Hand Signal Before Turning

I finally did it. I moved out of Shade Tree (the apart­ment com­plex will remain name­less for their anonymin­ity *cough*Lake*choke*Meadows*cough*). I actu­ally moved out of the city to a sub­urb of all places. All the years I would talk about how much I though the ‘burbs sucked and that they were bor­ing and that the only good thing that came out of the ‘burbs was the fact that it is much cheaper for engi­neer­ing com­pa­nies to exist out there. So why is it that I did it then?
Well, truth is I have too many rea­sons that make it hard to have just one glar­ing rea­son to explain it all. So is the list. Bet­ter yet, a table to see the comparison:

Well you get the point. But I guess the biggest part was the fact that Chicago has great emo­tional and cul­tural value to me. I’ve never really con­sid­ered the ‘burbs a place that can be inspir­ing and increase to the spice of life. Maybe the value, but not be muse to explore and grow spir­i­tu­ally.

Either way, I’m here. When I spent the last few moments in my place today, I have a very, VERY long prayer. In this sin­gle day, I saw many amaz­ing things. I saw 8, EIGHT of my friends from all walks of life and dif­fer­ent stages of my life come to help me in the truest sense of the word. They came with­out demands of repay­ment. They just did it because I’m their friend. Now I’m not say­ing that because I’m jaded and didn’t expect that, but I’m say­ing it because I needed a reminder that I really am blessed. And I have to say, in recent mem­ory, this was def­i­nitely one of my most life-changing, life-grateful days. This whole move helped me to real­ize that in the 5 years I stayed at lake mead­ows that I was actu­ally mov­ing for­ward, even though I didn’t think I was for the past cou­ple of years. It’s like I was in mid-step all this time and each day I was mak­ing an infin­i­tes­i­mal step but didn’t real­ize it. The last 3 years have been very depress­ing for me because I couldn’t com­pre­hend that I actu­ally was mov­ing for­ward… just not at a vis­i­ble pace. Now me where I am by what I did, I have real­ized that I actu­ally am. Now the ques­tion is, have I finally com­pleted a step or am I step mid-step but just at an apex? Bet­ter yet, does it really mat­ter? I really doesn’t. More so than any­thing else, I have to remem­ber that I have been blessed with won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ties to move for­ward every­day; it’s called life in the most basic sense. Being able to wake up every­day and decide how I’m going to go through the inter­est­ing events that I may go through.

Yes, this is a big step for me. I have real­ized just how won­der­ful my life has been though I felt like it wasn’t. Yeah, I’ve got the basic, social mark­ers for suc­cess; good job, nice car, nice apart­ment, decent clothes, cool gad­gets, won­der­ful friends, great metab­o­lism, yada yada yada. But what is best is that I’ve real­ized that life is as good as you think it is and today I thought it is amazing.

(I have to per­son­ally thank Frankie, Renato, Chal­mus, Steve, Al (!), Jelani, Bran­don, Dad and Mom (’cause Mom always gets the last hug . You have made me feel like the hap­pi­est per­son on the planet. See? Here’s a man tear :~) )