Something I Need to Admit

I'm going to admit something, right now, that I've never actually concretely, succinctly admitted to anyone before. Don't ask me why, but I'm feeling just a little bit confessional today. Not so confessional, mind you, that reading this blog post will make you want to cover your eyes, plug your ears, or do anything except shake your head sadly. Anyway, last fall I did something I vowed I would never do:

I put much of my life--and some of my dreams--on hold because I was dating a boy.

If you're reading this, odds are you know me. And if you know me, you know who I'm talking about. But anyway, my feet are getting a little sore from kicking myself over it. The way it works, I figure, is this: when you're outside of a relationship, it's quite easy to say, "I will never stop achieving what I want to achieve because I'm dating someone." At that point, you're watching everyone else in their relationships--all of the wheeling and dealing, the compromising, the sacrificing that is going on--and you're pretty sure that you're watching a whole lot of insanity in action.

And let's be honest. Sometimes you are. But sometimes you aren't--because, after all, a working relationship always ends up being a compromise. People give up some of their individual goals to form new ones together and see if those work out. But I jumped the gun on this last one, and my decisions to put some of my dreams and ambitions on hold came because I thought I was riding an express train when I was really on a bus inching forward in the middle of rush hour traffic. No wonder I experienced the bigger jolt when he applied the brakes!

Now I'm starting to wonder how I find my way back to my dreams. And now, even worse, I'm wondering what exactly my dreams are; an insatiable wanderlust keeps eating at me, but I have no idea how to satisfy it. So in the meantime, on this spring Saturday, I am going to do the only thing that brings me much relief at the moment: I'm going to clean. Like there's no tomorrow.

Suspicion Confirmed

The town I live in is not terribly big. It's not terribly small, either. But in recent years, the powers-that-be in my neighborhood have seen fit to write a neighborhood newsletter in the hopes of fostering good relationships between everyone within a two-block radius of my family. Anyway, this newsletter "introduces" us to each other (today's issue is laughable--one of the two families in question lives directly across the street from me, and the husband assisted me last summer when an unfortunate flooding incident occurred in the back yard; the other family has lived one street east of mine for thirty years and there isn't a soul in a five-mile radius who doesn't know them).

Anyway, this newsletter also publishes any good news that any person in the neighborhood might have. I'm in this issue! This is where the confirmation of suspicion comes in. I attended BYU for a year. I did not graduate from BYU. For three and a half years, I attended Weber State University. WSU is my alma mater. But I have long suspected that, in this my hometown, any attendance at BYU means that the attendee graduated from BYU as well. Does this make sense? Dumb question. I know it makes no sense. But it's right there in the newsletter: "Congrats to confuzzled, who recently graduated from BYU with her bachelor's degree in English and her minor in Communications."

My real question is this: how long has the newsletter writer been retired? And how often does he get out of his house? For all three and a half years, I walked down to the corner of Casa Loma and Main and hitched a bus north to Ogden (note, dear newsletter editor, Provo is south) at 7 or so in the morning. And, at approximately 6:00 every evening (such is the life of an on-campus worker), I disembarked from the bus and walked back home. Newsletter writer/editor seems unaware of this, though I walked directly past his house. And corrected his wife every time I visited the home ward, saying, "No. I'm at Weber State." Such, I suppose, are the perils of attending the singles ward and having a life outside the immediate neighborhood.

P.S. Odds would seem to dictate that the more places I apply, the more likely a response from someone would be. Is my math wrong here?