I haven’t blogged in so long, I almost forgot how to do it, but here goes.

So much has happened since November or whenever it was that I last updated this page. I started a new job, I started watching Heroes, (thanks, Jess!) and Veronica Mars was cancelled. I made a passel of new friends, but I royally pissed off some other friends, and I lost one forever. I’m quitting my church next Sunday. So much has changed for me since November, but I can’t say I’m entirely worse off for it.

My new job is exciting. I’m an “activities associate” at a resort here in town, which basically means that I’m a year-round camp counselor for old people. And you’d think with all the horror stories I have to tell about rude customers and rich, entitled retirees, I would hate this job. I don’t. I really like it. It helps that I work with some incredibly talented people who also like their job, that I get to use some of my gifts as a performer, and that the pay and benefits rock my face off. Mainly, it’s just nice to have a change of pace. I was getting so burned out in retail, I needed to get out before I went all emo and slit my wrists or something. (Things were not that drastic. You all know how melodramatic I am.)

New on the TV front: Jess helped me discover Heroes in January and it changed my life. I am obsessed with this little show about ordinary people with extraordinary abilities. I love character-driven stories, so this is like the epitome of shows for me: Each person’s abilities seem to be a logical manifestation of their personalities. For instance: my favorite character, Peter, is a hospice nurse at the beginning of the series. He’s got this huge heart, he’s kind and caring. He’s the type of person who you know gets dumped on all the time. His ability is that he can take on the abilities of the other heroes just by being around them. So basically, he’s taking on the burdens of the other characters, and the way he accesses them is that he thinks about how the person made him feel when he was with him. So this kind man with a caring heart accesses the powers he’s acquired by using his heart, not his head. I could analyze every character ad nauseum, but I won’t. Just watch the show, okay? The DVD comes out in August or something. It will change your life.

The way I made these new friends is really kind of mind-blowing. I was involved in The Sound of Music back in the winter, and while not everything about that experience was wonderful, it did introduce me to these people who have changed my life. They were all involved in the show as well, and we just really clicked. I don’t know when or how it happened, it just did. I remembered Danielle saying back in December or January that we probably wouldn’t see any of them again after the show was through and I thought, “No!” so I scheduled all these parties over at my house for the next month and… the rest is history. I see my new friends something like every day and they have become my new surrogate family. A couple of years ago, I had a little family like that, other people my age who didn’t have a mom and a dad right here they could lean on, so we leaned on each other. They’re all scattered all over the Midwest and the South now, but I never forgot what it was like to have that little postmodern family. Now I have it again and it looks different, but sometimes it feels similar. We can be brutally honest with each other, we fight and make up, we laugh a lot and cry some and watch movies and have sleepovers and it’s so nice to have those day-to-day friends again. I could write a whole blog about just them, but maybe that’s for another day.

The rest of my changes have been harder. I don’t really want to get into it all, but this has been a very trying time for me spiritually. The church I’ve been going to for five years is dying. It’s being destroyed from the inside out. One of the few people with the balls to fight, my dear friend Mike Stowe, died a month ago last week and I miss him horribly. I’ve lost friends before. They’ve moved away, or stopped talking to me, or graduated from college. I’d never lost someone like this before: he just died, just like that, with no warning. He was only 49 years old and he just dropped dead. I don’t understand it. I hope I will someday, but I don’t right now.

Not to be a downer. My life doesn’t really suck, it just feels that way sometimes. But you know, when I’m sitting around my house feeling sorry for myself about the hard changes in my life, I remember the good stuff that’s happened, too, and I can still say “I serve a good God.” And then I go watch Heroes. So, there, my newest blog since the winter. Maybe this will be a regular thing. Hmmm.