No Complaints Here

At least, not during Lent.

This was not an epiphany. This was not even an ah-ha moment. It was more of a "huh. yeah, I guess so" moment. It even happened on a delayed reaction.

Gina asked me if I was going to go to a party tonight. It's actually a party that I want to go to, but as always, the timing sucks. Timing is just not good in general for parties these days. That's grad school for you. But this year I am trying hard to be more social... to not ditch out on fun events (as much as usual), and to do fun things with people I like on a regular basis.

And so Friday we staged Tacos and Telenovelas at my place. And it was fun and it was with people I like, and so I was positively social and it was awesome.

Today I had my first day of CERT training (Community Emergency Response Teams). It got out early, and so of course I was all excited about the extra hours with which to cross things off of my to-do list. But then Leslie emailed, inviting me over for enchiladas and hanging out with her family and a few friends. My first reaction was the "ugh, so busy" reaction that leads me to having no social life. But then I thought, "no, I got several extra hours in my day today. I'm gonna go hang out with Leslie."

And so I did and it was awesome.

AND THEN after all of that Gina asked me if I was going to the party tonight. I was stuffed with enchiladas and still had my to-do list items, and furthermore had a little beer in me which makes my steely discipline turn into pudding, thereby making the accomplishment of to-do lists even more difficult. I dove into a litany of all of these things, these things preventing me from saying yes to this party. Gina quipped, "oh your life is so hard."

This is actually one of my favorite jokes. I make it to myself and others when we complain about awesome things. Other people make this joke to me. It's a fairly normal joke, this "oh your life is so hard" joke. It keeps us honest, and I enjoy that. At the time I hardly noticed it.

An hour later, I was reading for Comps and for no discernible reason the conversation replayed itself in my head and I thought, "You know, I've been pretty negative about things lately, even good things like enchiladas and beer turning me into pudding. I should be more positive. I should give up complaining for Lent."

And there you have it. No complaints here.

Of course, though, because I'm me, I need a plan. So, I shall try, *try*, consciously try to think of my life (even the burnout draggy things like studying for Comps) in the positive terms associated with them (like how I'm learning such awesome things in such a short amount of time). Failing that, when I find myself complaining aloud about how very hard I have it (or when someone else catches me who knows about my Lent), I will then recite a litany about the positives/benefits of whatever I was just complaining about.

But don't think this means you can sexually harass me or something and get away with it. I will still file a complaint against you. Lent will understand.