I may be a bit light headed from donating blood, but I am happy to be where I am. It is difficult for me to ever feel content. Go ahead, ask around, you aren’t the only person who thinks that I am an insanely pessimistic individual who generally only points out the negative in most situations. So sitting around and thinking about good things feels somewhat unnatural.

Before I get into those good things though, I would like to complain about something. Our company has 1000’s of people in a single building. An administrative announcement was sent out two weeks ago about a blood drive being held on the second floor. Why was no one but myself there? It is a two day blood drive and I doubt they will get 100 pints of blood due to the poor outcome. Why are people so afraid to give blood? Do they just not care? Are they afraid of needles?

I highly doubt most of the people in the large financial institution I work at have gotten a tattoo or piercing in the last year. So what is the holdup? It makes me angry that people are not willing to spend 30 minutes of their existance. I mean, I do it for the cookies and orange juice afterwards but there are plenty of other reasons to donate. Cancer patients, organ surgery, natural disasters all demand a constant supply of blood but so few donate. I don’t think I am any better than anyone else because I donate, I am simply confused why other people don’t!

Alright - that is the end of my rant. Now you get to hear about the good things in my life in detail.

1. Living in New York -
   This is quite an experience to be here. Crackheads, couples, and religious fanatic on the subway. Jasmine and I being a minority in our neighborhood. Not having to drive. It all seems pretty amazing still. We are saving money little by little to eventually be able to see all the sites out here. The entire thing is mind blowing. Our apartment is great, and I barely notice the $2k a month that is being thrown away on it (okay, maybe I do notice. A lot). I am excited that we are going to have visitors stay with us as well.
2. My Marriage -
   Some of you may know of the difficulties that Jasmine and I have had in the past. Vanquished. We still bicker, and things aren’t easy. Especially since we aren’t around our community of friends. But because we have no one else to rely on, we have also become closer and forced to depend on each other. We have never been stronger.
3. My Faith -
   When we moved to New York I had assumed that the most difficult thing would be to find a church. I was wrong. We have begun going to The River, a very young church. They have only begun but already have the roots of what I believe to be a good community, a great pastor, and a vision of Christianity that synchs up perfectly with ours. I will explain more as we become more involved
4. Work -
   It is challenging. Nearly every day I have at least one experience that makes me want to run for my life. But it is challenging! I love being in an environment where I am called out if I am slacking. I sometimes need to be pressured to produce anything. The people who I work with are super nice and the experience is getting better every day. Just today I am releasing a web interface that is cleaner and faster and more usable than most of the others they have already produced. I don’t know how long it will last, but I am not trying to escape just yet.
5. Reading -
   Because I don’t have to drive out here, I can read on the subway. I can only get through 5-10 pages each direction, but it is better than the 0 pages I used to read during my commute. I have recently been reading many books on how to improve my writing.
6. Writing -
   I am slowly learning more things that I didn’t know I didn’t know (repetition on purpose). I would love to say that I am writing every day, but I am not. I am still trying to beef up my knowledge base from all of the different perspectives I can. I know that many people say that the best thing to do is to “just write” but I don’t think so. I can “just write” for the next 20 years and never get published or hired. By processing the information I have been recieving about writing better, I can already go back to my previous stories and tear them to shreds as to why they fail and, ultimately, why they failed to get me into grad school.

So - what you should get out of this whole post is that I am satisfied. I am content. I am also growing. I have not given up on my dreams for the future, and I will continue taking steps to achieve them. But until then, pray for me and also know that I am happy.