Made a gingerbread house this month! I was 10, the last time I made a gingerbread house. I have a Polaroid of my best friend and I with the gingerbread house that we co-decorated.  Decorating a house this year was fun and brought back childhood memories. I enjoyed being creative and doing a kid activity.  I also enjoyed meeting a good people.  Before I left my friends, I told him “you’re surrounded by good people.”  It’s been a while since I’ve met an entire group of new people.

A lot of my experiences in my younger years (The Final Curtain Call) and early adulthood (Out with the Mold) led me to appreciate the good.  The group of friends that I had in college was not the group for me. That group deeply hurt me and it took me a good year or two to heal. Since that time I have been aware of the people who enter my life. I pay attention to their character and their intentions.  If I can’t picture myself embracing a person or if I can’t get a good feel for them, I keep them at a distance.

I have a strong intuition.  The moments I have gotten hurt were when I went against it. I now stay true to my intuition.  After college, I met the best people I have ever known at the time.  Since I have experienced both positive and toxic relationships, I express gratitude for all the good in my life.  It took a hard to have a deep appreciation for my friends.

This week I met up with my ASU film friends.  It has been about five or six years since I’ve seen some of the members of our expanding group.  Being with old friends, falling back into the banter and jokes that we’ve had since we’ve known each other was great.  I thought back to when I first met the group, how hurt I had been a year earlier and thought about the people who I have been able to reconnect with this year, my year of redirection (Redirection: 7 Lessons from Living Differently).  I felt grateful to see what has become of my life.  Of all my years, this year life has shown and reminded me of important moments and people from my past and the good that has come from as the result of following my heart.