Category Archives: Personal

A Totally Normal Day

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Do you ever find yourself thinking about what it was you were doing just before everything changed?

And not only that, but how normal it seemed?

Sometimes I wonder if it’s weird that I remember these things and hold on to them as some sort of basis of comparison. While I’ve recently been accused of not dealing with change, when a lot of things change quickly, it’s sometimes difficult to organize that. I still remember that last little bit of “normal” before everything went haywire, and whether it’s a coping mechanism or not, I reach back to that.

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Goodbye, Borders. Godspeed.

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When I read the news that Borders would be closing its doors for good, I cried. Not sobbing uncontrollably, but my eyes filled with tears. That might seem like a bit of a strong reaction, but I think it might be more about what this symbolizes. Sometimes I really fear for literacy, and I mean that.

You also never realize how much something meant to you until it’s gone.

Growing up in the middle of nowhere, we didn’t have trendy bookshops. We didn’t have large retail chains like Barnes & Noble, although on special occasions we’d visit the one an hour away. No, we had a shopping center with a small retailer called The Book Store that was hit or miss, and we had a shopping mall with a Waldenbooks, a subsidiary of Borders. So many of my best childhood memories involve books and begging my parents to take me to buy them. It follows, then, that this bookstore in particular has brought me much joy in my life.

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The Hopeful Reader

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Last week I wrote about my Top 5 favorite pieces of escapist literature, and this week I’m here to talk books again. Specifically, I’m thinking about how reading is just as crucial as writing for mental well-being (I’m not saying that it always works, but it does help). Books don’t always need to be escapist in nature to give us something, do they? Different genres elicit different feelings, all of which are necessary for surviving the cruel, cruel world, no?

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Human Pill Bug

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The human body and spirit really are tricky, fascinating things. It’s funny how emotional exhaustion manifests itself to make us feel physically and mentally drained, as well. It also amazes me how much energy it takes simply to put on a happy face.

(I’ve spent the last two days sitting in a chair next to my dad’s hospital bed. This is his 5th hospital stay since the beginning of April and those chairs don’t get any less uncomfortable. I don’t necessarily have anything profound to say, but humor me by reading on.)

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Where in the World is Frankasaurus?

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Franklin G. Sheepfoot
629 Paul Rudd Avenue
Slinky, PA 00019

June 24, 2011

Society of Frank Readers
911 Employment Boulevard
Blogging Brain, PA 00030

Dear Society of Frank Readers,

I am writing to express my interest and enthusiasm in having you continue to visit and read my blog on a regular basis. I realize the updates have been slow lately, but I assure you it is for good reasons. Given my blogging skills, my love of writing, and my sense of humor, I believe I am well-suited to remaining on your must-read list.

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Honesty: Simple, Enough, Simply Enough?

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Recommended listening for this post: “Honesty” by Billy Joel, “Cry for Help” by Rick Astley (don’t judge me; that song is amazing), and “Start Over” by the Abandoned Pools. In that order.

You know that friend you have with whom you can talk about anything? You can communicate openly and be yourself. Always. There’s nothing you can’t discuss.

Isn’t that a great feeling?

For me, that friend is someone I’ve known for a number of years. Most of my friendships with guys begin when they have a romantic interest in someone I know — a friend, my cousin, my sister. This was no different. This friend had a thing for my sister, and that’s how we started talking. We were in our early teens and became inseparable. We’d spend hours pedaling our bikes all over town, talking about everything. Then we’d go home and get online and talk some more. He became like a member of my family, and in many ways, still is.

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The Fear of Fear Itself

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This is a more personal post than I usually write. I’m just trying to write some things out tonight, as it were, so if it’s not your thing, feel free to check back next week.

Growing up with a sister who is two years younger than me, it was a given that people would compare and contrast us. My sister was always bubbly, cute, wearing the right clothes, dating someone, involved in plenty of activities, and always surrounded by a large network of friends. To this day, when we go somewhere, she’ll make conversation with people she doesn’t know, and she pulls it off.

On the other hand, I have always been reserved, quiet, shy, frustrated that no one makes clothes for the little teapot, habitually single, involved in plenty of activities, and with a select core group of very close friends. I’m not very outgoing because I get really nervous talking to people I don’t know or don’t know well. I stammer and stutter and say stupid things. I think I’m a generally awkward person.

We are basically nothing alike, which is probably why we find ourselves arguing a lot and unable to really understand each other. But that’s not really where this is going to go. Over years of comparisons, people always assumed that because I was quiet and not very outgoing, I’d always be more interested in staying close to home. I’d probably attend the local campus and stick around close to mommy and daddy when school was over. My sister, on the other hand, would run off and live somewhere interesting. She was much better suited to take care of herself.

My sister ended up going to college about 20 miles away. In the fall, my brother, the most outgoing and adventurous of the three of us, will be heading off to college about 40 miles away. Surprising everyone who thought I’d go to school in my back yard, my college was just over 100 miles from home. And on move-in day of my freshman year when my whole family stood on the sidewalk telling me tearful goodbyes, I didn’t cry with them. I gave them hugs, sent them off, spun on my heel, and got to my life.

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I Don’t Get People

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Fair Warning: These are my thoughts and, where applicable, opinions. I’m not interested in fighting with people, which is why I’m writing this instead of fighting with them. Also, my train of thought might derail.

So Osama bin Laden is dead and we’ve known this now for, as I start this, about two hours.

Forget that the Phillies are, at 12:25 a.m., in the bottom of the 13th inning.

Whereas we as a country should be happy that the terroristic “mastermind” behind 9/11 has ceased to be and it was on America’s watch, we instead find ourselves divided by political parties. And I really can’t understand this, although I guess it isn’t altogether surprising. I applaud the Obama administration for gathering the intelligence and using it in a way that allowed the troops on the ground to effectively execute the command. I’d applaud any administration that did that.

But in the end, it goes beyond the Obama administration. Osama bin Laden is dead because of America. Not because of the sole actions of Democrats or Republicans.

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Some Things Never Change

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Yesterday I wrote about how things need to change. Today I’m back to write about how some things never will (although they still need to). It’s tied in with Easter (to a degree)… and there are pictures. If you think my drawings are ridiculous at best now, you have to see my skills of an artist in second grade.

As my mom and I were decorating for Easter a few weeks ago, we discovered that one of our oldest decorations, a basket shaped like a rabbit that, for years, held eggs, had been damaged by stuff from our roof. Before we threw it out, we cleaned everything out of it. I love finding things from the past, things I’d forgotten all about or never remembered in the first place, so I was pretty pumped to find a letter that I’d written to the Easter Bunny when I was in second grade. Then I read the letter and thought to myself, “Wow. Our society is full of really awful people.” The letter was actually really sad.

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Turn and Face the Strange

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Why is it so easy to get comfortable? We call ourselves proponents of change and say that we welcome it, but we settle into this state of happy lethargy and contentment. We might not be fine with where things are or where we are with them, but we’ll choose to be (or at least say we are) because it makes it easier and then we don’t have to think about it. When did it become favorable to never want to push ourselves or test our boundaries in any and all areas of our lives? Continue reading →