my brother

last night i had the distinct pleasure of hanging out with my little brother jon. standing in at a towering 6'3" i suppose it's no longer completely accurate to call him my little brother, but being that it's a habit i've never really wanted to let go of, i now refer to him fondly as my not-so-little-little brother. being more than seven years my junior, he will forever be my baby brother.

jon moved back to seattle in march after a nine-month post-college stint in san diego and it was a true joy for me to have him back. he's the only family i have here in washington and what's been beautiful for me is to have the chance to foster a real grown-up relationship with him.

when i moved here to seattle so many years ago now, he was a little ten year old boy, and experiencing very different things than his wide-eyed collegiate sister. because he was so young when i moved away from home, i always felt like i missed out on so much of his childhood and even though we had a special big-sister/little-brother bond, i often wondered if the distance that separated us would ever be able to be bridged.

fast forward thirteen years to the present and i can say with grateful assurance that my brother has grown into someone of whom i am truly proud. as we sat at our favorite place "prost!" over a couple of beers, watching the rain-soaked street filled with evening passers-by, i was thankful for how easily conversation and laughter flowed. we share a lot of the same loves like music and traveling, the same discontent with status quo life, the same antsy-ness at being chained to a desk for the standard 8-hour days. and because our hearts understand and feel some of the same things, i can rest safely in the knowledge that we are connected by more than just blood, connected by a fierce loyalty and love and longing for what this world holds for us.

i am thankful for my brother.

post #2

for some reason, coming up with a post #2 seems more difficult than the first entry. i feel the temptation to put it off indefinitely because to write again means that i'm actually taking this blog thing seriously, which also means i feel like i must have something clever or interesting to share. i think i could get overwhelmed by all the built-up pressure and never write another thing, which is why i decided to just post again today and get it over with--to make it a discipline of sorts, even though i really have no idea what exactly it is that i'm doing.

so i apologize for this ramble which in a sense is really a non-post, but i'm just trying to break in the tread on my brave shoes in the hopes that sharing myself in this way might some day soon become a little less frightening and a little more familiar.

hope is rising...

a beginning

i've been contemplating this idea for a long time...a place to explore thoughts with words. i think i have a love/hate relationship with technology and have always been a little bit hesitant to put myself out there, so to speak, to this vast, often faceless world of the internet. what i have witnessed though, over the past year or so of reading my friends' blogs, is that i love seeing little snapshots of people living their lives, of the ways their minds and hearts spill forth through their attempts at connecting and sharing the stories of their days.

connection has felt a bit elusive to me these days, and i recognize that i need to be the one to take the steps to begin to try and foster that in my life again. as we find ourselves spread out both in our various stages of life and geographically, my longing is to hold on more tightly than ever to the people in my life who have loved me and made my life richer because of their presence and their friendship.

this new venture is an attempt to crawl outside of myself, to play with language and words, and to think deliberately about what it means to navigate this life in a manner that is full of beautiful possibility. i have no idea how often i will feel like i have something to share, but i'm willing to give it a try.

so a fond hello to all of you out there in this blogging world. this is me.