In the last few days, I’ve been getting emails and text messages from friends, asking me what I want for my bridal shower. The truth is that I’ve never been in a situation of my own making (as in, a voluntary birthday party that either my family or I have thrown) where I would implicitly be asking for gifts and then have to open them up in front of everyone. As my mom used to say to me when I was growing up and would ask why all my friends had big birthday parties I could occasionally attend but I did not, we supposedly didn’t have enough money for that (now I know that it’s not true, but whatever — now we know it was just cheapness and lack of desire to organize). The one birthday party I ever really had was a surprise thrown for me by one of my best friends today, organized at the Olive Garden (then, it was nice, but now clearly as my tastes have changed, it would be funny). Now that my bridal shower is coming up this Saturday, I realize I again need to be in a room full of people who want me to open my gifts and get googly eyed with gratitude. I know I should be grateful; I’m lucky that I even have friends who would be willing to travel for me and be a part of my wedding festivities, and I’m also lucky I have family who are alive and healthy and can celebrate. But I am awkward with the idea of asking for gifts, so I have been giving non-answers.

One friend asked me if I wanted an object or cash or a gift card. Another friend straight up said, I know I’d personally prefer cash, so guess what? You are getting cash! And then a third friend said, I know you like to bake and cook, so can you go around your kitchen and see what you don’t have or would consider a “nice-to-have”? And I’m not being rude when I’m asking you to do this, am I? She is so cute and practical.

I’m really excited about the weekend. I’ve never had a weekend where it was a celebration all about me, and I feel all at once happy, excited, awkward, and emotional about it. It seems so self-indulgent, but I don’t care anymore as long as everyone is happy and has fun. I still can’t believe I managed to get 15 women in my life in the same room in the same city at the same time. Not everyone I’d like to be there will be there, unfortunately, but I guess that’s the way life is. You have to take what you can get and enjoy it for what it is…. Because soon, those amazing moments will be over and replaced with new and different events. For the ones who couldn’t make it, it’s really their loss and not mine. And I feel the same way for those who won’t be attending our wedding.

I checked into my hotel room tonight at the W Midtown Atlanta to find a surprise on the vanity counter waiting for me. It was a bottle of California chardonnay in an ice-filled silver bucket, and a small plate of delicately arranged petit fours. With it came a hand-written note by the W concierge, thanking me for my 10th stay at a Starwood Hotels property, and congratulating me for reaching this “milestone” and hoping I will enjoy my loyalty perks.

I was pretty shocked when I saw these gifts waiting for me, and even more shocked when I read through the hand-written note. But then, I honestly started feeling a little guilty for my privilege. I’ve never stayed at a Starwood property unless it’s been for work, with one exception for the time I was in Philadelphia for a pleasure trip, and I happened to get a good deal at a Sheraton through Hotwire. Starwood hotels are pretty terrible value, and the hotels are almost always very expensive. I mean, for $250/night, you don’t even automatically get Q-Tips and cotton balls in your vanity kit; in fact, you get no vanity kit and have to request it.

And then I thought about my brother, and how he’s only stayed at nice hotels on the evenings of two of his cousin’s weddings, when he got a free hotel room all to himself. Those were the only nights of his life he ever to got to enjoy a spiffy hotel room. I only wish Ed got to enjoy even a fraction of the privilege I have had in my short life.

Today, my good friend’s sister met me in the West Village for to catch up over dessert. She lives with her sister, my friend, her brother, and their parents in Little Rock. They’re the only people I know who live in Little Rock… and actually enjoy it.

She told me that since my friend got treated for cancer and now that it’s gone, she’s actually become even more of a recluse. She doesn’t really spend time with any friends at all unless they are her sister’s, and she’s become more clingy to their mother. We’re 29 years old. This is definitely not a good sign. She tries to avoid all driving despite the fact that she lives in an area that necessitates a car. Little Rock is not anything like New York City with public transit.

I always thought that after some life-altering experience, whether it’s a death of someone very close to you, or getting treated and getting over a life-threatening disease, we’d be forced to make major changes in our lives and outlooks, and hopefully for the better. Sadly, for my friend, whether she wanted to share it with me or not, she hasn’t.

I’ve spent the last three days in trainings and conferences. The first two days were for my company’s sales conference, and today was designated as management training day, where everyone in our company who is either a manager or a manager-in-training had to sit in on an all-day work shop on how to improve ourselves as supervisors of others. While a lot of the tips were very useful in terms of the usual known things (e.g. when pointing out an area where the employee can improve, make sure you don’t use the word “but” as a connector, and instead use “and” or just eliminate a connector completely), a lot of it ended up coming across as very generic. For example, the last session of the day included us identifying “problem employees.” These people were labeled things like “the criticizer” or “the one who goofs off/wastes time.” The problem with these labels is that as most human beings are, we’re multifaceted people and workers. Chances are, there are very few people who just fit into one of these categories; we all kind of embody a lot of these qualities, just at different times and in different circumstances. And just because someone may spend a lot of time socializing in the office and seemingly “wasting time” doesn’t necessarily mean that she doesn’t meet her deadlines or comes to meetings late. The workshop presenter’s advice was to be as specific as possible when giving feedback and managing people, yet her presentation just felt too general, without enough complex real-life situations. It’s almost as though she is not practicing what she preaches herself.

Yesterday, I got an e-mail notification that someone I did not know donated $100 to my AFSP donor drive. When I logged into my account and read the message from this person, I realized it was a friend of my cousin’s. She said she found my work admirable to help others in light of this tragedy, and that my cousin spoke often about my brother, considering him like a little brother. He told her that he thought about my brother often.

While that sounds very touching, the sad part about that is that it’s easy for an outsider to think that my cousin cared a lot. My cousin rarely paid my brother any attention. He hadn’t spoken with him in over three months before he died. Sure, he sent him birthday and Christmas gifts, but part of love is actually being there and giving attention.

I’m grateful for the generous donation, but I’m just sad that this friend has no clue what the real story behind my cousin is.

I spent a good chunk of my day today booking airline travel and hotel accommodation to then have it all rescheduled by a client, which led me needing to call both the airline and hotel and change the reservations on non-exchangeable, non-refundable rates. That was a lot of fun. It was even more fun when I was told by a sour American Airlines agent that I would be charged a $200 change fee despite the fact that it was within the 24-hour window to get the amount credited to a different flight. The agent was not polite at all and insisted that 24-hour hold policy replaced the 24-hour cancellation window.

That’s the thing about boring day jobs where all you do are repetitive actions. There’s no real excitement to the day, so you feel a need to be a little mean to your innocent customers when they just have simple requests. It adds some element of fun to your day, right, to be a little mean and fierce to people you don’t know and will never meet eyes with? I don’t really believe in karma, so I won’t make a comment about karma. But I will say that if you hate your job, you should either quit or at least search for a new job and not take it out on innocent strangers.

Last year, Chris’s younger brother quit his job and left Toronto to move back to Australia. But before he did that, he spent about two months traveling around Southeast and South Asia, exploring areas that I haven’t been to yet, including Nepal, India, and the country side of Malaysia.

Is it sad that the first thing I think of when someone quits their job to go travel for an extended period of time is health insurance? What will they do for health insurance? What will they do if something happens to them, God forbid? Oh, wait. Ben is an Australian citizen. Australia has universal healthcare. He doesn’t have to worry about what happens to him because job or no job, he has health insurance fully covered.

Even with Obamacare now, it’s scary to think about not having a job and relying on the broken system that we have now. I just can’t understand people who don’t think that the right to life also means the right to healthcare, because without health, what do we have? We don’t really have a life, do we? The concerns that plague us as young Americans aren’t even thoughts at all in the minds of people in Canada and Australia, who don’t have to worry about these same senseless things. I thought about this when a client told me her colleague left the company to travel Thailand for a third of the year. Maybe she didn’t get health insurance and just winged it. Let life take its course!

I’m too much of a thinker to be that spontaneous, though.