Giving Thanks

Today I was reflecting on how very fortunate I am and how unnecessarily negative I can be. Sometimes I complain about my side jobs, how I'm stressed by them to the point that I'm being ungrateful and even critical of my employers. This needs to stop. I'm actually quite lucky to have these jobs and for the way that they treat me. I've become spoiled, I believe, because many times they have been so good to me that I've come to expect that treatment all the time so when they don't shower me with whatever it is I'm expecting, I'm annoyed. This is wrong on my part. That's that, and I'm expressing this so I can change.

I was also thinking about how picky I've been with apartments over the past 3-4 years. I think back to my time in Guatemala and I have to think of the luxury we actually live in! Within our own scope, living in the US, in New Orleans, I've been pick, too. Jesse and I have been together a little shy of three-and-a-half years, and this past week marked a move to our fourth apartment together. About a month and a half ago when we decided to take this apartment in American Can, he made me promise not to bring up moving again (or leave him :D) for an indefinite period of time. He even asked me to write a contract. Well, after actually physically participating in much of this move, I now know why: moving's a bitch! I've never done so much manual labor in my life. My hands ached, and I did far less than Mia and Jes in the move; I wasn't strong enough.

I have taken/take Jesse for granted. When we moved to our CBD apartment, I had just started working at Anthropologie, and I didn't want to ask off of work so early. In retrospect, that was dumb. The time before that, at our second Uptown apartment together, he and his dad moved our stuff in right after I left for my last undergrad semester in Guatemala. The first place we lived, on St. Charles, he and his good friend moved his stuff in because my few possessions (mainly bought from the previous tenant, a graduating, former classmate) were already in the apartment.

I am going to have a new outlook. We love Mid City so far. I'm going to quote Sallie, and hope that "I've never looked back." I hope that when Jes and I finally can buy a house (if we stay in NOLA), that we put our roots in Mid City. It's just this sense of community, warmness, nature. Much, much more, but I'll end here and save an ethnography for another day.