It is what it is

The weekend is over and I am sad to see it go. Time always seems to fly when your having fun. I spent a good part of the weekend hanging out with my friend in Atlanta. I was extremely worried. You see she is a smoker and was my smoking buddy when we worked together. What is worse is most of the friends we hang out with are smokers. The whole drive up there not an ounce of temptation, I was more happy that I finally got the stinky smell of out my car. A little while into hanging out the dreadful moment occurred, it was time to step out on the porch for a cigarette break. As the air began to fill up with with smoke I realized that it smelled totally different to me, no longer a smell that I love but more of disgust. At the same time memories of all the fun times I had while smoking began to flood my mind and before I knew it  I was asking for a drag. Now my friend is a good friend and some would say somewhat cruel. She hands over the last of her cigarette and I took a puff. I coughed and choked, it tasted disgusting, I hated it. Now many of you would say that I slipped and in a way I did but at the same time that little puff ease my desire of do I really want to quit. You don't realize how good you feel until you take that puff. Your sense of taste and smell are totally different and even my eyes reacted to it totally differently. Yes that puff was a drop in my resistance wall but it showed me that my weakness wasn't as weak as I thought, my mind had really grown to hate the thing I once love and that little puff tested that.

Like I said this weekend was a true test of my strength, I sort of passed/failed my not smoking test but I did really good on eating real healthy. Luckily my friend knows a lot of health food and helped me stick to that part. The highlight of my weekend was spending my saturday not in bed like I enjoy but working with the homeless. It was a little different this time, more helpers than people that needed help but I still enjoy talking to these people that most individuals run away from and making them feel human again.  The best part of it was I got to share the experience with two of my good friends and my brother. I love when you are doing a positive thing and you tell people about it that they want to jump on the train.

Now onto the sucky stuff, I still haven't heard a thing about a job. I am not upset, I have just realized that it is was it is. I realized yesterday that I am not keeping up-to-date on my skills and even by working temp jobs I still wouldn't be using those skills, so I decided to volunteer those skills. The church I grew up in does a lot of media stuff and there is only one person to do it, that's where I come in. I spoke with the guy yesterday and he was thrilled to have the help and I am thrilled to learn more and to stay current.  I am also giving my talents to a couple of non-profit organizations. I felt like it was the right thing to do and whenever I do go on an interview it won't look like I have been doing nothing.

I have really come to realize that circumstances happened and there really is not much you can do about it. The only thing you can really do is react, positive or negative. Sometimes that reaction isn't just an immediate one, sometimes that one circumstance requires multiple reactions over a long period of time. Just because you reacted so negatively at the initial response of the circumstance doesn't mean every reaction that follows has to be negative. Growing up every time I was upset about something my dad would always tell me to turn that frown upside down. I feel like we have to do that with life. Turn the negative into a positive. Everything happens for a reason, even if we don't know what that reason in the beginning is, it will become more clear later on down the road. Or if you are like me, you know the reason why it happened and just decided that there had to be more to it but there isn't more, sometimes it just is what it is.