Mistakes

Today has been deceiving.

I started off on a good note-I was sure it was going to be a good day. Good things happened, I got out of bed at a reasonable time and yet here I am, crying at a coffee shop. Dammit.

Most mornings, it's a struggle to get out of bed, for a lot of reasons. For starters, I super love sleeping. It's the best and generally, the more, the better. I know full well this isn't actually true because if you stay in bed too long, it just makes you more tired. Life's a bitch like that. Anyway, unless I have an actual plan for the day (meeting up with someone, lunch with someone in SY's family, etc), I don't have an actual reason to get out of the bed, so it's hard to convince myself to do it. But, today, for some reason, I did it with a smile on my face.

While I didn't have anything to do, exactly, I had decided on a goal for the day, and that was to ride my bike to a little lake/park I saw on the map. There is a large river that runs all through the city I live in and I often ride my bike up and down it. You can only go up or down way or the other, so it gets kind of boring seeing the same scenery all the time. I have been discovering some mini river paths (streams?) that veer off the main path and last night I started down one that is pretty close to my apartment. It was crowded at dusk, so after looking at it on the map, I decided I'd try to make it to the end this morning. SY said there was a park and some tombs, and even though tombs are boring, I figured it was better than laying in bed all morning.

So, I got up and got moving. The path itself isn't concrete (like the bigger one), it's like this rubbery material that makes it good for walking, but a little squishy for riding. I'm thinking, whatever, I am now the bike master, I can do anything bike related. But like, holy shit, it was so difficult to pedal. I checked my tires but they weren't flat so I blamed it on the squishy path. I moved to the road, but that didn't help much and also, I feared for my life. The path next to the stream had also run out and I had to move to the sidewalk. After about 30 minutes, I gave up. I just chained my bike to a fence and figured I'd walk the rest of the way. I got to an intersection and there was a huge hill in front of me, a giant church on the right and stairs on the left. I took the stairs, thinking, this will most definitely lead to something awesome and beautiful tombs are waiting for me.

NOPE.

It was a fucking parking lot so I just gave up and turned around, cursing the damn map for making it look so easy. I couldn't walk by the stream anymore, so I never did find my stupid lake/tomb but there was some good that came out of it. When I rode back, I figured out the reason it was difficult to get there was because I was actually going up an incline the entire way. I flew on the way down! It was scary/awesome since I had to ride on the road again for a bit, but I got back on the path and it was smooth sailing and I was once again master of all things biking. I was quite proud of myself for making up it up the hill AND I found a shortcut back to my apartment. I also looked at the map again, and there doesn't seem to be a clear path to the lake thing since the path doesn't run along the river all the way to it. I don't know how to get there, but I'm going to make SY drive to it because I'm going to see those damn tombs!

Anyway, so I came home, took a shower and ate some lunch. Then I came down to the coffee house in the building and everything has gone to shit.

For starters, my coffee sucked. I was pumped because I found a nice table in the back with an outlet right next to it, but the coffee was a disappointment, even with caramel in it. Then I got an email from a former student telling me he was in a car accident and had been in the hospital since July! Noooo, such bad news! Then my fool self decided to check on the status of my student loans and FuckKLKAJFLKJDFLKJERUNG that was the worst idea ever, in the history of bad ideas. I have been paying on those bitches for EIGHT fucking years and have barely made a dent. So depressing. Sooooo depressing. Do people ever actually pay them off? Is this a real thing? How can is it possible that I still owe so much? Should I just ignore them and stay on the 60 year repayment plan? I don't understand anything! Why wasn't there a class in college that taught you how to repay them wisely and what all the words on the bill mean!?!?!

But what really sent me over the edge was looking  up information about possibly trying to get SY to America sometime in the next few years. IT IS SO HARD. I get it, people try to cheat the system sometimes and you can't just show up with anyone on your arm and expect to be handed a green card but WOW. I mean, it is really fucking complicated and expensive to get someone you love and want to spend your life with over to the US. And the fact that literally any two idiots in the US can just waltz into a courthouse in the US and get a marriage certificate is SUPER annoying. I don't want to detract from anyone else's happiness, but seriously? Trying to marry someone from another country is the least romantic thing ever. And unlike Korea, the US doesn't have one central registry for marriages, so people can, theoretically, go to each state and get married multiple times! And I didn't fact check this, but I feel like it's probably less expensive and less of headache to get married, get divorced and get married again for two moron Americans than it is for one sensible, decent American (me) to marry one goober-ish, yet lovable Korean (SY).

I understand it needs to be a process and there need to be rules so people aren't just coming in the country all willy-nilly, but wow. It's just silly how complicated it is. I guess you eventually...many, many hours and dollars later, get to marry your dream lover but I feel like there should be a prize of sorts for making it through the immigration shit storm. A free house? Tax break? Free ice cream for the rest of your life? A glitter celebration sticker? Anything! DAMN. IT. Being an adult sucks and I don't want to do it anymore.

Then I tried to re-do my pony tail and my hairband broke. Noooooooo. That really sent me over the edge.

Anyway. I don't like thinking about life and all the stupid things that it requires from me. I am not good at planning for the future (um, obviously?) but it seems like living your life planning for things that may or may not (read: probably won't) happen the way you want seems like a waste. So I'm just going to keep on going day by day and hope for the best. Is that stupid? Probably. But doing it any other way sucks all the happiness from my soul. I feel like I could keep going and discuss this subject further, but "Crazy Train" just started playing on my computer (thanks, shuffle!) and "I'm going off the rails on a crazy train" is trying to to tell me to shut up.

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

So I'm gonna live and IN FACT, I am going to use my bike adventure today as a metaphor! It was really fucking difficult getting up there, but I fucking did it and the ride down was AWESOME.

Dream big people!! Ride that bike to the top!