Two Completely Different Peninsulas

Even though school is out for the year, it doesn't mean I'm not learning anything.

My grandpa has been a hero of mine for as long as I can remember. He's the coolest guy I know, and spending time with him this week is making that even clearer. Yet there are some obvious differences in how we live our lives.

Something about being in the military, and probably being old too, gets him up at 4 a.m. every day to make a pot of coffee. The thing I prefer about grandpa, compared to other ex-military I've lived with, is his sneakiness.

There are other guys that wake up at an ungodly hour, and want everyone to be up with them. So I appreciate my grandpa not being obnoxious...

Another thing I find funny about him is that he believes everything he reads on the Internet.

There are some very interesting people that find some very interesting ways to convince other people to believe in their very interesting theories.

But the best part about my grandpa, which is also the part I could really benefit from imitating, is his demeanor. He’s been married to my grandma for more than 50 years, and though he’s been mostly deaf for about 20 of those years, he’s still able to make my grandma and everyone around him happy.

That is something that I strive for in my own life. My main purpose is to make everyone I know as happy as possible. Though I’ve driven off that track recently, this trip is opening to my eyes about what my real purpose is.

My days of selfish searches for happiness are over, and its back to being me.

It shouldn’t have taken a trip down to Florida to make me realize this, but the pancakes were definitely worth the trip.

Vacation?

“I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything I dreamed it’d be.”-- This basically sums up my last 5 days on planet Earth.

I haven’t been this lazy, this bored, this…fat in such a long time.

It is times like these that make me realize how much I appreciate school and the stress that comes with it. Even though classes are hard, and most of them stupid, it is still a responsibility that keeps people like me sane.

I’ve already cleaned my apartment, and my car, I’ve done all my laundry, and I’m going to bake up a storm tomorrow…what else is there to do?

I leave for Florida on Friday, and I will be there until the first week of January. That’s awesome, I know.

But will it make a difference? I am afraid I will just be bored AND warm. Plus, I won’t get to see my friends at all over Christmas break.

I guess I just miss hanging out with certain people, and I am recognizing that I would rather be with them than be warm…and not have to worry about scraping off my windshield…or have to wear multiple layers of clothes…ok, so maybe my friends can wait.

Regardless of all those things, and how I rank my friends against my warmth, I miss school. I am still in town, still walking distance from my classrooms, but it’s the people that make the difference.

I hope that I feel different at the end of next semester. I hope I am ready to move on from college and start working in the “real world.” I can’t imagine living my life without talking to the people I am talking to now. It seems impossible to think that I will need to spend more than $100 a week on myself. I feel like I could live like this forever.

But I know that’s not true. I have to move on. Just like that relationship you were in that caused you so much stress, and made you so angry sometimes, after it’s over…you miss it.

I guess I just need to find a new girlfriend…right?

n/a