Thought-Cloud

So you know how sometimes you meet really awesome guys?  But at that time, there's no "connection" made for some reason or another?  But it's not a big deal; you both move on with your lives.  Maybe grow apart or move someplace different or get a job.  But then at some point later in life, could be weeks or months or years (for me it tends to be years...), you start thinking about what "could have been."

I do that a lot when I'm supposed to be doing work/studying for grad school.  Oh silly me and my methods of distraction!

I actually do stay in contact with these guys somewhat.  Honestly, I'm not very good at keeping in touch with anyone, regardless of gender.  But I do try to send my friends an encouraging text every once in awhile.  And that's what I occasionally do for my guy-friends.  Usually in generic mass-text format.  Sometimes individually for whatever reason.

But anyways, there have been a couple guys that my mind keeps getting distracted with.  Just wondering what they're up to or hoping they're doing well (okay, okay, I hope ALL my friends are doing well!).  But I also think about the what-ifs.  What if I hadn't have been so stand-offish?  What if they had asked me out back then?  What if, what if, what if...

I do have reasonable answers to a lot of these and when I really process what I'm thinking about, I absolutely have no regrets about my just-friendships with them.  What I guess I find most troubling about these what-ifs is that despite the fact that I am happy with the decisions I made, these thoughts just float around on the surface of my mind.  As soon as I focus on them, I see the flaws in their construction.  They're just a periphery thought-cloud blanketing the rest of my logical thoughts.

An example of a thought-cloud moment in my brain:

[Various thoughts and interpretations of random notes I've taken throughout class]  "I wonder how so-and-so is doing."  [More thoughts about how my upcoming test is going to be very difficult considering I didn't start studying until later than my classmates]  "I wish I had a boyfriend."  [Frantically trying to memorize some random list of grad school-y type things]  "We would have made a really great couple.  We'd probably still be dating right now." [Even more grad school junk]

 I think you get the picture...

I want to reconstruct my thought-cloud.  Honestly, it doesn't need to be about boys (my mom told me I need to stop saying "boys" and start calling them "men" now that I'm 24.  I don't know how I feel about this whole being-adult thing).  These thoughts that just pop up on the surface don't have to be like this.  These are just the thoughts I've managed to program into myself over the years of being single.  It happens.

I want my thought-cloud blanket to be made up of more thoughts along these lines:

[I think you understand the basics of what goes into the brackets...school stuff]  "God, thank you for giving me this opportunity to be here." [Since you get it, there's going to be less detail in the bracket-y region of this here dealio]  "God, I want all of this to be for you; not me." [More brackets for the sake of brackets]  "God, I'm excited to be living the life you've blessed me with."  [You didn't think they would have ended yet, right?]  "God, I want to do this work for you, because by learning it now, you will use it later."  [Last brackets...for now]

 So yeah.  I think that's what I'll be working on for quite awhile.  It's probably going to take some time.  One thing that I've learned is that bad habits are easy to make and hard to break.  And good habits...don't really exist.  If it's good and takes repetition, it's not going to be easy.  But it will certainly be worthwhile.