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Huzzah for Bullet Point Friday!

Bullet-Point Posts: The Lazy Man’s Blogging Tool

• I have a mock trial competition this weekend. It’s also the weekend of the snowpocalypse II (this time with more snow, explosions, and alcohol). I’m praying to The Snowgods that the competition get canceled and I spend the next three days drinking with my friends. Truly, it’s the only way to deal.

• Yesterday could’ve been the most stressed I’ve been this year. I intern for the District Attorney in a county in PA and I get to do real lawyer-like stuff – I have trials, I do Bench Warrant and Preliminary hearings, and it’s all pretty awesome. However, time spent arresting people notwithstanding, a lot of my time is spent researching, writing briefs, and reading over transcripts. It’s about 95% prepping and 5% trial-ing/fun stuff. Within a 5 hour time span on Thursday I’m told I have a memo due Monday, a jury trial on Tuesday, and a Bench Trial the week after. While awesome, it so coincided with the fact that I’m elsewhere this weekend & won’t really be able to get anything done for Monday. And THEN it turns out that this law school thing I’ve been setting up nearly collapsed and I needed to fix it in about 30 minutes, and THEN on the drive back to my apartment that morning, my car’s brake light turned on and images of me, my car, and a Speed-esqe situation.

How did I feel on Thursday? Like Charlie dealing with Pepe Silvia.

• Truth: I’m a selfish giver.

While I detest (read: am terrified of) needles, I try to give blood as often as I can. Is it because I’m selfless? Because I try to help those that are in need? Not so much. I time my blood donation with when the Red Cross is giving out free t-shirts. I use the same mentality when running 5Ks and marathons.

In fact, one my 2010 resolutions? Get more shirts. I figure everyone wins: I get in much better shape, run a lot, help other people with my awesome blood, and further my quest to never buy a shirt so long as I live. Indeed, I’m pretty sure that this is one of my driving motivators in life.

• Speaking of running, the lovely, witty, super smart, and absurdly funny Anne from fAnnetastic Food has set me up with an awesome workout schedule for Operation: Run Like The Original Marathon Guy But Without The Dying At The End Part (shortened to RLTOMGBWTDATEP for convenience). The next step is to get her to start hooking me up with the healthy baked goods she makes.

I hate girl scout cookie season. There, I said it.

The cookies are delicious, I’ll be the first to admit. But it’s such a shameful process from beginning to end. On the one hand, we have children peddling their wares on the streets and in front of grocery stores. And these wares being peddled? They’re the Devil’s food.

Damnit, little girl in your stupid uniform with your ridiculous hat, do you know how much will-power it took me to NOT buy Oreos or Cinnabons while I was just in that damn grocery store? The ONLY way that I can get through that will-sucking exercise is by repeating two things to myself:

1. Raspberries, Blueberries, Greek Yogurt, and Granola all taste JUST as delicious as an Oreo would.
2. I need to buy healthy items so that I can proudly judge people’s contents in their carts at the check-out aisle.

But now that I’ve stepped outside, guilt-free and my self-righteous judgment quota of the hour has been satisfied? WHY ARE YOU OFFERING ME DELICIOUS THIN MINTS, DEVIL CHILD? It’s like selling chocolate liqueur after forcing an alcoholic to pass through a grocery store with its own liquor aisle(s).

And just like that alcoholic, I know that No One Would Know if I just buy one box.

But you do know, little girl, don’t you? You know that it’d end up being 7 boxes, a mumbled excuse of “relatives” or a made-up “wife”, and then it’d be an illicit rush home to rip open the packaging and the frenzied attack to eat as many Thin Mints and Samoas as possible before the rational part of my brain realizes what the hell just happened. And just like that, 6 2 days later, in disbelief that my “stash” is empty, I’d find myself – junkie-like – trying to inhale the crumbs of what used to be 5 7 boxes worth of The Good Stuff.

Samoas? More like Samoashame.

And even if I manage to avoid your grocery/street-side Fat Traps, I still have to deal with you at the workplace.

People start talking to me about their daughters/cousins/little sisters/neighbors and how wonderful they are and how their Girl Scout troupe is doing this or that. You know what? I don’t care. Your daughter/cousin/little sister is useless as a person because they are children and children contribute nothing to society. I miss the days of child labor because at least back then they could make clothing or go into coal mines. Now? Now they have adults sell their Thin-Killer Cookies and tell stories about lovely little Jane and her smile and her rendition of a dandelion in the school play.

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ed. You know what’s not only delicious, but healthy and free? Signing up for the lovely, funny, smart, and ridiculously active fAnnetastic food’s Progresso soup giveaway !

I’ve been hearing a soft humming, I guess you could describe it as a buzz, lately. It’s everywhere I go and it is nothing if not constant. A perpetual whisper – feeling tangibly close while frustratingly ethereal and unrecognizable.

It follows me to work, it’s there when I’m in class, and it makes itself heard when I look at myself in the mirror every morning. When I’m in my room, alone and reading, it hums, buzzes, and sings.

Sometimes I go out, get drinks, laugh a lot and hope that the noise cancels it out.
Sometimes I drown myself in work in hopes that I get distracted enough not to notice.
Sometimes I tell myself that I’ll try to understand what it means when I’m less busy.
Sometimes I make excuses, sometimes I hesitate, sometimes I deliberate.

Add up enough sometimes and you are faced with an entire lifetime.

And it dawns on me. That voice? That whisper? It’s mine. It’s me.

It’s time to ask the hard questions; time to find the person I, at best, vaguely recognize when I look in that mirror; and time to act. Because I’m tired of feeling passionless, I’m tired of wondering an infinite amount of what-ifs and should-haves and whether-tos.

It’s time to ignore possibility and focus only on what is and is not.

I started writing that it’s time to start asking and time to start trying to find.

But, no.

It’s time to act.