I lost (more than) an earring...

Earring from Ann

A few weeks ago, I went on a group bike ride (which was awesome), and since we were celebrating bikes in Music City, everyone was encouraged to wear western themed clothes. The shirt in my closet that most closely resembled "western wear" had a red floral print, I reached for this pair of earrings: red beads and a flower. By the time we reached our destination, I'd lost one of them - a casualty of wind and competition from a large scarf. 

I hadn't seen my friend who made them for me in a few months. Ann was a generous, cheerful spirit. I can't remember a time that we talked that didn't involve her laughing one of her infectious, hearty laughs. When she talked about going home to be with her husband, planning to surprise him by arriving a day early, her plans were interspersed with her excited chuckles, imagining his face when she walked in the door. He was always the one surprising her over their long courtship, and she was eager to get the chance to turn the tables. 

I'll never know what that reunion with her husband was like. Before we got the chance to catch up over a christmas card or hurried email, let alone a skype chat across the continents, I received word that Ann had taken her own life. I still can't believe it. How could my laughing friend be driven to such an act in the few months since we'd parted? Was there anything I could have done or said, was it wrong to encourage her to follow her heart and leave graduate school to be with her family and husband? 

Of course there is no answer to such questions. Or to the questions her other friends and family must be asking themselves now. And even if there are answers, they can't bring back her smiling face, her quick wit, or her giving spirit. The world is a poorer place for the lack of Ann, and the most I can hope is to live up to my memories of her by reaching out, sharing, and laughing, even through tears. 

What a blog can't replace

"Well I wrote about it on my blog... didn't you read it?"

This is a question I often asked the last time I was blogging regularly. In a way, it was just laziness, or fatigue. A lot of energy goes into these posts (although not as much as for other people, I'm sure). I learned yesterday that when it comes to writing, I am a "gusher" (as opposed to an "eker").  That means that the words come to me quickly, but not really in the way that I really want them to. I can think in writing, which means that my first drafts (or zero drafts, or sometimes, really, -1 drafts) are more long hand notes, reacting to what I've read, a long way from analysis. And while analysis is the goal of a dissertation, it doesn't have to be of a blog. And I don't think it will be for this one.

Yet I digress. What a blog can't replace is actually telling your story to a friend, face to face. And while that may seem obvious, for any number of reasons involving media, presence, etc, it was something that took me some getting used to. And still does.

It's a little like when I'd tell my mom something, and just assume that she'd tell it to my dad, and vice versa. But of course the fact is, he wanted to hear it straight from me, too. And as might also be fairly obvious, even though I'm writing candidly about some aspects of my life here, I'm filtering, sifting for the good parts, panning for anecdotal gold. Real friends want to hear the story, mud and all.  Some just want to hear the mud, and the nuggets that appear here are superfluous. So as I keep this up, I'll try and remember that even if I'm writing with friends and family in mind, I should be ready to tell them the "real" story, when they ask.

Today's inspiration

I was struck at lunch by how rich my life is at the moment with good friends, and how often we meet over good food.

Just in the last 24 hours, I've had amazing ice cream sundaes with my book club, where we mostly encouraged each other after attempting to read Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country. We heard about the ups and downs we've experienced since our holiday party, and it was great to be a part of each other's lives for a couple of hours (even if I did get lost driving there, and then set off the panic alarm of my car when I tried to shove the door shut with the seat belt in it, then couldn't find my keys in my purse with my glove on, honking into someone's window for a good 5 minutes around 7 pm.)

This morning I indulged in a bagel brunch with a school teacher friend, who also doesn't have to teach on MLK day. Although we both had work we probably should have been doing, we decided to put a little stress relief and camaraderie before lesson plans and grading. After that, a friend who'd listened to my woes the night before over ice cream brought me amazing homemade thai coconut chicken soup (possibly one of the most perfect foods on earth). Slurping up the spicy broth I realized: this is too good to forget. Which made me want to take better care of writing down what else is too good to forget, and start this blog.

I'm afraid that it feels trite to write something this simple: seeing my friends and eating good food has given me a better outlook on life -- but it has, for now. And can be repeated, as necessary. What a gift.

Inaugural Post

This blog has a number of inspirations. I've been reading any number of blogs regularly, and have been informed and inspired by them in a great number of ways. I've been wanting a fun way to write more, in order to just write more, generally, and make finishing my dissertation easier, specifically. I've missed blogging, to be honest, but could never find quite the motivation when I was going about my day to day. I'm also about half way through Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project, and it's made me want to find small ways to remind myself about the ways I'm happy, because I tend to forget.

So the title for this blog, though simple, is really quite apt: "Thank God", both as a casual idiom, but also as a reminder to make room for spirituality in the day to day; "good friends", which is both who I'd like to stay in better touch with through a blog, as well as who I'm truly surrounded by when I remember to look up; and good food, the pursuit of which, when I'm being honest with myself, is probably my biggest hobby.

So I'll write to remember great conversations or adventures with friends, kitchen successes and failures, and anecdotes from the weird journey that is life.