{"id":12,"date":"1999-10-06T08:31:00","date_gmt":"1999-10-06T08:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/?p=12"},"modified":"1999-10-06T08:31:00","modified_gmt":"1999-10-06T08:31:00","slug":"wish-you-were-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/?p=12","title":{"rendered":"wish you were here"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today is my birthday. It really didn&#8217;t feel different from any other day. But at the end of it, (that is, right now), I decided to take a look at my life and where it is. That got me thinking about people who&#8217;ve been involved in my life.<\/p>\n<p>One thing that I realized was that this is the first birthday I&#8217;ve ever celebrated without my sister there. Of course, she&#8217;s married and living some 12 hours away from me now. It&#8217;s one of those things, I guess&#8230;she was up here with me for four years and seventeen or so before that, and now is when I finally realize all that she meant to me. I won&#8217;t go into specifics, because that would take a while. Suffice to say that I miss her&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I looked back at this past month, in which I participated in the wedding of my childhood best friend (who married another good friend of mine, incidentally). I watched as they moved on into new parts of their lives.<\/p>\n<p>And I knew that I wasn&#8217;t as big a part of them as I used to be, nor would I ever be again.<\/p>\n<p>That scares me somewhat.<\/p>\n<p>But I know a couple of things from my time here at Alabama, both in undergrad and now&#8230;there&#8217;s no way that everyone you know can stay in your life in the same capacity for all time. For that matter, no one really can. People change as time goes by&#8230;we all know that. I think that I was most amazed at that at my friends&#8217; wedding. I talked to people that night that I hadn&#8217;t seen in five years or so. One of them had a baby and one on the way since I&#8217;d last seen him&#8230;another had been married and had a baby on the way. These were people that I <b>grew up<\/b> with&#8230;and now I&#8217;m more a memory than any integral part of their lives.<\/p>\n<p>But another thing is that I don&#8217;t forget them, and they don&#8217;t forget me. I trade e-mails and phone calls with my friends, and I&#8217;m sure that one day it&#8217;ll go to the point of trading Christmas cards and the occasional visit. We may be far apart, but one day we&#8217;ll be back together again. At least that&#8217;s my way of looking at it.<\/p>\n<p>So I look out of my little corner of the world at the small mass of trees hiding the convenience stores from my view, and I reflect. I know that you&#8217;re all out there&#8230;as I think about all of this, I wish that I could go into a place, just for one more night, where I wouldn&#8217;t have to worry about all of this grown-up stuff. And all of you would be here with me. And I&#8217;d tell each of you what you meant to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is my birthday. It really didn&#8217;t feel different from any other day. But at the end of it, (that is, right now), I decided to take a look at my life and where it is. That got me thinking about people who&#8217;ve been involved in my life. One thing that I realized was that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts-insightful","category-thoughts-introspective"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1122productions.com\/brandon\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}