Not only am I addicted to blogging, I'm starting to develop an addiction to OTHER people's blogs. I realized this morning that this is a bit like being addicted to reality tv. It's that PLUNGE straight into someone else's life and thoughts and you just can't seem to get enough because damn, other people have cool lives.

I'm not saying my life isn't cool, it's just not always as cool as other people's.

Some people's lives are not as cool as mine, so it evens out.

I'm wondering who is the guy that is at the bottom of this chain? How bad does HIS life suck?

It's like this -- most of my friends have at least their Bachelor's degree, if not more and several of them have pretty cool, well-paying jobs. I'm often very envious that they have reached this stage of accomplishment in their lives. Other friends have travelled all over the world and seen things that I cannot even imagine witnessing. I would love to travel but just don't like doing things alone so I don't. (I would SO love to be like that guy in the cell phone commercial who was road-tripping around the country, calling obscure people from his past just to have a place to crash for free.) But both of these groups of friends have often made equally envious comments back to me because I own my home and have "roots." Frankly, I look at the roots as an obligation a lot of the time, but I guess it's because I take it for granted now. This is the yin-yang version of "you have it better off than me" though. What I have evens out what I lack and vice versa.

But, there's always someone that you meet who is a couple steps below the equation. So you have this position of improved status over SOMEONE. And they have it over someone else that they know and so on. But, where does it end?

My brain just drifted off to the guilt room... This is a fun place to be. I always get here when I think about "well at least I don't have it as bad as so & so" because I've recently cut out one of the so & so's from my life. I feel bad but the level of drama ALL the time was just too much to bear. So, I started screening the calls and not calling back and basically acting like a man. But what could I do? Is there a mature way to go about this? Someone whose life is constantly inundated in drama is not going to be able to have the mature conversation about it, are they? And it's not even step one drama, it's spiralled beyond that. She's gotten herself to such a point that the only way it seems like she's going to get out of it is to be adopted by a caring band of monkeys. I don't know how to talk to people like that. The only thing she seems to pro-actively do is find more ways to screw up her life.

I don't have time for people like that. And it's not that my life is replete with friendships and that my dance card is booked -- but I don't have time to waste on people who waste their lives. You only have this one chance to do it, as far as we know. I'm not the most pro-active person in the world when it comes to self-improvement either, but at least I am not going in the wrong direction either.

But, still I feel bad. I feel like I should have said goodbye. I feel like I should have tried to do more to make her see that she was getting to a point of no return.

I lost another really good friend last year over drama. It could have been worked out that time but she didn't want to deal. And even though I was legitimately "wronged", I still miss her. Think about her a lot and wonder what things would have been like if we'd tried harder to find a middle ground for our problem. Have almost picked up the phone a thousand times and called.

But friendships are gossamer wings and if we don't protect them, they float away or are crushed.

Hm. Didn't mean to start my day on this mopey note. Guess I'll go shower and caffeinate, hope that helps!