Day 12!

Day 12: Go Somewhere You Haven't Gone Before.
Submitted for the approval of the November Project, I call this story: “Comic Relief“.

I’ve been following this blog by two good friends since the beginning, and I’ve found it to be surprisingly inspirational. That's not a knock against Holly and Danielle. I’m just surprised that I’ve taken the inspiration and run with it.

Since November first I’ve been donating clothes, writing letters, applying for jobs, working out and many other things to make this the best month ever.

When Holly first asked me to be a guest blogger today, I wasn't exactly overwhelmed with ideas for a place I could go that I’ve never been. It’s not that I’ve been everywhere there is to be--far from it. Instead, I struggled to find a place that would be worthy of a blog post.

On my afternoon run, I looked around for inspiration. Instead, I found more pizza shops and laundromats than I had realized ever existed within a five block radius of my apartment. I ran past a Meallys Furniture store that I had never been to, but really I would have done nothing but look at sectionals and dining sets that I would never buy. Not the most exciting blog.

So I thought outside the box. Could my new place be a new “state of mind“? That would require some serious meditation, that thought of which scared me away pretty quickly.

A new website? I could argue that it’s a “place,” but it seemed like a copout.

So after concluding my run I thought about playing my new Batman game for Xbox when it hit me: a comic book store.

During my first couple years of college I used to read comics, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course the first thought of many of you is this or this. But really they were fun to read and fit nicely into my schedule. A ten to fifteen minute comic was much more practical than a novel when, as an English major, I was reading too many of those already. But in the end I was reading about 25 each month, and I decided the 75 dollars was better spent elsewhere.

Since my old comic store shut down, a quick search online gave me my destination: Comic Collection on Bustleton Avenue.

I’ll spare you much of the geeky details (the reminiscing of characters I missed, the discussions with fellow comic readers that I assumed were regulars), but I have to admit that it made me miss reading comics. This had been a journey that I had been meaning to take for quite some time, and to me this is what the November Project is all about: taking control of your life.

Too many times we get stuck in our daily, weekly, monthly, even yearly routines, to the point where we don’t leave ourselves enough time, or put in the effort, to do things we really want to , need to, or just something new.

I didn’t discover anything new and profound about myself today. But I visited a place I’ve been meaning to go for almost two years. Every week I think all of the things I should really do the next weekend when I have some free time. Oftentimes, I ignore this and use my weekends to drink too many beers and hang out with friends. Thirty dollars later, I can cross one of these off the list.

And a quick look at the November Project calendar tells me that I will be celebrating two special people in my life tomorrow: Holly and Danielle. Thanks for helping me with the little things on my way to what I hope is a slightly better me.

*This blog was written by a guest blogger, and one of our closest friends, Zack. Zack is a sports writer from the suburbs of Philadelphia. He lives for coronaritas from On The Border.