to someone so wholly different from myself, starting a company with no business plan or even a budget, eating half a bag of snack-size Hershey's Cookies 'n' Creme without throwing up...)

Other plans seem to fail, but really have unexpected benefits (being married to someone so wholly different from myself encourages me to go back to school for a little mental stimulation, a personal loss makes me reevaluate relationships and the nature of "want" versus "need.")

And then there are plans that haven't come to fruition, but haven't crashed and burned yet, either. (Now that I have a better grasp on what I need in my relationships, how is that going to impact my behavior, and what will the changes I am making mean to the friendships I've developed so far?)

It would be easy to throw up my hands and give up hope that any of my dreams or goals will happen. I freely admit that I do not have a knack for business, nor do I have that sense of purpose that seems to be natural to "successful" people. I see the failures that happened when I did try hard to accomplish something and I contrast that with the times that my lazy ass fell into something good, through absolutely no effort of my own, and I have to wonder what lessons I'm supposed to take from the past 37 years. Because, frankly, I sometimes think that I was more "successful" when I was seventeen.

But - just like when I am saved from my own mistakes by some happenstance - when I am getting close to despair, inevitably something will hit me that makes me realize that (a) I am not the only one in this boat; (b) there are just as many people worse off than me as there are better off; (c) I have friends and family that love me dearly, even when I screw up; and (d) there is so much beauty in this world if you just look for it.

I got this jaded by counting the crappy things in my life instead of the good stuff. So, without further ado, things that made me happy in the last week:

1. Amy's photo of a caterpillar;


2. My niece calling me "Kiki" and holding up her arms for me to pick her up;


3. A friend telling me that they liked making me smile;


4. Putting aside my social anxiety to make new friends;


5. Keeping my cool is an awkward situation;


6. That my fingers remembered how to play one of my favorite songs on the guitar;


7. Another friend taking a picture of me (that I think made me look like an albino hippo with a bad dye job) and saying how pretty I looked;


8. Running into old friends and getting to catch up;


9. Getting to explain a football term to a girlfriend and having her be all impressed, even though I just learned it myself and I'm pretty sure I got it wrong;


10. Finding gasoline for $2.65/gallon;


11. Being asked to make a cake for one friend's birthday and a pie for another one's;


12. That I will be able to quote Star Wars episodes IV, V and VI completely by heart because I canceled my cable and have been making do watching my old DVDs over and over (and over...)


and lastly


13. learning how to do numbered lists with html