Okay.  I’m back.

Now, maybe life can return to some semblance of normalcy (BOR-ing).

Or, maybe not.

It seems my days are filling up insanely fast, and for someone who’s not used to having any type of social calendar — or any type of calendar at all, I’m a little overwhelmed.

Some people are good at this.  When presented with large lists of to-dos and schedules and time frames, they immediately jump in — tackling the onslaught like taking a sledgehammer to a brick wall.

Others, like me, become paralyzed with indecision.

There are too many choices.  Where do I start?

My time is valuable, you know?  And I want to make the most of what I have.

Which is exactly why I opt out of Black Friday every year.

What?

You heard me.

Black Friday.  That horrendous day that used to be reserved solely for nursing tryptophan hangovers and detoxing the cranberry sauce from our systems and reflecting on the thanks we gave yesterday for all of the things we’re fortunate to have has somehow, via very deliberate media and marketing ploys, turned into a day of dragging our food-filled butts out of bed in the middle of the night to stand in line and then fight with perfect strangers over all of the things we still want.

Sure.

Makes perfect sense.

Of course, if you’re a Black Friday fanatic, I’m not going to change your mind.  You’ve heard it all before — it’s turned into a high-stress, competitive day of finagling and bargaining and deal-gettin’, the likes of which you only witness en masse but once per year, and you love it.

And there’s no way I’m going to convince you otherwise.

But.

For me, at least, beyond the traffic and the frenzy and the gimme gimme attitude, there’s a bigger reason why I opt out of Black Friday.

The deals aren’t worth it.

At least not for me.

And probably my definition of “cost” is different than your definition of “cost.”

What??  I could save 40% off a flat screen television?

Don’t care.

And 25% off a new washer and dryer?

Whatevs.

And if I buy one Magic Bullet with the complete accessory kit, they’ll throw in another identical bullet plus the kind that makes baby food in baby-sized portions for free?

Meh.

You see, it all comes down to what you perceive as a deal.

Bu– but– a deal is a DEAL, you say?

Not so much.

What if I did need a new dryer?  What if I really could save $200 off the ticket price if I woke up at 2 a.m., stood outside in the cold for 2 hours in a squishy line of tense people, rushed mob-style through the department store doors, dodging angry women with flying purses and pepper spray and competitive adrenaline, jumping over the bodies of those too weak to handle the pressure, pushing slow-moving children and the elderly out of my way like some maniacal greed-driven beast, jumping through the air and splaying my body across the last dryer in the store because it’s MINE, all MINE — and get-back-you-bitch-because-I-WILL-bite-you, and finally — finally — I get home with my new dryer.

And get this:  it only cost me $400, 6 hours of sleep, the flu from standing with germy people outside in the cold, 2 years off of my life from the stress of the ordeal, and, oh yeah, my dignity.

But at least I saved $200.

See my point?

For the longest time, I’ve maintained the very real and personal belief that I was born sometime in the mid 1940’s, lived passionately in the ’60’s, and died of a dramatic drug overdose (is there any other kind?) sometime in the 70’s.

I came back in a hurry as a child of the ’80’s so I wouldn’t miss anything, but it turns out, unfortunately, I did.

I feel this way mainly because of a strong, inexplicable affinity for Vietnam era music and the television show, The Wonder Years.  I feel no such connection to feathered bangs and slap bracelets.  And Nick Carter couldn’t hold a candle to John Lennon.

I mean, really?

But there’s just something about the innocence of a time prior to all of the distractions of the present day — when answers came from actual books instead of Google, when entertainment came from imagination before television, and when people actually understood their cause.

Photo by Burk Uzzle.

Well… for the most part.

Photo by Burk Uzzle

The world was a scary place, for sure, but still there was hope.

And I think that maybe I would have liked to live then — when reporting still involved research and passion and integrity.  When family and friends conversed with each other during meals instead of fondling their phones.  When people became famous for doing extraordinary things — not how pretty they were or how many sex tapes they filmed or how envious they made us of their shallow lives.  When little girls were beginning to learn their intellectual worth, dreaming about building careers as scientists or writers or soldiers — not about how famous they could become for bleaching their hair, using their friends, and doing nothing of memorable note.

I realize it’s not healthy to live in the past.  Especially when, if you don’t believe in reincarnation, I never actually lived in the past.

But here’s the thing.

I think that maybe we’re forgetting ourselves here.

We’re too worried about how many Facebook friends we have rather than building real relationships.  We’re filling the empty parts of ourselves with stuff we don’t really want because it’s too hard or too time consuming or too terrifying to think about what might really be missing.

None of this is revolutionary, of course.

But think about this for a minute, the next time you look down at your phone when there’s a real, live person in front of you — the next time you tell a little girl how pretty she is instead of asking her about her favorite book — the next time you spend hours watching and envying how celebrities live their lives:

Life is built on experiences — the stimulation of conversation, the taste of good food, the reminiscing of a day well spent.  So maybe, just for a night, we should turn off our phones and experience it.

*Steps down from pedestal.*

I was watching a show the other day that took place Great Britain in the early 1900’s where the characters wore black arm bands when they were in mourning.

I don’t know if you knew this, but people died a lot in the early 1900’s.  I’m pretty sure it’s because they didn’t have Echinacia.

Or Viagra.

Or iPhones.

But one thing they did seem to have was an inherent understanding of the fact that people can’t read other people’s minds.

Bear with me for a sec.

I think you’ll find it hard to disagree that most people, at least here in America, are pretty self-absorbed when it comes to their day-to-day business.  When we order our triple-shot-chai-caramel-mocha-latteatto from the pony-tailed, too skinny girl behind the counter at S’bucks, we’re not concerned about what kind of morning she’s having.  We’re not worried about whether or not she’ll pass her mid-term or get into law school get an abortion.  We just want our damn coffee, because WE are having a DAY.

So we might be a bit snippy with the skinny latte maker — we might be too busy thinking about how she must be thinking about how cool we are in our work skirts and ties and rushing off to a busy busy day to notice the fact that she’s actually thinking about her mother, who’s somewhere in Afghanistan and hasn’t called home in 4 days.

Or her boyfriend, who just dumped her for a skinnier latte.

Which brings me back to the arm band thing.  While politeness and compassion are virtues that we should probably practice all of the time, it’s sometimes easy to get wrapped up in our own little whirlwind wonderlands and forget that there are other people in other wonderlands that, on occasion, are actually sometimes a wee bit more jarring than or own.

And maybe, had we known that one of these little satellites within our colossal orbit was having a bad day, we would have been a little nicer.  Or understanding.  Or… equipped.

I’m talking about mood bands, people.

If the dumpee at S’bucks were wearing a red arm band to symbolize just how ticked off she is at the world, we’d know to leave her the eff alone.

And maybe give her a slightly bigger tip.

And maybe hit on her, depending on our gender or sexual orientation.

Or, if our co-worker shows up to the office wearing a black arm band to symbolize mourning, we know not to heckle him too much about his losing football team.  Unless the band is for mourning that loss, in which case he’s abusing the system and should be heckled to no end.

Our waitress is wearing a green arm band?  Perfect!  She’s happy and helpful and will likely fill our drinks in a timely fashion.  But watch what you say — if you cross the line of rudeness and she returns wearing red, you might want to pass on dessert.

I’m thinking I could be on to something big here.

The thing about the woods is that they can be quite beautiful and quite terrifying, all at the same time.

Photo taken with iPhone.

The good thing is that when you’re on a designated path in a state park, they’re a lot more beautiful and a lot less terrifying.

Photo taken with iPhone.

Unless you’re me, and you inadvertently lead your party astray from said path and out into the dense wilderness where every shadow is suspect, every rustle sounds menacing, and the legs of your fellow backpackers start resembling those of fried chicken drumsticks.

Extra crispy.

Photo taken with iPhone.

Fortunately, I stumbled back onto the path without even realizing I’d been off of it, and my much more wood-savvy companions were apparently aware that we were leaving the path and didn’t say anything because they, for some inexplicable reason regardless of knowing me, thought that I knew what I was doing.

Pfffft!

The truth is, I never know what I’m doing.

Like, at all.

I’m just stumbling blindly along like the rest of us.

And sometimes I can feel it when I’ve left the path, but other times I can’t.

Photo taken with iPhone

Rarely, as it did yesterday in Raven Rock State Park, does my inadvertent wandering turn into a bonafide short cut.

Photo taken with iPhone

So my lessons from our hike?

1)  Sometimes you have to look for even the most obvious paths, but wandering aside every now and again to enjoy the scenery isn’t the worst idea in the world.  Unless, of course, we’re speaking in the literal woods-hiking sense, in which case wandering from the path can be extremely dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.  (Anyone read The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon?)

2)  On my own, trekking through the wilderness, I wouldn’t last a day.

I’m just glad that no fried chickens — or human appendages — were harmed during the hike.

Photo taken with iPhone

(By the way, my comrades saw the path switchback ahead of us, so while they knew it was a shortcut and weren’t just allowing me to blindly lead them astray, I had to expertly cover my shock at stumbling upon a path when I thought we’d already been on the path.  This is why you should always bring smart people with you while wandering through the woods.)

This morning I became sidetracked reading someone else’s blog — someone who’s poetic and dreamy and introspective and harsh — every bit the writer I’d like to be if I took myself more seriously.  A traveler.

I’d share it with you, but I selfishly want to keep it for myself.

Hey, buddy, life isn’t fair.

Don’t you hate it when people say that to you?  Like I don’t know.

Anyway, now I don’t have enough time to write a proper post before leaving for work.  And the only reason I’m wasting your time at all is because I’ve had an epiphanal moment I feel I need to share.  Are you ready for it?

Here it is:

When I can’t travel, I replace the desire with food.

Was that obvious to everyone but me?

I absorb myself in discovering new recipes, cooking it, tasting it, eating it, washing it down with red wine.  I hope this doesn’t mean I’m psychologically unsound.

Though, would that really surprise anyone?

Oh, and here is that blog I don’t want to share.  I’m only telling you because sometimes life can be fair, if I can help it, and I don’t like making people curious without providing answers.

It seems unnecessarily mean, you know?

And now, because I’m here (not traveling), I’m going to get ready for work and then fully embrace my culture by buying a sausage cheese biscuit on my way to the office.

I never said I’d pretend to be above it all.

(Is this post as confusing as I think it might be?  Welcome to my unedited, pre-breakfast, post-coffee mind.  It’s a scary place.)