Simplicity

I have yet to find someone who I can describe as a "simple person." Everyone has their own unique quirks and characteristics that makes them who they are. To make things more complex, we've got a world of unique individuals who are all forced to interact with each other to survive, to find love, and to succeed.

A few things over the past few months have my head spinning in the relationship aspect of said conundrum. The first was the movie "Juno" and how simple the director made Bleaker. He runs, a lot. That's pretty much the whole character. If you want to get technical, Bleaker also plays the guitar and has an overbearing mother.

With all the crazy things happening in Juno's life, Bleaker's simplicity is a huge attraction. By being with him, and sharing in his simple, happy life--everything will be alright.

The problem, of course, is that nobody is simple. Some people lead more complicated lives than others, but that doesn't mean as individuals they are any more or less complex than other individuals. For instance, my life is pretty straight-forward and simple right now: work from 8:30am-5pm, class a couple nights a week. No other obligations, no girlfriend, and I am striving for something (becoming a teacher), so my life has purpose. Waking up in the morning isn't tough, and going to sleep at night is easy.

Compare my life now, to my life a year and a half ago, when I was staying up until sunrise because I didn't have anything better to do. I had no reason to wake up early, I had no job, and my immediate goal was to move down to Tahoe. As nice as it was to not be working, the months between moving out of Portland and moving to Tahoe were very dull, bordering on depressing. I lived at home, in my parents' basement, 24 years old. The simplest life imaginable, but with that simplicity came depression, because I felt like a loser for moving back in with my parents, and I felt like a loser for not contributing to the betterment of myself, much less society. Simplest time of my life, yet my mind was drifting all over the place with all the free time I had, and as an individual I was more complex than a six-star sudoku.

Now compare both of those lives to someone like The Wife. She bounces full-time accountant duties with being a mother of two kids and a wife to a newly-returned Iraq soldier/doctor. There can't possibly be enough time in the day for her impossible schedule. It seems natural to me that she would be intrigued about Betty, who lives a completely different life. I can only assume Betty is interested in aspects of The Wife's life as well. I'm interested in both of their lives, as well as Waffles' life, Brian's life, Jessica's life, my parents, my friends, and pretty much every person I know.

There are aspects of everyone's lives that I wish I had. I can't tell if it is a balance issue, a "grass is greener" thing, or just a thirst for knowledge. I always wonder what it would be like to travel for a living. Having a steady relationship with someone would be awfully difficult, being on the road all the time. Casual relationships would be both fun and memorable, but also hollow and less meaningful than a long-term relationship.

Both Betty and The Wife have perked my interest over the last few months, because they are such complex people. I'm still interested in their complexity, but through reading their blogs I've come to realize that almost everyone is just as complex, they just might not be as good at expressing themselves. A lot of the male bloggers out there (including myself) are poor writers, but through their stories and rambles you get a feel for who they really are and start to pick up on the little quirks that make a guy like Columbo or Hoy so unique.

I'm looking forward to continuing to read everyone's blogs, and hopefully using my ever-growing knowledge of people to start writing stories with characters that have feeling and are unique. I've got a few story ideas brewing, and hope to follow in The Wife's footsteps and get some fiction posted by the end of the week.