Resolving

I've never really allowed myself to have New Years Resolutions. I've always tried to live my life regret free, believing that both good things and bad ones all happen for a reason, and if you roll with the punches, you'll still end up where you're supposed to be. From that viewpoint, it's always felt frivolous to attempt to enact a change of your own because life's just going to do whatever it wants anyway.

But more-so this year than any before, I can't help but feel like the universe is moving pieces around the board again. The most notable example of which is the addition of Alexus into my life. Since a lot of you out there don't know the full story, allow me to explain in greater detail. And pay attention, I think the details are important here.

The new World of Warcraft expansion had a midnight release on 12/7 for all of the people who had it reserved and fully paid off, myself included. So I show up around 11:45. Since the mall is closed, everyone is supposed to line up at one particular entrance, and the Gamestop employees have brought everybody's copy of the game down to hand out. Meanwhile, I'm standing in this group of guys who are being loud and obnoxious and boasting about how great their characters are. At some point they focus their attention on me and ask about mine, which one of the guys promptly starts berating. Instead of listening to this, I go over to talk to the employees who are patiently waiting for midnight.

Midnight strikes and the employees ask everyone to start forming lines. Since I'm already standing by the employees, I'm "first" in line just in terms of where I'm standing. At this point, the guy who was being a douche to me before starts freaking out about how I have to go to the back of the line because they were all there first. I don't honestly care. It's tired and I'm cold, so I just went without a fuss. Now I'm the last person in line, and I'm standing next to a guy and a girl. The guy introduced himself as James, and that prompted the girl, Alexus, to introduce herself as well. James begins making small talk about how all of his friends have stopped playing, so the game is kind of boring to him. Alexus, meanwhile, pulls out her phone to show us videos of her Warcraft character. As she's doing this, James suggests "hey, let's all exchange phone numbers so that we can talk on WoW." So, we do.

As we're moving up in line, I find out that Alexus is friends with a lot of the people that work at Gamestop, and that she's hanging out with them afterwards. Eventually, I get up to the front and the employees realize that they forgot my copy of the game up in the store. The mall is closed, and we're not supposed to go in, but the store manager decides to bring Alexus and I inside because he's not sending me home empty-handed and she has plans with friends who will be up there too. When we get up there, the employees all go into the Gamestop, but since Alexus and I are not employees, they can't let us into the store. So instead, Alexus and I get to sit down outside the closed Gamestop in the empty mall and chat one-on-one for several minutes. The employees come out and hand me my game, I thank them and say goodbye to Alexus. As I'm walking away, she shouts after me "You have my number, right?" I say I do and tell her to have a good night.

Believing that everything happens for a reason, I was thinking about that whole experience on the drive back home. When lots of little random things happen to put me in a particular situation, I believe that's the universe trying to tell me something. So I'm thinking, if that guy hadn't douched out on me, I wouldn't have gotten sent to the back of the line and met Alexus. If James hadn't brought up the number exchange, I know I probably wouldn't have done it. If the employees hadn't forgotten my copy and ONLY my copy of the game, I wouldn't have gotten to go upstairs. And if the Gamestop employees had let us come in, Alexus and I wouldn't have gotten to talk one-on-one. When you look at the night as a whole, I feel like there were an awful lot of "coincidences" that occurred to put me in that situation. So, I went with my gut, and a couple of quick text messages eventually turned into the relationship that we had now. What are the odds that after talking over the last few weeks that we have the similar hobbies? Personality and sense of humor? Values? Life goals? Beliefs? She's a quirky gamer dork. Just like me. We have a very natural chemistry and the fact that she can make me laugh until I'm crying doesn't hurt either. I can't remember the last time I was this happy. I just can't imagine all of this being "chance".

I think the best things in life are out of our control. Look back and you'll see that my interaction and choice to make contact played a very small role in the events leading up to all this. The rest was up to the universe.

That being said, I've decided to make a small resolution this year anyway. I'm going to try and go back to writing a blog every week. I decided to take a break because I was writing a story which I was going to post. But then life got in the way, as it so often does, and I kept pushing it off as my muse faded. Now it's a couple of months later and I've got no writing to show for it. I'm hoping that'll change this time around.

Happy New Year, everyone.