the living and the dead

i look over at my calendar several times a day and as i see all of the marked off days showing me that the month is halfway, over i can't help but ask myself: what have i accomplished in a month? it will soon be 3 months into this new year and of course immediately those feelings of not having done anything but hate on my job and waste my money come to mind.
but instead i decided to turn it around so that the next time i am looking at my calendar, at all of the days crossed off, i can think of something good i have done in my life.

so for the month of february: i took more than 2/3 of my insufficient paycheck and made my first $250 payment to my school loans all by myself.

it's a small something, but at least it IS something.

in other news lizzie is getting shipped off to australia soon. she'll be gone for 4 months? which is really exciting for her. i hope she gets that tan she is hoping for and meets a lot of new friends. i am excited for her, going to school in australia is really cool.
also, we have all been talking about alan a lot. i don't know what it is, i really feel like he still doesn't quite know how to be himself. or maybe he just doesn't know how to be more honest with us. he just has not found that balance. it seems like he labels himself "the underdog" and i personally feel that you are only the underdog if you want to be. if you are in a situation where you feel that way and you don't do anything about it, then those are YOUR issues. i can admit that i rag on him a lot, as i do with all of my friends. and i know that his personality differs a lot from ours and he just takes things to heart, or takes things a little too far sometimes. i understand all that. i have been friends with him long enough to figure out his habits. i have backed off a lot and made myself aware of his sensitivities. at the same time, at this point in our friendship i don't understand why if you feel a certain way you can't just come to us and tell us. it doesn't matter how we react bc we are your friends and that is what we are here for.

it is hard for me to understand how someone can't be who they are all of the time. i know that you show different sides of yourself or are more comfortable around different people and vice versa but when it all boils down it's not like you live out all of these secret things and then get embarrassed to talk about them. i don't mean to drag this all out forever and a day it just helps to process it all before i actually talk to alan. bc i will. bc i think it's important. i feel like it's going to be kind of hard bc how do you get anything out of someone who clams up all of the time?
there has to be some reason for why there is me juan and lizzie, and then there is alan. why are there issues there?