What has Lance Armstrong done?

For me, Lance Armstrong:

• gave cancer patients someone to look up to, and to continue to fight against the disease because of.
• got me into better shape.
• started me cycling. Which is where I think about life most often.
• started me following cycling, and watching the grand tours. Which gave me a connection with some friends that are very close now.
• started a great foundation, that I'll continue to donate to.
• started a great foundation that helps me track my daily calories by having the largest food database I could find.
• started a great foundation that has raised millions upon millions of dollars for the research of a cure for cancer.

One year ago...

So, I've been thinking a lot recently.  I'm very sure that when I eventually die, "thinking myself to death" might be the reason that's on the certificate.  This normally happens to me though when I've done something that makes me reconsider what I'm doing with my life or what I've done with my life. Meeting someone that I'm in awe of and being quite happy with everything going on in my life right now has turned me into reminiscing on the past year of my life. I'd love to be able to tell you that this is going to be some eloquent post, written with actual sentences and paragraphs, but it won't be. I think in bullet points, so that's what you get.

Last year at this time, I was:

• walking around aimlessly.  Without purpose, without direction, and without an actual goal in sight.  The "light at the end of the tunnel" was more likely the train and not the end of the tunnel.
• a new home owner.  After luckily falling into a good housing opportunity, and having a great friend help me out completely.
• rearranging my life, and dealing with living by myself for the first time ever.
• dreading waking up each morning, and going to a job that I wasn't appreciated at.  While also preparing to be without a job.  Knowing that February would be the end of a 12 year career at the same company.  My first job out of college.
• quite unhappy with life and also quite alone.  I do thank the people that I talked to a lot last year, but no matter what was actually said to me, it was really just going in one ear and out the other.
• very stressed out about what I was going to do.

365 days can be a lifetime though.  I was told, by a smart person, that she's found "the worst year you've encountered is normally followed up by the best year you've encountered".  I feel like 2012 was good to me.  The best year?  I think I could've done more to try to end the world.  Certainly a better year and my life has turned around.  So, in the last year, I:

• received a book called "What Color is Your Parachute?", that got my head around finding a new job and creating a new career.
• got a new job, that I'm currently very happy with, and that I'm appreciated at.
• decided to upgrade my closet with many new Express fitted dress shirts.
• refereed my first ACC soccer game.
• witnessed my cousin get married.
• got to go to an Orioles playoff game.
• traveled to Australia, for a great friend's wedding, and hung out with one of the most amazing girls I could possibly have in my life.

I don't tell you this to make me seem like I'm great, and everything wasn't perfect throughout the whole year, but if you know me at all then you know what a shit word "perfect" is anyway. Like I said above, all in all it was a good year. It was probably the exact year that I needed to feel like myself again. I needed to be appreciated. I needed to accomplish some long time goals. I needed to believe in myself. I would've liked to have met someone to date too, but I'll have to leave something to do for this year.

Fighting for out of your league

I've had a lot of time to think recently, and to be a bit more alone than I normally am. Being on planes flying around the world, screwing with your sleeping patterns, and having a couple more days from work will do that a guy I guess.  Plus drinking by yourself might have its usefulness. All joking aside and with the above being said, I think I've had an epiphany, or maybe I'm finally able to put into words, something that I've been thinking about for a long time now.

I always seem to be interested in girls that are far out of my league. 

Whether I try to talk myself into the fact that she isn't, to try to calm myself down, the fact of the matter though, is that she always is. Every girl that I've ever been fully interested in has been so amazingly far out of my league. The question that keeps popping up in my head though (and I don't have a solid answer for) ... Do I continue doing that to myself (I'm not getting any younger you know)? Do I continue to be interested in girls that are so far out of my league? And if the answer continues to be yes, then I need to learn, at some point in the very near future, to stop getting discouraged if it doesn't work out or I don't really get a chance.  Because it's really not meant to work out in the first place. The hardest part of continuing down this destructive path I have myself on, will be to stop getting discouraged time after time. To realize that I would need it to really work but one time, just one time, it will work out and then I'll have found that absolutely amazing girl that I've been chasing for my lifetime. I guess the real epiphany comes in realizing that the reason I always chase after girls out of my league, is because of an incessant need to find someone that is better than me. Someone to learn from, someone to grow with, and someone to be a better person because of. I've always liked the quote "If you're the smartest person in the room, then you're in the wrong room", but I seem to be only just realizing that I'm actually trying to live that way.

At the end of the day, I'll have to keep trying. So maybe I have my answer after all.  I don't know any other way, and it really only takes one chance after all, right? Like Blake Shelton says, in his song "Over" ... "I don't wanna fall asleep alone, and wake up knowing that I died without the one."

Off to Australia

Happy New Year to you. It sure has been awhile since I've sat down to this mess of a blog. I do have a couple posts, right off the hop, to bring in the new year. A lot has gone on, for the better, in 2012. I'm still processing how absolutely amazing my friend is, to be quite honest. She's truly one of the very few, very special, very attractive, and very amazing people in my life. I think I'm just going get into the list before I start missing her already.

So, without further adieu, in no real order (because I've lost track of days)... My amazing trip to Sydney.

• I watched The Bourne Legacy, and Ted on the way there ...The Avengers, and The Wrestler on the way back.  Ate four plane meals, snacks in the meantime, listened to hours of music, and slept.
• My friend met me straight off at the airport, with a huge smile, a kiss on the cheek, and a "where the fuck have you been?" type of look, 
• We walked all around Sydney, 
• We saw the Sydney Opera House, 
• We saw the Sydney Harbour bridge, 
• We saw Hyde Park in Sydney, 
• We went down to The Rocks, 
• We took a ferry to Manly for some beach time, 
• We put our feet into the Pacific Ocean, for the first time, in December, that I've been in an Ocean, 
• We took a train to Sydney Olympic Park, 
• We rode in all sorts of public transportation, 
• We watched a live Twenty20 Big Bash cricket match and she explained what was going on, 
• We went to a great wedding, for a long time friend, and she met most all of my friends that I have from growing up. 
• She danced the night away at the reception, while I sang the tunes on the bus to the after party. 
• We ate some proper fish and chips, burgers and chips, Chinese, sushi, Mexican, and a brunch that consisted of French toast, maple syrup, bacon, and vanilla ice cream (twice on the brunch), 
• We watched the New Years Eve fireworks, from the stands of a cricket grounds in Valcluse (so there weren't as many people and we could see the whole harbor), 
• We watched the World Series of Darts (to which she even found me darts with American flags), 
• We went to an amazing 20,000 seat stadium for an A-league match and hung out with all the officials after the game (because she just happened to know the center), 
• We watched the sun rise on Bondi Beach on New Year's Day (just to see the sun rise on the beginning of a great year for both of us), 
• We got thrown out of a bar, after I drank three beers, because there was a fight, the police was there, and I was tired (read: "looked drunk"), 
• We got asked, "Who do we sing for?" To which the correct response is "We sing for Wanderers", especially while wearing an USA away top. 

I'm sure I'll think of more that went on, but I'm currently in the process of trying to shut down my brain and go to sleep. No matter what, you can see from the list above that my friend certainly showed me a lot in a five day span. I'll never be able to repay her for the hospitality and generosity that she's showed me, but I surely hope that I have the chance to try. I'd really like to see her again.