If it wasn't for roller derby

If it wasn’t for roller derby, I’d have no friends and nothing to do.

I just moved to LA 2 weeks ago. I am not really a Catholic, (not in the strictest or even really the most liberal of interpretations) but I do choose to practice lent. Let’s not get into why. Last year I had a very successful lent, in my eyes. I benefited from the experience greatly and I was looking forward to it this year. (Which begged many a conversation of “If people give up stuff they know is bad for them, why do they start back up again?”) but nevertheless, I ended up anticipating the 40 day sacrilege.

I had the idea in about January to give up facebook. I should have done it for the whole year and made it a resolution. Some people are aghast at this thought and have said to me, “But I thought you had to give up something bad for lent!?” To those people, I have no words.

So I moved to LA two weeks ago, and was just…not hating it, because I was excited and eager at the prospect of a new city and new experience, but… everything I’ve ever known or been taught about LA has pretty much taught me to hate it. And sure enough, within the first week here I had developed a routine of fast food and cursing in long hours of traffic. I had to find a better way, I needed to, or I would be in hell for my time here.

Thankfully, (divine intervention?) my move coincided with lent, which started last week on March 9^th, and will last until Easter in April (40 days).  I did give up facebook, along with many other things, including adding to my workout regimen, (which you can count as “giving up being lazy” if you are one of the narrow minded few who needs to define sacrifice by abstaining from something).

Being without facebook, I have become hyper aware of the human interaction I do have. I even started using craig’s list as a poor man’s facebook. (Crack ain’t cocaine baby).  Anyhow, it’s been working out for me, but I’ve become painfully aware of how few friends I have, and just how hard it is to make friends. Now that I’m out of school, (first time in like 20 years) I realize adults NEED hobbies. They need them to make friends, and not go stir crazy.

So I woke up and remembered it was St. Patrick’s Day, simultaneously remembering the now newish heightened sense of loneliness without my facebook crutch and accepted that I would probably not be doing anything for St. Patrick’s. For the first time in probably all my life, I really didn’t give a fuck about wearing something green, and even laughed at myself at how absurd it was that for the past 25 years I did go out of my way to wear it on the 17^th of March. Shit, I’m not Irish.

But I figured I just wasn’t feeling like ‘me’ and scrounged around my pin jar for something green. Something I could clip to an outfit that wasn’t outrageously shouting “HEY! I’m celebrating this silly elementary school holiday!” I found two SVRG pins and stuck them to my black tank top. PERFECT. I left for coffee on a walk feeling very stylish. Then I got a text from a friend in Long Beach: “Down hill skate tonight! COME!”

I was stoked. I do have friends after all!

If it wasn’t for roller derby, there’d be almost nothing interesting about me.

At least, that’s how I feel today.

<3 you derb!

Xoxo,

Auntie