It's Been 84 Years...

Welcome back to the blog! It's been a minute. And by a minute, I mean a literal 439,000+ minutes, oops. Somehow, the last time I posted was for my obligatory annual birthday post in 2022. Buzz, your girlfriend, WOOF. Better late than never?

In the past 439,000 minutes, life has been ... weird. I lost a loved one. Time went all funny. Things got hard. In Summer 2022, back before everything happened, I planned to retire this blog and start afresh under a new domain. But now, here I am, a full year has passed, and I never did press publish on the new site.

As I look ahead at turning 30 in September (a whole new decade!), my mind has been on time, life, aging, and memories. You know, I'm kind of awed by the fact that I've been posting on this blog in some form or another for about 10 years. My biggest struggle throughout my blogging journey has always been wanting everything on my site to look *perfect* but as I've poked around the blog a bit for nostalgia's sake, its contents are a beautiful reminder to me of all the little moments and memories (often imperfect and offline) that I've made along the way.

So, for now, Acoustic Erin shall endureth. To give the ol' gal a bit of a fresh look, I changed the blog header and also am sprinkling in bits of my own handwriting (see below). I may be making more tweaks to the layout, pages and look/feel of the site as the weeks go on, but mainly, I'm excited to finally feel like I have words to write again, and to be returning to a medium that, amidst all of the chaos online, feels delightedly old school and slow paced, the same as it always was. 

It's good to be back.

New post signature say what,

29

Today I'm 29. I almost forgot to write this post, because this blog isn't really a space I prioritize much anymore 😔, but as I've been doing birthday posts since I turned 21, so nearly all of my 20's, here I am. 

I feel like I am coming into a blessed new season of life. 

28 was probably the year I experienced the most change one possibly could. But I'm here on the other side of everything with the man I love, the job I enjoy, a little house in a tiny town that's closer to both our families, and I feel like life is really beginning. 

In this new season, in this last year of my 20's, I want to live life to the fullest.

I feel something significant about this last year before I turn 30. I'm going to be working on exciting projects and getting more tattoos and trying to put myself out there more. I want to walk closer with the Lord, write every day, not be afraid, to really see the beauty in each moment.

Some changes to my blogging journey will be coming soon, stay tuned for that if anyone's out there still, hehe.

I'm getting older, I think I'm aging well,

E

P.S. All the old birthday posts can be found here.

The Last One At the Lunch Table

Image credit here.

I had a dream that things were like they used to be.

J was in the kitchen making us pancakes, and M was there, except he wasn't married. I'm sure C was somewhere with the blanket, the one he used to keep in the back of his car for bonfire nights, and would eventually fall asleep in.

I was there.

Five years ago I posted something to this blog when I was feeling the kind of nostalgic that is premature, nostalgia for the present moment, before you've even left it. I wrote about my boys, the ones who I grew up with, loved, fought with, sang beside, prayed for. I told myself (and the seven people who read this blog lolol) that I would keep them in my life always, that I would watch them all get married, as if I was trying to will it into being.

It never happened.

I didn’t see any of my boys on their wedding days, not one. I still think about it sometimes, how despite everything that held us together, it didn’t end up happening that way. A has yet to get married, though, so maybe there’s still a chance.

I found out recently that one of my boys goes to the church my husband and I have been visiting. I thought that I recognized him from a distance, all these years removed, but I wasn't sure. It's weird when someone whose birthday I never forgot and middle name I know has become sort of a stranger standing across the room, both of us too shy to say hi.

Lately, I've been wondering if I found my people prematurely.

That I met my kindreds against all odds, but we grew up, and it had to end. We had a good run, but I peaked early, and those were the only kindreds I was ever going to get. I don’t actually think this is true, I’m being dramatic. I’ve met a handful of souls since that make me believe there are still, to quote Perks of Being a Wallflower, cool people left to meet.

I remember this freshman at my high school who I knew of peripherally. He made friends with a group of close-knit seniors. He would sit with them at lunch, and they were all best friends. I always wondered what happened to him after they graduated and he was left behind. What do you do when you’re the last one at the lunch table?

I look back and see a moment in time. That era and our shared history has a certain warm glow in my memory, though what I remember now as being beautiful and fantastic was actually riddled with a lot of growing pains. I will never forget sitting in a Starbucks parking lot as my sister cried about one of our boys, inconsolable. Or the night that C took us both to get Boston Crème donuts when I came home from college, heartbroken. We blasted country music and 60s soul in his car like it was a lifeline.

It seems childish now, but that’s what we were, in some ways. We hadn’t quite become our full selves yet. The stakes were high, and the emotions were real. We drew on our Converse and sat on roof tops. We made pretentious comments and huddled on the beach at night and ate our bodyweight in half-price appetizers.

C had a church key (actually, almost everyone did), which meant access to the church 24/7, where we played games of Masterpiece, listened to “Walking in Memphis,” and broke each other’s hearts. Sometimes we would lay in the pews while J improvised on piano, with Z on drums bringing down the house. One winter, we rode around in someone’s truck, picking up old Christmas trees and burning them to a crisp in the fire pit. Our collective consciousness was rooted there on the church grounds.

I'm not sure how to get back.

Lower lows & higher highs,

E