Friday, October 2, 2009

Substance

Like clockwork, I found that it had been eight weeks and I was scheduled for another hair trim yesterday. I also had Community Group so clearly I was stretching it with a two-commitment evening and a rental car with no GPS.

I should really get out more...

Or not, since I'm driving a rental car sans-rental insurance.

While robed, checking Twitter and waiting for my appointment I realized I was the only brunette getting my hair done and found myself vastly outnumbered by Dallas Blondes. It was like being stuck in Austin Powers with a room full of femme bots- only I was in the Park Cities and there were women everywhere with frozen expressions, staring into mirrors or at magazines with foil all up in their hair. Someone needs to study the effects of peroxide fumes on the brain, no?



I left to go to KR and MK's place for Community Group, and it ended up being only MK, MG, CC and myself. With the majority of the group unable to attend this week, we sat around to chat, eat grapes and sample various flavors of Braum's ice-cream. Peanut butter and Snickers? Surprisingly good.

Conversation floated and I noticed that MG was making a list in her journal; creative writing courses, calligraphy class, living in Spain, teaching English in Latin America... Just things that had been on her mind making their way to paper. We discussed continuing education, classes we would consider taking and how we just miss talking about books and literary things.

Hi, welcome to life with English nerds. Non-stop fun.

We talked about ideas for the future, in a hopeful but directional sense. I see now that graduating college and working full time puts you in a position to realize your talents and what you really care about. And while my friends have goals and dreams aplenty among us, I don't see many examples in my own life of people looking simply to climb the corporate ladder or take a job simply to make more money. This manifests itself differently depending on the person but on some level we all want our work to have meaning and purpose.

I don't mean to paint my friends as pipe-smoking philosophers because that's not the case at all, but I do find refreshing the fact that our conversations have substance. Not gossip or idle chatter but rather honest questions and genuine interest in each other's lives.

We are women and I think that makes us dreamers by nature, but I also like seeing appreciation and "carpe diem" for the now...

The peanut butter and Snicker's ice-cream doesn't hurt anything, either.

Why do so many...settle for so little? I don't understand why they're not greedy for what's inside them.
-Jack Gilbert

4 comments:

Andhari said...

Ouch. The fact that some of my friends gossip and talk about light things when we meet up kinda hit me a little there.

Kidding. I do have groups of people that spend time the way you do. Kinda make me feel bad and shallow when I meet them but it does give me perspectives. And I do know what I want in my life..

Ps. Why are most girls there blond? I mean do they prefer it or naturally have the hair? I think you're pretty with brunette hair.

alyssa said...

I like this...and please don't tell me that you were all that "surprised" that snickers and peanut butter ice was good! ;)

Bluebelle said...

I smiled at the "english nerds" bit. This weekend I was helping my sister with her university application and started getting excited talking about language and literature. I miss studying way more than I expected!

erin - heart in ireland said...

the english nerds comment made me laugh, at work we're always talking about something history related and the other day when talking about a coworkers family history another co-worker goes, i wonder what the math department talks about all the time?

but that is awesome about your friends, i feel like mine are similar with what our goals and what we want and being supportive of each other.