LaurieWrites

11/7, 38.

Yesterday was your birthday and I didn't forget, because godforsaken BIRTHDAY ALARM reminded me three times.

I can't remove you from Birthday Alarm because I don't know what Birthday Alarm is. Actually, I probably could remove you but when I get these e-mails blaring your name in the subject line and demanding that I remember your birthday I delete them as quickly as they come because it's weird to see your name in the subject line of any of my e-mails anymore. This is useful and still marginally necessary self-preservation but it also prevents me from acquiring any more information about Birthday Alarm, including the instructions of how to remove individuals from my virtual memory bank so that every year I'm not reminded of their birthday when I would just as soon not remember it. 

Birthday Alarm also doesn't remind me about anyone else's birthday. I find this strange, given that I know a lot of people and care about a lot of birthdays. I can't imagine a time when I would have only asked to be reminded of yours, because I would have had no shot at forgetting it anyway.

I refuse to believe that you would have set your own Birthday Alarm for my benefit.

Without the electronic reminder, I would have remembered it anyway (but still thanks, really, for the alarmist bullshit that helped me remember it extra hard, Birthday Alarm, just in case I haven't been clear enough about that so far. Think you could tone it down just a notch? Seriously.) but I didn't consciously carry your claim to this day with me this year in my heart or my head for the first time in nine years. This was a relief. I just had to stop and think, actually do the math, to remember how old you were now because I was stuck between two options when I put a working title on this post.

I forgot that we're the same age every year for a month and 20 days. 

Last year in the waning days of my denial about a variety of things both related to you and not, when we were still in some form of stupid electronic communication and I had in fact seen you on your turf just weeks before, I contacted a store in your city and had a gift card sent for your birthday, because I was incapable of ignoring it just then. I felt the familiarity in my veins, the necessity of marking your time in the context of my own. I knew you needed shoring up, I knew you weren't in a good place, and I couldn't be neutral.

I never could be neutral in your orbit. It just didn't work. 

You contacted me to thank me for the present. We had a strange, long, online chat, and then December, 2008 happened, one of the most challenging months of my life, and I stopped talking to you. There were two e-mails in January, the last of which I ignored, and that was that. The contact stopped.

In the years of off and on I concurrently worried over and celebrated your birthday. I wanted to make it special, like people in my role in your life were supposed to do, and because really, at that time, I couldn't imagine a world into which you had not been born. There was the east, and you were the sun. I don't really remember, now, that any year was particularly fantastic, but I'm sure there were some that didn't suck. Nothing about our relationship - nothing, absolutely nothing, in hindsight - was logistically ideal. There was never enough private space or time to spend together, never enough time to relax, not really. This was both by necessity and design, as it turns out, and is a hallmark to me of that which is not meant to be.

If you can't relax into each other enough to roll with the punches and have a good time regardless of the situation you're done. I know that now. I could say I wish I'd learned it earlier but there was nothing about this that could have happened any differently. I know that now too. It still pisses me off but I know it.

The absence of (most) feeling is the most that I can ask for and as much as I can expect at this point, I guess. It's not so bad for a year. Our story ended unremarkably, actually. Unanswered e-mails and the inactive ceasing of communication between two intense communicators who communicated intensely together is probably the saddest possible outcome, in a way, but it's also appropriate. You finally reach a point where you've said enough, where you've done all that you could possibly do. It's like you walked down a long, long road together and for the last two blocks the conversation dwindled and at the final intersection one turned left, one turned right, and no one said anything.

I went left. I'm calling it.

When pressed I guess I could say that I miss you, but that would imply that I know you anymore and I don't. I have no idea where you are, besides the basic outline of a geographic area. I have no idea what you're doing, and that's good. That's so much better than good given the relative hell that I went through due to a focus on where you were and what you were doing for a very, very long time, something I say now with no blame but just an acknowledgement that that is how it happened. That is how much I cared. And what I can say is that having no contact, having no knowledge, is the best possible outcome for me and my somewhat fragile yet intensely resilient heart. I don't want to know. I don't need to know. I hope I never know again. It's just better and safer for me that way, and I finally care more about my mental and emotional health than I do about having any shred of information about you.

But what I do know is that all those years without me, when you had moved on in some fundamental ways but kept your hold on my heart, when I wished you a happy birthday, I'm pretty sure I didn't mean it in the way I was supposed to. I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore. I'm glad that now I can own the fact that I don't wish you any particular kind of happiness, any more than I wish you any kind of pain. I'm utterly neutral and more or less disinterested in the particulars. If I were a better person, i.e., the Dolly Parton or Whitney Houston in that godawful I Will Always Love You Song (dirty lie, ladies) I would have an interest that surpassed rhetoric in your happiness, but I don't. I am utterly neutral, and the best I can do is wish you neutral things, if I wish you anything at all. It's a relief to know what a tiny corner of the 7th represents, and to move on. That's where I ended up, and I'd think it was sad if only I wasn't so grateful not to be miserable anymore.

Leaf. Heart.

This is my favorite shot from Lancaster, I think. Of course I took it in the parking lot right before I left.

I have a thing for heart-shaped leaves and raindrops, it turns out. That one reminded me of another shot, and when I found it it turns out I took it on November 7 last year. So apropos for the text post that's coming. Serendipitous, even.

Ninja mascara

I went to New York in September to see about a blender and not only met a life-sized Great Lash mascara in Times Square in the process but also received a free full-sized sample, which I can't believe I haven't told you about yet.

And by "I can't believe I haven't told you" I mean "I can totally believe I haven't," but it was fun. Here's the set, including this cute shot of Devra and me, not wearing ninja headbands. 

Sometimes you need to go see about blenders to have some fun, I guess. Also to have amazing rice cheese balls. Go to Bar Stuzzichini, you won't regret it.

Work in progress

I just finished two days of what felt like nonstop eating and no workouts in Pennsylvania and today I tried to get back on track.

I went to the gym last night for an hour. I hit the elliptical hard with intervals and now my arms and legs hurt and I'm finding it hard to keep my eyes open again although it's Friday and I'd oh, maybe, like to watch a movie because I'm crazy like that. Oh, and then there was that delicious unnecessary snack I just had to have because I was in some kind of post-workout hysteria wherein I just cram whatever happens to be on the counter into my mouth in a ridiculous act of self-sabotage.

I was doing so well from the spring to late summer. I lost almost 20 pounds. I was exercising daily. I was eating like a relatively sane person, and it wasn't even that difficult. I had cut my wine intake drastically, partially because the workouts were helping me to better manage my moods and partially because the last thing it turns out I feel like doing after working out for almost two hours is to pour any liquid besides water down my throat in excess or to eat food that I know isn't bad for me. Funny how that works.

Anyway I was feeling optimistic, like I had a handle on this thing after a couple years of really not having a handle on it at all. I had an eye on a 40 pound weight loss goal and felt for the first time in years that I could hit it.

Then it all fell apart, in late August a little bit and then by the middle of September for real. I started a new semester and with it the exercise routine became more erratic. I started getting a little more lax with my food, and once the workouts dwindle it becomes frighteningly easy to rationalize the food thing too. This is why I can't just manage my weight with calorie reduction and not activity. It's totally intertwined for me.

I started October true to the Shredheads challenge. I worked out seven out of the first ten days of the month. The habit started to reform, and I started to feel better about spending the time every day in focused physical motion. Then, as the month wore on, my schedule bit the dust again, and I started giving myself inches of skipping that turned into yards. By the time I got to Pennsylvania on Tuesday I was in a terrible mental space and embarked on two days of completely off-the-chain down home eating. I'm talking poor road food choices, using absolutely no restraint at huge conference buffets, a long afternoon drive in the countryside of fatty foods and carbs, a failure to put my workout clothes to use even though the hotel had a fitness center and I had (if I was honest) time to use it.

I ate cake three times. That is all.

By the time I came home I had overexaggerated all of my choices in my mind to the point where I was convinced that I had put myself up in another digit that I had planned on never seeing again. I felt bloated and sick. I was sentencing myself by the minute to a return to the weight I'd been at in April when I started this process. In fact, if it were possible to gain back the 14 pounds I've managed to keep off of my totals since then, I was convinced I accomplished that in two and a half days.

Awfulize much?

I did what I always do.

I kept going. I went back to work. I drank a crazy amount of water on Friday. I went to the gym after meeting a friend for an early happy hour (not advisable, no, but I had made plans with her and didn't want to bail on meeting her. I just did the best I could with the hours in my day.) Today, I went out to scope a photoshoot site for a dear friend of mine, and because it happened to be at a county park with miles of hiking trails, I went in reasonable hiking clothes and hit the trails for an hour.

I weighed myself this morning, because not knowing is always worse for me, and it turns out that the focus and determination of the past 24 hours - in spite of last night's ill-advised snacks and a couple of beers - undid whatever happened in Pennsylvania and I'm still 15 pounds down from my highest weight of last spring.

I'm still doing this, although right now it is difficult. Right now my head is not in the game as much as it needs to be. Right now I feel very discouraged and tired. I feel like I've set myself back and wasted a couple of months that I couldn't afford to, and I'm still not happy that I've gained back a few pounds instead of continuing to make progress in the other direction.

But I know this is not the worst it can be, in fact it is far from it, and I know that I can do this. I know enough about my weird psychology combined with a somewhat erratic and taxed body chemistry to know that I have to expect this. I have to treat this like a mental and physcial marathon and a process that I'll be engaged in on some level for the rest of my life.

I am strong. I can manage an hour on the elliptical and burn off 600 calories and still feel energized. I can go outside and walk fairly difficult trails and still feel like I'm doing myself some good. I'm not obsessed with exercise or food, which during college, one of the last times I embarked on some unhealthy ways to lose weight, I couldn not say.

I am still trying very hard to take care of myself. If I said I didn't care about the numbers that would be a lie. If I said I wasn't worried about the holiday season that would be another one. But I know what I have to do and to some extent I'm doing it. This is still a priority for me, and in November, I'm recommitting myself - just like I'll have to try to do in every day in every month to come.

I feel okay - not great, okay. I am still much better off than I was in April and not worse. I feel better. I look better. So there's that. 

Thanks to Bill and Kristen for the continued motivation and opportunity to hear from and talk to others who are walking (and running, for sure they're running) similar paths. It helps.

It's hard to hold a candle.

Fort Hood. Orlando.

I'm not sure where to find it. I guess you just do.

How you see yourself.

 That's the trick. I've been thinking a lot about that lately. I'm not sure why, or where it'll end up, but it's probably got something to do with the change of the seasons.

I'm not sure about much, actually. These are the times when I really need to release my need to be.

Things I bought today in Amish Country

Gummy pumpkins, gummy raspberries and gummy dinosaurs (someone in my life likes gummy things)

A pretzel with sweet mustard

A tea towel replica of the Irish flag

Two tacos (one carne asada, one fish) and guacamole

Two Diet Cokes

Sushi, yellowtail and scallion roll, and salmon, white tuna and shrimp sushi, specifically

Pumpkin butter, apple butter, nonpareils, pickled tomatoes, pistachios, bacon & horseradish cheddar cheese, sesame crackers, peanut and raisin mix and apples at the farmer's market

Pumpkin pie ice cream

One hour and 24 minutes on a parking meter

Tights at Target

So. Weird. I should not be left unattended. Also I will now cease eating for the remainder of the week. And tomorrow, perhaps, I'll share some of what I saw and heard, which is a lot.

A Year Ago Today.

I was so excited and moved. I was hopeful. I drove home from NPR Headquarters in downtown D.C. where I'd been to watch and blog about the returns, through normally silent streets that were filled with people screaming, laughing, crying, dancing. Dancing. This city hadn't danced like that, collectively, in my lifetime.

Progress is difficult. Hatred and complacency are tough obstacles. None of us are truly privy to the information we would need about our governments - local, state, Federal - to draw the most informed conclusions. I truly believe this. I think that the most intelligent and well-informed among us simply do not know, and would not know unless we were sitting in certain seats. As black and white as we like to pretend it is, there is way too much gray.

I choose to remain hopeful.

I choose to try to understand what other people believe and why, unless they're completely off the rails or abusive in word or deed. I choose to remember that after nine months of George Bush's first term, I had seen nothing, nothing to thrill me and nothing to make me uneasy, until the world fell apart and then there were years of devastation and there the pieces lay for someone else to try to put together, a nearly impossible task, in my eyes.

I don't know enough to draw any conclusions yet, but I will only say that I believe how people felt a year ago today continues to have merit. And I will say that in the dissent I hear - and welcome, in principle, because I treasure the concept of democracy and our precious right to free speech - I hear much more hatred and negativity than I hear progress and solutions, and I hope that is more a defect in my perception than it is a reality.

I still believe that change takes time.

Lancaster Last Time

2006, to be precise. I had fun shooting the last time I was here. I think this was my favorite.

<

Or maybe this was my favorite? Who can remember.

Whole set here.

Could be my...election day.

But it's not. My friend Jill Miller Zimon is in the process of kicking butt in the Pepper Pike City Council race, in Cuyahoga County (think Cleveland) in my former home state of Ohio. Go Jill! Your gain is Virginia's crushing loss!

Don't ask, don't tell. Really, Virginia.

Actually Jill has nothing to do with Virginia, just everything to do with a race well run and run with integrity. Impressive stuff. Here she is when we are at NPR on Election Night '08.

I don't have a whole lot today. I'm tired. I have some kind of problem with going to sleep at a reasonable hour and tonight, in a Lancaster, Pennsylvania, hotel room, I am going to do so before midnight, maybe even 11:30, having found way better than average sushi in a fairly rural area and eating it while I watched The Biggest Loser and cried. (No I can't stop watching this show. No I don't know why. Yes I want to punch my television every time Alison Sweeney starts talking like Rob the Copy Guy from Saturday Night Live. I don't know what I'm doing.) I'm going to bed now partially because I feel like I'm going to pass out face down in my keyboard so I really don't have any choice, and also because I have to wake up on time to see this dude, who is our 9 a.m. keynote tomorrow morning.

Yeah, I don't exactly know why it's happening at a career counseling conference either, but I'm expecting there will be coffee. Also I will not be "WOOHOO-ing" at 9 a.m., you can pretty much count on that.

All Souls

Today was All Soul's Day and there was a Mass said at my parents' church for all parishioners who died this year, including my grandmother. Families were supposed to show up and carry candles to the altar while the names of their people were read.

When I read the e-mail about it my heart sank because I knew I'd have to go even though I'd say I wouldn't til the last minute and I knew it would be difficult and I knew I'd cry and make an ass of myself.

All of that came true. 

I don't go to church and haven't for years, which is something I don't write about much in-depth beyond owning my ambivalence about the whole thing, topped off with such profound dissent with Catholic politics and practices that my participation would be hypocritical. My dedication to my grandmother and the goodness with which she helped to raise me - in many ways inseparable from being Catholic, because it was just something that always was - trumps that though. I knew she would like it if I went and if she had been asked to go and remember a family member in the same way she would have gone and helped to cook the food and helped people find places to sit and offered to walk the babies around in the back if need be.

She would have done it for me. When presented with that flip-flopped reality there was nothing else for me to do.

And so I sat in the back in a pew by myself and got caught up in the words of the ritual that I still know by heart and the weakly-sung hymns. I started crying as soon as I sat down, back in a church I was in last ten months ago for her funeral, still jacked up from the gym so sitting down in a room of grieving people immediately after was a bit of a shock. I of course had no tissues in my purse so I wiped my eyes (and, more embarrassingly, my nose) on my sweater to try to keep things under control, failing for the better part of an hour, panicked the whole time that the woman next to me would move or scream, for fear of swine flu or contagious emotional instability. 

I watched people - old people, widowed spouses, adult children, families in huge packs of siblings and grandchildren - walk to the back of the church, called by the month their person died, and wondered how I would make it up the aisle behind my parents without losing my shit entirely, a woman pushing 40 still mourning a primal grandparental tie to a person who no matter how old or frail she was I could still get to spar with me, someone who will never come back.

It was a brutal, insane and completely beautiful grief parade, and when January, 2009, was called I got up off of my ass like I told myself mentally I absolutely would not do up until the moment I needed to and I walked behind my father and my mother to an altar I don't really believe in anymore except for the very necessity that it must mean something because it meant so much to her. And Daddy left the candle on the steps and we walked back to our seats and I kept on crying for myself and for her and the people who came in the months behind us, and I did not leave. I listened and I watched and I remembered and felt the entire, nearly-unbearable weight of the ties and years that had brought me here, to that pew, standing and sitting and kneeling in a lockstep so comfortable that no matter how long you're away it's still quite possible to slide back in at a moment's notice.

It may be the only time I will get to do that for her again, and as much as I didn't want to do it for as exposed as it made me feel with feelings I'm not entirely sure yet how to control, it was my honor to accompany a single lighted candle up a suburban church aisle for her. I know I do it mostly for me, to help me put all of this back together into some kind of workable form, because whatever I can do she doesn't need anymore. But still, in some ways, even if it's futile, I still do it for her too.  

 

Brunch, Hell's Kitchen

I am capable of consuming more than two beverages at every meal. It gets a little out of hand.

I like when the Caps win.

Especially when they beat a former Patrick Division team, like the Philadelphia Flyers. This is what I look like when that happens. And after two alarming subsequent losses in the past three days, this is the image that I'd like to use to kick off November. You know, in the interest of turning that mess around real quick.

Hi everyone. This is me. I take a lot of goofy pictures of myself. I take a lot of pictures in general.

Here's another one, that isn't of me. I took this one on a photowalk of sorts for my friend Genie and her new baby who was on his way into the world when I shot it. Congratulations, Genie and Rich, and I can't wait to meet you, Ian Jacob. I wished a happy life for you on this dandelion, that's certain.

Happy November, happy...um...NaPhoPoMo. Sure, why not?

November = NaNo

November is going to be absurd. I'm going to Amish Country, home of a sickening array of pastries and buggy parking at the outlet mall. I'm going to a two-day girl geek event up the road and a few other media and writing sorts of things because I really need the inspiration. I'm driving to South Carolina for Thanksgiving, because my uncle who is like my brother is turning 50 and he wants to have his holiday birthday at the beach. And from there I'm pretty sure it'll be Savannah for the turn of the month, which as I mentioned below I'm pretty excited about. And there's the usual teaching and work and overall running of the laps of my daily life.

As I've done every year for the past few, I'm also doing NaBloPoMo, wherein I commit to writing a blog post per day for the entire month. I'm also signing up for NaNoWriMo, not expecting that I'll at all finish or even make major headway on a novel of any kind, but just to write, to have some structure and communication with people who are some of them really going to do this, and good for them. I can commit to writing daily barring any major emergency, but I won't even bother to commit to a word count because that just never works for me. 

I am mostly excited for NaBloPoMo because people I dig are doing it too, people like Deb and Alana, people like Kelly (go to her site and donate a purse. Kelly rules.) and Amy Turn-Sharp.  And of course the founder of this enterprise herself, Eden Kennedy, who was one of the very first bloggers I read and who is responsible for the ultimate blogging experience of my life, the BlogHer Community Keynote. I read in the inaugural 2008 version in San Francisco and it continues to mean so much to me, can't lie. 

Damn I've met some amazing people through this gig. It repeatedly blows my mind, and it's one of the reasons why I like this idea of getting back to basics, of doing what appealed to me about this in the first place, which was writing and publishing it at will, and increasingly became about connecting with other people who were doing the same thing. None of this stuff would have happened to me - not the conferences and the gadgets and the writing opportunities and the Twitter business and the social groups I've got online and off and the overall (if I'm being honest) support of people who I call friends if I had not ponied up 15 bucks to Typepad four years ago, broken-hearted and halfway through a bottle of wine. It allowed me to write again, mostly because it gave me a space to do it and a structure that it turns out I really needed. And as always happens for me, the writing made everything else happen from there.

This month, I am going to shoot for a daily photo post and a writing post, either combined or separate. That could change, of course. It often does. I hope you'll drop by, and if you're doing any NaBlo-whatevering too, please comment or @ me on Twitter and let me know - @lauriewrites, naturally. 

November will be better than October turned out to be, I know it. And if not, at least it'll be much more thoroughly documented.

I'm on my way.

Everything is off kilter. Everything. It's all knocked around like crazy shit gets knocked around.

I hate it.

Let's see. The list of everything that's akilter is boring, so I'll spare you. It's nothing that sounds that terrible even in the aggregate. It's just a bunch of...

Like, wait. See? Just there? I had to stop writing this because I was overcome with a sudden urge to purchase "Goodbye Stranger" as performed by the almost-elderly group Supertramp and so I stopped and bought it and then got further distracted by the opportunity to acquire a Skid Row EP. Problems. No focus. 

GOODBYE STRANGER, IT'S BEEN NICE. HOPE YOU'LL FIND YOUR PARADISE.

Also? PARK AVENUE leads to SKID ROW. FYI.

Well, that little problem's solved, but I still can't write for shit. I feel stupid all the time. If I've interacted with you in any way in the past two months, I probably feel like an idiot for some reason related to something I said or did or wrote. I can't finish e-mails. I can't make decisions. I am deleting this post in my head right the hell now.

I don't know what happens to my brain. I do know though that after much internal whatever over a whole bunch of different whatevers since the end of August, the other day I was so humiliated in a meeting by someone I generally trust that something further snapped. I admitted to a chorus of agreement that I sucked at something I do routinely in my job, and what it meant when I finally could think again was that (brace for this quantum leap) I am bad at everything. I have no aptitude for what I do. I am a terrible person with no skill whatsoever at interacting with the people I need to interact with daily to accomplish what I am charged with accomplishing.

I wanted to walk out the door and never come back and make good on that continued threat that I really only make to myself to drop out and rent beach chairs in coastal Carolina.

AND I WILL GO ON SHINING SHINING LIKE BRAND NEW. I'LL NEVER LOOK BEHIND ME MY TROUBLES WILL BE FEW.

Cue ironic Supertramp interjection.

If I could sum up this period photographically it would be thus:

Hi, that's my last New York hotel room when I was there a couple of weeks ago. 22nd floor, no screen, and a weird compulsion to jump - I'm Super Girl. I can fly - in spite of zero desire to end my life decimated on the sidewalk.

I know. It's horrible. It's not good. What it is is the truth, and after weeks of not showing up here to dump my thoughts and feelings into this little white box, I feel it's the least I can do.

Good news? I have a little bit. The Washington Capitals bring me joy. I'm spending money I ought not to spend on tickets to home games therefore because it's actually fun to go (Except for when they lose to New YORK, the lowest ranked team in the Southeast, that was AWESOME.) and if there is something I believe is underrated it's fun. I mean, I'm on Twitter, and I read the litany of activities, some of it family/kid-related, some of it personal, and mostly it just sounds like...a litany, which in the Catholic church is basically the repetition of something over and over and over and over until you feel you've reached the end of the list of the saints or the popes or the rosary, whatever it is you're litanying. Fun? Probably not. And no I'm not saying these daily activities can't be, I'm just saying a lot of times it feels more like a list to check off than something genuinely fun. 

I don't like where this is going now. I don't like preaching about fun because if you want the opposite of fun that's probably up there.

THE WRITING'S ON THE WALL.

Anyway, it's not all bad, I guess that's the point. I had what might count as a minor breakthrough yesterday. I have some ideas of things that will make things better. And what's more important is that I had the crystallized idea that I could make things better, that I could change them intentionally and mindfully just by resetting the dials, by rebooting - like my blog friend Leah is doing, but not exactly. I don't have to do what I'm doing. I don't have to stay in the same ill-advised place. That was the old way. It doesn't have to be that way anymore. And my incessant feeling of disconnection to anything - a family of my own, a home, a community - is not so much a destiny as it is a current state of affairs that I don't particularly care for and that in the next chapter I have some say over whether it remains the same or completely, positively changes.

And that's really the heart of the matter, gentle reader. It's not as bad as it sounds. It's actually the best possible outcome of this year of transition and change and pervasive, underlying grief.

Maybe that's why I'm buying the Skid Row ep. Maybe that's why my Thanksgiving plan this year includes a roadtrip and the beach with my family for my uncle's milestone birthday and a week with my college best friend in a southern coastal city. And I'm so counting the days, counting them over and over in my hands. I will be in the sun and the warmth on your birthday, that also happens to be the birthday of two little girls I'll be visiting, who will be high on a trip to Disney and will be all the promise in the world that everyone needs to see. I will not be in the space I'm in that is currently a space of biding time, of not feeling good about where I go at the end of the day.

Maybe that's why I have this and a couple of other numbers on repeat.

Oh, what the hell. Bonus!

Points if you guess which one contains part of my high school yearbook quote. And at which erstwhile lead singer's concert I broke my dress this summer while making a completely overaged fool of myself but having such a good time I didn't give a DAMN. Lord, will live and die a closet groupie.

I think sometimes I have to go back to go forward, and right now in my mind a lot of the time I'm in a concert parking lot with a pint of Jack Daniels in my jean jacket pocket, looking over the next 20 years, looking at a few forks in the road where although I went left now I have new ones and a chance to go in a different direction.

It can be worse than that, is all I'm saying.