The first was what I needed (and had) this morning in order to straighten out Oct-05. The latter is what got me off my ass and productive tonight.

Past being a relative term, of course.

It occurred to me, last night, that going through the bank recs was an odd little trip down memory lane; unexpected, too. Two years ago October I was living on my own for the first time ever, I had come to the realization (while driving to my ex’s home to pick up some mail from his front porch and taking a work call on my cell-phone) that by-god I was in my occupation/I had a career, I was no longer in ‘someday’ mode I was in ‘now.’ The following month I would take my first ever plane-ride to New England (another first for me) for work training on our new software (yes, another first, everything else was strictly locak OJT). I felt like an adult, finally, and since then I’ve seldom had that ‘I’m a stupid, clueless teenager’ feeling. It’s really liberating!

While working through more bank recs I got into 2006 and came up three credit card transactions made by Mom when she thought that to initiate a charge you needed to press the ‘credit’ button. She was running the cards because I was in middle-of-nowhere-Mi’ssippi at Gulf Wars; another first and possibly an only… it wasn’t ‘all that’ for me. While I only made it through April, 2006, in the bank recs by the time I left work, it’s no wonder the reminders kept coming at home.

Last summer I reconnected with some old high school (okay, some go back to middle school) friends and ended up going to an end-of-Summer pool party where I met a guy who was insanely charming, very sweet, and quite taken with me. Unfortunately, he happens to be very bad at, say, calling when he says he will, so while he’s great to talk to I never really saw anything happening. Guess who called tonight, after more than 6 months of ‘radio silence’?

But it was perfect timing: I was sitting around, not really getting motivated to work on what I needed to, and the phone rings with a number I don’t recognize. It’s RockStar (what? I have a thing for musicians–guitarists especially–it’s a weakness…) calling, I guess, to chat. We spent an hour on the phone just wandering through various topics and left it with ‘at some point, not too long from now, he’s going to make some time and ask me out’. I’m not holding my breath, but it’ll be interesting to see if it happens. Actually, this would normally bother me to no end but since I’m under no false impressions, here, I’ll probably only believe it when and if he ever does. (And half-expect him not to show if we do make plans… which is another thing that would send me over the edge, but maybe since I expect it it would just amuse me? who knows…)

The call, the spark of human contact, was what I needed, though, to get up and actually do something tonight. I know over the past dozen years or so I’ve become a bit more introverted, I need my alone-time more often and definitely need the decompression space living alone affords me. Still, there’s something about the contact high I get from just talking to another person that is incredibly invigorating. So, while we talked, I cleaned my kitchen and started one of the prep tasks for making the lamb. I turned on my laptop so I could organize some thoughts.

The call ended and I decided to check out those friends that are linked to him in my mind via myspace. And that got me to thinking: I really envy those old friends that have such crazy, yet perfect for them, lives. Kids, a mortgage, family drama, crazy friends… I envy them their ability to hold onto that. But it’s not jealousy, I’m not going to kid myself that I would do well in their situations, but wow do I admire them! It’s just amazing to me that people can stay together for a decade or more, to constantly keep up with people like that: I’m such a flake, I flit in and out of the different social circles but I always have everyone in mind. It’s funny but I was actually thinking about last Summer’s party and how odd it was and yet how comfortable it was–despite the fact I was there alone (a few years ago I never would have accepted an invite without someone to latch onto as a human social sheild), hadn’t talked to any of these people in 12 years at least (some a lot longer and some I’d never met) and yet… I survived and I enjoyed myself. It was another one of those growing-up things I’d failed to master in the past.

I’m fighting the nostalgia off, tonight, but it’s not as hard to do as it once was. I think that’s a good thing.