I’m holding on to you like a diamond in the rough

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

The older I get, the more I enjoy “Friends.”

I’m dangerously close to the age the girls were when the series began, and I so get where these characters were in life. (It actually makes me kind of happy that I didn’t watch the show when it first debuted. I was 13. I totally would not have appreciated it.)

But now I’m in the middle of my 20-something years. I have no money and I’m about to begin the third job of my career. My girl friends and I love to gossip about the guys we’re dating (which I know is completely normal, but we’re doing it now more than ever!).

Until recently, though, most of my closest friends were in other states. When the girls and I got together for a Florida trip in May, we represented five different states. (Paula’s in Georgia, Apryl lives in Virginia, I’m a ‘Bama girl, Heather represented Mississippi and Alison is the only one still in Florida.) Alisa was in California until last week, Megan is in New York, Lara has lived in three states in 2006.

Thank God for IN calling and free long distance.

But I feel like the tide is changing. Susan moved to town and Heather arrives Monday. Katie’s in Montevallo, but we’re considering becoming roommates this winter.

My “Friends” group is starting to take shape.

Seriously though, there have been times in the past several years where I realized I was jealous of characters on a TV show. That’s silly, maybe, but it’s true — and I don’t think I was alone in that. The greatest thing about college was living with my best friends, and I don’t think I could overemphasize the value of having those people nearby. I have tons of friends in this state already, but there’s something great about showing up at a friend’s house and waiting for her in her backyard hammock.

I’m Monica, and now I have my Phoebe and my … other Phoebe. (And maybe a third on the way?) Send Joey, Ross and Chandler on over and I may never move from this city again.

Monica to Rachel at the end of the pilot, after Rachel cuts up her credit cards: Welcome to the real world. It sucks. You’re going to love it.

PS: I originally started writing this post, with a completely different intent, on July 9, 2005. How about that. And I even remember WHY I started writing it — because Heather and I were in a loud bar and couldn’t hear ourselves and we got to talking about the episode where Joey, Ross and Chandler try to go out and have fun but they’re exhausted and want to go home. So she said, “We’re in an episode of friends… but they’re THIRTY!” So … tonight I’m boring. But I’m trying to clean out my ancient drafts. 😉

He taught her how to run, baby

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

I’m not sure if it’s possible to become athletic at 24 years old, but I’ve decided that I’m going to try.

I’m 5’3 and about 98 pounds. I’m not terribly concerned about getting in shape for aesthetic reasons (although truthfully, I would mind a little more muscle tone). But I am convinced that my metabolism is going to taper off at some point, and I’ll regret it if I’m not already exercising when that happens. Plus I’m something of a hypochondriac, so I think getting in shape will make me feel better about myself and will cut down on the number of ailments I convince myself that I have.

I’ve been toying with these thoughts for at least a year now, but I haven’t done much about it. Last summer my roommate Lydia and I decided to walk in the mornings before work, but I don’t think that lasted a week before we decided sleep is better than sweat.

So this weekend I took a big step: I decided to become a runner.

Now I haven’t always been completely sedentary. I rode my bike all over my neighborhood as a child, and I was on the dance and cheer squads in high school. I love canoeing and kayaking, although I don’t often have the opportunity to go.

But I have always, always hated running.

I’ve decided to work on that because running just makes the most sense right now. I’m a commuter, with a 120-mile round trip drive to and from work. I don’t have much time to go to a gym, and I really can’t afford it anyway.

So even though I would really prefer a dance class or yoga or something involving air conditioning, I decided to suck it up and buy my first pair of running shoes. They were much cheaper than a gym membership, and I figured that if I don’t follow through, I just won’t buy another pair ever again.

I left the store at about 2 p.m. Saturday after jogging in place, testing probably 10 different pairs of shoes. (My friend Adriene kept me company and encouraged me via text message. It was very difficult to surround myself with shoes and not pick out a pair of heels.)

The gray and purple Nikes I selected are about as cute as running shoes can be, though, and I had to talk myself out of taking them on a test run during the hottest part of the day. The next morning I quickly realized why that was a good move.

I am such a wimp. I went a mile that morning, running maybe 2/5 of it and walking the rest. Even that little bit was too much for me; I had to take a break sitting on the curb, and I nearly puked at one point.

Today I altered my approach, using a schedule that had been recommended to Adriene when she started running. I walked 10 minutes to warm up, then ran one minute. After a five minute walking break, I ran another minute, then cooled down with the 10 minute walk back home. Each week I’m supposed to add a minute to my running time, then start deducting walking time until I’m running continuously.

Today still did not feel good – I’ve got to work on my breathing. But it was an improvement over yesterday. And if I keep my eyes on my pretty gray and purple sneakers, they give me a small thrill of enthusiasm as my feet carry me home.

CUTE SHOES!

I’m a hundred kinds of crazy

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

Things that make me feel beautiful:

  • Being complimented on my personality, not my appearance, by someone who obviously also finds me attractive
  • Tall, dainty shoes
  • Spending time with four of my favorite women. When we’re together, I feel like we’re just sparkling.
  • My cat’s adoring gaze
  • Gray sweatpants and ribbed tank tops
  • Orange, brown and green
  • Dancing to Patty Griffin’s “Mil Besos” in the solitude of my own home
  • A single rose in a bud vase
  • Folk music
  • Reading books by eccentric writers and wise journalists
  • Freshly painted toenails
  • Messy ponytails
  • Dancing to “Will It Go ‘Round in Circles” in my car where no one can see
  • Hoop earrings
  • Reading in bed instead of being productive
  • Complete honesty with friends
  • John Mayer songs
  • Embracing my quirkiness for all it’s worth (it’s endearing!)

Nothing tastes as sweet as what I can’t have

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

The only bad thing about a good weekend is that it makes me miss Tuscaloosa.

Maybe that’s silly, since Friday night I hung out with people that I mostly know from Tallahassee, and we were in Birmingham. (But three of them live in Tuscaloosa, and until next week, one of them lives pretty close to T-town.)

Both Friday and Saturday were spent with friends, though, and that’s something I miss out on with all the moving around I’ve done lately. The two hours I spend commuting each day limit the time I have for socializing, and though it’s worth it to be back in Birmingham, it still takes its toll.

I guess I’m missing something that doesn’t exactly exist anymore — having most of my friends in one city, a roommate to go home to at night and random dog walks. I’ll never have most of my friends in one place ever, ever again (except maybe if/when I get married), and the former roommate I spent yesterday with is getting married in several months. (And well, I don’t have a dog, but I’m really good at borrowing them.)

It’s kind of silly for a good weekend to leave me sort of melancholy (nostalgic, really). But at least I’ll have plenty of thoughts to keep me busy on my drive to Georgia this afternoon.

I don’t know where I’m going, but I know you’ll be there

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

I read an article today on Slate that really resonated with me. I would quote parts of it here, but really, you should just go read the entire thing.

http://www.slate.com/id/2140095/

I don’t like writing very much right now. It’s been months since I wrote something that I was pleased with, whether personally or professionally. Instead of a craft that I work at and take pride in, it’s become a chore, a means to a paycheck.

That’s not to say I don’t want to write anymore. I do. Even when I daydream about quitting and doing something else, writing figures prominently. (Today my brilliant idea was that I should become a flight attendant and write about that somehow … travel articles or something. Or travel articles and a book. I haven’t figured it all out yet. But then I realized that Delta isn’t hiring and I don’t want to fly Southwest and Continental wants you to have two years of customer service experience, which I do not. So then I thought I might stick with journalism.)

Journalism is still the love in my life (even when Jesus should be). I’m in this for the long haul, and I think I may have a book (or two) in me yet. But right now I’m in a rut.

And though they have nothing to do with each other, that article also reminded me of the introduction to Don Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz.” I’m tired of resolution – I feel sometimes like everything I write has to have a neat ending, even if it’s just spilling my guts all over the World Wide Web. I want to be OK with uncertainty and unanswered questions.

Sometimes, I want to create them for myself.

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.

After that I liked jazz music.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.

I used to not like God because God didn’t resolve. But that was before any of this happened.

–Don Miller

You always want what you can’t have

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

I spend too much time looking at the past, and I really forget how good I have it.

Today was perfect. I slept in till 11:30, then sat and drank black coffee with an old friend for maybe an hour. (There’s nothing like a friend around whom you can look your absolute worst and yet not feel ugly.) I spent another hour on the phone with my best friend, sitting on the back deck while my cat played in the yard. I didn’t brush my teeth until 2:30 and it was GLORIOUS.

It reminded me of probably my favorite Easter to date — in 2002, when my roommate Paula and I went to church together in the morning, then cooked for a handful of our friends who hadn’t gone home for Easter. That was one of the most laid-back days when I was able to appreciate grace and good friends.

At some point in the past several years, I’ve developed an appreciation for diversity that I had never realized I lacked. Like that day in 2002, last night and today were filled with people … mostly people who aren’t like me in a lot of ways. And it’s … I don’t know, fulfilling somehow.

Heather and I were talking earlier about faith, and ways that we’ve both changed since college. I told her that faith (and thereby life) is much messier than I ever thought, but also so much more beautiful.

It’s just been one of those days where your emotions hover just below the surface, threatening to break through. I was on the verge of tears several times during church tonight … and I kept thinking about how poker, beer and friends (many that I barely know) somehow don’t seem like Easter … but how, at the same time, friendships somehow have a redemptive quality.

“No need to ask where other roads might have led, since they led elsewhere; for nowhere but this here and now is my true destination.” –Ruth Bidgood

Protected: Prettiest city in Alabam (password: my birthplace)

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

The dream is this: I find a job in Birmingham. It’s enough to pay my bills on 40 hours a week, plus enough to save a little for retirement.

I move out of my grandmother’s house and into a Southside apartment with Katie. My family is all still within a half hour of me, and my 16-year-old cousin and I can have girly sleepovers with movies and chocolate chip cookie dough.

Living with Katie also means having a close friend down the hall. Susan (well, both Susans, actually) would be just 10 minutes away. Living in Southside means living in my church neighborhood and just over the mountain from my community group (as well as Anna, Jeff and Heath). It means walking to coffee or friends’ homes (maybe). It means deepening friendships and a short drive to work.

The reality is this: It’s not likely to happen, at least, not soon. The one Birmingham job I currently have a shot at is part time (which would be OK, but wouldn’t fulfill the dream. And, after reading the job description, I’m afraid I could be overqualified).

The dream is several years away still, and by then it will probably assume a different incarnation.

Still, it’s nice to dream.

I’m holding on underneath this shroud

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

Death isn’t supposed to be scary when you’re a Christian – at least, I feel like it shouldn’t be. We have the promise of eternal life, that when life passes away, we’ll be with Jesus.

And that sounds good, and I do believe that. And yet, when someone I know dies, I find myself wondering: Are they really in a better place? Is there really life after death? Or is the end, the end?

Last summer I wrote two stories about Cassidy, a little girl who was battling a brain tumor. When I interviewed her mother for the first story, it was only days after Cassidy’s grandfather had died in a car accident on his way to visit the hospital. Talking to Suzie about her father’s death was the first time I interviewed someone after the death of a loved one. When I called the next month to schedule a follow-up interview, I heard Suzie’s husband, Sean, shouting in the background: “Be sure that CJ is the one who comes! I want to meet CJ!”

That was one of the best compliments of my career.

Cassidy and her family captured my heart. They entrusted me with sharing their story, which was at once heart-wrenching and hopeful. I got to see the community rally around the family and I saw how the family clung to their hope in Christ through their daughter’s illness.

Cassidy died Friday night. She was 6 years old.

I gasped (literally gasped) when I opened to her picture in the Birmingham News obituaries this morning. I’d kept up with Cassidy’s health in the seven months since she left the hospital using a Web site her family had set up. But I hadn’t looked in on her in several months, and had no idea that she had checked back in.

Among the many, many people thanked in Cassidy’s obituary, her family included The Tuscaloosa News. It amazes me that in what surely must be the toughest time of their lives, Suzie and Sean would think of what I wrote as a blessing. They, and their precious daughter, were the ones who blessed me.

Sleepy sweet home Alabama

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

On days like this, I feel more like a Floridian than an Alabamian. I’m wearing a short sleeve T shirt and my favorite hole-y jeans with the legs cuffed. I slipped on my pink Chucks when I left the house earlier, but now I’m sitting barefoot in my living room, enjoying the breeze from the open window.

But on days like this, when I’m sitting in front of a college football game, I realize I’m more an Alabamian than a Floridian.

As ESPN ran a montage of 2005’s greatest moments in college football, I searched out every shot of crimson and white I could spot. I beamed with pride as images of Brodie Croyle and Tyrone Prothro (the catch!) filled the screen.

And I gasped at the first image of a Seminole. I had forgotten that I have another team.

I know I should be ashamed. I am ashamed! I spent three and a half fantastic years at Florida State, and I enjoyed twice as many football seasons there as I did as a student at Alabama.

But my home’s in Alabama – and now, so are my driver’s license and voter registration. I’m not sure what is required to call yourself an Alabamian, but I’m here, and I am one.


Forgive me for blogging after the fact … I don’t have internet access at home, but I’ve been writing just the same. And I have a new year entry to make, it’s just still in my journal.

I’m wide awake, it’s morning

Posted on by Carla Jean Whitley

OK first off, there’s this adorable little redheaded girl at the next table over, and she is totally making me want to have children. I want redheaded babies, did I ever mention that? Or well, not necessarily babies, plural, but I’d like one.

That’s probably why I agreed to go out with that crazy redhead that one time, but well, crazy isn’t going to keep me around. After all, I’ve got redheads in my gene pool already.

But enough about the children that I’m not yet ready to have.

I’m soaking in the small town atmosphere in this random city I’ve found. My accent is thickening and I’ve been recognized several times. (Yes. Recognized. They ran our pictures with a short article about staffing changes the first Sunday I was here.) I’ve had senior citizens imply that they want to set me up (with who, I have no idea) and I’ve found every place with wireless internet access (I think).

And so far, I like it.

The novelty will wear off, I’m sure, and there will be days where I’m frustrated with the lack of anything to DO in this town. (Why do you think I’m sitting on the internet on a Friday night?) I’m already frustrated with the lack of furniture options. 🙂 (I’m sitting on the internet because I got tired of sitting on my living room floor.)

But it’s fun. It’s different, and it’s an opportunity — all the things I said it would be before I took the job. I’m still working with the future in mind, though I haven’t written anything that I’m too, too excited about just yet. But then, my first three assignments in Tuscaloosa were about a brick and mortar workshop, a college page story and an eight inch story about Stillman’s graduation. I feel comfortable with this start.

I could stand to find some friends, though.