Bon Voyage?

So, right now I am actively not-packing. I should be packing. I should be getting my paperwork together and packing my bags and prepping mentally for my MOVE TO THE UK but I am not. Oh, also, I am moving to Scotland in two days to go to graduate school.

I know, I've been quiet about these major life changes on the blog. There were lots of reasons. I had to wait until it was all officially announced at work and... then I was just very busy dealing with life. My mom was in the hospital on and off with health issues. I had to move back into my moms house. In short... it was an intense summer.

I have this plan (it's ambitious, I know) where I write more in the coming year. I mean, yes, I'm going to school to study creative writing, so I know I will be writing. But I'm going to try to blog more so that people can keep up with my very exciting glamorous life (ha!). Maybe I will even write about more than just not being able to cook and having no time to exercise. (Who am I kidding, I will totally write about those same things I'll just be in Scotland)

So, if you would like to follow my adventures as I travel through the UK, please do. And if you don't want to, then that is also fine. I'll still be dishing out the questionable life advice and awkwardly bashing my way through life... just internationally!

The illusion of being put together, or, why I eat out

I think eating out may be the only true way to achieve, briefly, that glowy contented feeling of having your life completely together. Maybe this is not true for everyone, but when I am sitting at a table, beer (or wine, or cocktail) in hand, looking at a perfectly designed restautrant that just feels like a place where successful young professionals and hip young families come together to eat, I feel like I'm in some sort of magazine about good living. I get to pretend for a minute that I have the money and the lifestyle (and the metabolsim) of someone who does this all the time. I find myself saying "Brady, we are so lucky to be successful and happy and stylish. We should be these people all the time. This should be our life." I start to imagine that when I get home my furniture will be from Crate and Barrel. That my walls will be adorned with art. That I will be a person with trendy rugs and edgy wall colors and a vintage gas stove. That my closet will be filled with clothes I like and that in the mornings I will find time to spin (despite the fact that I have never been to a spin class).

I'm not sure if what I want most of all is to figure out how to feel that way all the time, or whether I'd be happier knowing that NO ONE feels that way all the time (which I'm beginning to think/hope is the truth). I think maybe we should take those moments and grab them and stay in them as long as we can because eventually you will have to go home to your messy room (or your own personal equivalent) and face the fact that there is nothing glamorous about folding laundry. Maybe pretending that life can be perfect and glowy everyday is dangerous to your own self esteem (and the self esteem of others... I'm looking at you, self help books, insprirational living gurus and crazy inspirational blogs written by seemingly perfect people).

Maybe if life was always perfect and glowy (and looked like a crate and barrel catalog) then those very special moments in very special restaurants with very special unique wonderful funny people would be mundane. And that would actually be so much worse.