Some days I feel very behind everyone else. I know that it's not fair to me to compare myself to others. I should be comparing myself to myself, and noting the progress. However, there are those days when I just don't want to, when it feels easier or more fun to just complain and bemoan about my life. Truth is, that I don't have any reason to complain. It's up to me to decide to be happy in my moment. There will most likely be a time in my life when I look back upon these moments with envy, thinking of the opportunities and freedoms available to me.

I was so very excited to get Wreck This Journal that I thought I could hardly wait for it to come. Then I got it and wrote the date in it, 8/28/09, and haven't done a thing with it but carry it everywhere with me - until today. I finally put in a fruit sticker. I've concluded that I must be either a perfectionist or afraid to do things wrong (or both!). Well, today I am jumping in. Enough holding back. I already know consciously that if I break something the world will go on. I already know that for some things there is no 'wrong' way to do them. Yet somewhere underneath it all I hesitate. What if I don't do it in my own signature way? What if, what if?? Today I am letting that bit of edginess that I am feeling take over the hesitancy. I feel anger for no apparent reason, and so I think that I will take it out on the book. It will absorb my emotions for me. My daily therapy. The spine will be cracked. Scribbling will occur. Pages will be bent. Pages will be burnt, and some will go missing. Sticky things will find their way between the pages. At some point it will fly through the air with blind madness and from great heights. And after it all I will still be me, and the journal will be a product of my own brand of creative destruction. There will be no scars for life from this experience, but perhaps quite the opposite might happen. I might just discover things about myself that I never knew before. I might just find a bit more freedom to live life every day.

I am loving my new apartment. With a few exceptions. #1. It smells. The smell is a mix of new carpet (yeah, new carpet!) and some kind of formaldehyde bug killer emanating from under the kitchen sink that was left over from before we moved in. This is related to #2. Roaches. UGH! I do not like large bugs that run fast and could possibly be crawling on me in the middle of the night. I have had way too many roach chasing adventures already. This is another reason that I am glad that I don't eat hardly any boxed foods. I hate to think of bugs getting into my food.

I am asking myself, what does it take to realize that happiness is something that comes from ourselves and not from without ourselves? Do you just have to think about it a lot? Is it just a matter or trial and error, realizing that time after time it doesn't come from those worldly things? Sometimes I just want to force myself or the people around me to get it already!