Traveling Thoughts

There has been a lot of change in me over the last year, in fact, a little over a year. It was a year ago a few days ago that a big change happened in my life that really was for the good, it was the push that I needed to want to take care of my diabetes. (there’s so much I haven’t blogged about so bear with me here,) I had wanted to take care of my diabetes when I started sky diving, but then when my blood sugar went low at elevation (10,000 feet above ground level) and my instructors told me once we got to ground that I wasn’t responding to their signals I knew that my days of sky diving were numbered (I made exactly one more jump). After that I got all defeated again.

I think I had lived the better part of 15 years in a mode of defeatedness. Diabetes really brought me down and with the doctors and family members really holding me back and me not fighting for my right to do things I really just became a turtle in a shell (that was a choice I made). I was a wall flower in school after the 5th grade. (5th grade was rough for me because I had just gotten diabetes and I spent a lot of time in the counselors offices because I was constantly in fights.) After 5th grade I receded into myself pretty much. In 6th grade I spent more time fighting with other kids over friends that it wasn’t worth the trouble to make friends anymore. That was my choice.

Life is all about our choices, sure, some things are thrown at us, but other things we do ourselves. Up until last year (March 15th) I really never made any choices that were going to be a massively good impact in my life, I made choices that helped me get by in life but beyond that most the other choices were to terrorize or hurt people that (i felt) had hurt me.

There are people having problems with whom I’ve become (call them casualties of my growth if you will but by the same token know that it’s not an unforgivable loss). They want what I was, and the truth is, I don’t want to be who I was, I’m doing things now that I should’ve been doing in middle school and high school, and it’s not wrong for me to be doing them as an adult, I’m out there fighting for what I want. And that’s my choice (and my right as a human being).

A month ago there was a pretty big bomb set off in a friendship, from that I decided that I didn’t need to spend my life online, that I needed to not be on the computer as much (I’m already on it 12-15 hrs a day for work). I decided that there are other things I’d rather be doing. As an effect of that choice, this blog has suffered (in addition to all the traveling I’ve been doing and the fairly regular blogging that I’ve been doing on my diabetes blog). Posting has been incredibly infrequent and I’m seriously contemplating whether or not I want to keep up two blogs.

There’s just so much to do beyond the computer, and I’m tired of feeling like I don’t have time to do anything. It’s a choice that we make, we make the time to do the things we want to. And when it comes down to it, I might be able to write some good posts that more people than I could imagine read, but what is that? What does that really amount to in my life, in my life beyond the computer, it might not…

When I started this blog, it was really a place to let loose, the good stuff, the bad stuff, the creative thought stuff. At one point I had a blog called “courtroversy” I would really unload there, I let it go long before traveling thoughts came into existence. Less than a year ago I felt that “courtroversy” needed to come back because I needed a place that could exist separate from everything else where I could vent (the bad stuff). This is my blog, and it’s not a niche blog, it’s an everything blog, an everything Courtney blog; and if I’m going to continue blogging here, I need to feel comfortable in my own space. One shouldn’t ever feel that on their own blog they can’t write stuff because of what their readers will think. Unless the intention was that the blog was for everyone else and not so much you, write about the “you” stuff. And that’s where I am now.

I’ve got experiences from work that I could probably blog about in such a manner that they won’t come back to bite me in the ass and get me fired. I’ve got experiences in friendships that will really piss of the people that were involved in these experiences, but you know what, I’m nice, I don’t use names, and I’m going to start blogging them (be pissed off if you like, I don’t care, pissing me off/hurting in the first place is what earned the experience a post). My family would probably have a fit if I wrote stuff on my blog, but, well, such is life, deal with it, I won’t use your name. I’ve got 3 vacations that have been taken in the last month to write about. I’ve got a heck of a lot to blog about, I’ve got a whole list, and if I’m going to blog, I’m going to do it where it makes me happy to write, not anyone else. That’s a choice I’m making.

By the same token, I may not blog. Maybe I don’t blog because, hrm, maybe I’m not around the computer. And you know what, I’m not going to be perturbed that the PC isn’t on. I’m off doing things, like, oh, riding my bicycle, swimming, running, sky diving, kayaking, hiking, rock climbing, reading a book, traveling, something other than being in front of a PC. That’s me now, a person that doesn’t need to be online talking to people via IM to be happy (don’t get me wrong, I love my friends on IM, but I’m growing here, growing in life experiences)

A friend said tonight “That’s why I think you rock. You have a good outlook.” Had he known me before a year, year and a half ago, he wouldn’t have thought that, and I don’t want to be the person that doesn’t have a good outlook. I spent more than half my life hating it and wishing that instead of surviving diabetes it had killed me. It really put me in a foul mood, and I don’t want to be there anymore. Again, don’t get me wrong here, I have my days where I hate life, but can you genuinely say that you don’t have those days too?

I’m making a choice here, because everything is a choice, we are where we are today because of the choices we made, and I want to continue growing, physically, mentally, spiritually, and I really can’t do that in front of a computer. So, here’s another choice, I will blog, I’ll even make a commitment now that I will blog at least once a week (here on this blog) but beyond that you may not see much of me (not here anyways).

If you want to see more of me than once a week I invite you to read my other blog, my diabetes/cycling blog, Ride to Remedy. That blog that keeps track of my journeys across the US as I ride in a Tour de Cure in each state. Obviously, I also talk about my diabetes. That blog is a niche blog, it mostly sticks to my diabetes and me cycling.

Anything beyond that will be posted here (if I so decide to sit down and blog).