Snow Glow

It's as if my life has been made up of a whole bunch of different compartments of sh. . .stuff I have to deal with.  Like time was moving me neatly from one compartment to the next, and I dealt with each one the best I could then moved on.

Then I flew across the country, to the side I'd never been to.  The grass was definitely much greener there, the trees taller, the mountains higher (obviously, since we don't exactly have any here), the people nicer, the coffee better, the food tastier, life slower. 

Out of my comfort zone I stretched and reached and dreamed for things I never dared consider from my bubble.  The world was bigger, brighter.  The light shone differently so that things that were once in shadows were now in the light.

Sunday morning sunshine in Portland.

The best thing I brought home was not, in fact, the t-shirt with the pine tree on the front (although that is pretty fantastic) but a new perspective and a renewed mind.  I am so thankful for the opportunity and the experiences I had!

Especially considering the fact that shortly after I arrived home, all of the compartments of stuff I had to deal with decided to collide.

I suppose it's just another side-effect of Adulthood, that the to-do lists only become longer and more detailed, that for every item you check off, three take its place.  Or perhaps it's simply the fact that practically everything in my life has been in the process of changing since this past April when I moved out of my parents house and my dear work friends told me they were moving away, followed by my engagement in May, followed by the decision in June that I would keep my position at work but switch companies, followed by all of the changes and absurdities that go along with keeping your same job but switching companies, management, and teammates in July, followed by painful goodbyes in August, followed by a month of mourning and adjusting in September, followed by my first ever business trip in October, and now here we are, knee-deep in marriage prep and snow, just in time for the holidays.

It's been a busy year, busier than I realized.  And I don't see it slowing down in the near future.  But at least I have a slightly better grasp on my sanity than I did even a week ago.  I'm learning to roll with the punches, to not over-think things too much, to leave work at work, to enjoy the little things about these crazy days of my entrance into Adulthood.

It's so the little things.  Like my car battery dying on my day off instead of on a morning when I had to be at work at 5:45 in the morning.  Like the sun sneaking its light through the crack in my curtains to form a perfectly golden exclamation point on my wall.  Like the ridiculous beauty of this early onset of winter in the Ohio Valley.  

Yes, I think I am just going to surrender everything and let this glorious sunlight melt the cold bitterness in my soul.