A thousand remember-when's.

It's 2 o'clock in the morning, and due to an over-zealous Sunday nap, sleep is nowhere to be found.

After I tried Netflix and my journal and Pinterest...I resorted to my photo album and all the wonders it possesses. 

A year ago, I was on the coast with the people I love more than words, and so much has changed since we said goodbye to Beach Street it makes my heart hurt. 

The canyon wind banging my front door around is significantly less soothing than the ocean outside those windows, and there isn't a lot I wouldn't give for a fresh crab dinner and front-room dancing right now. 

Nostalgia is a funny thing, isn't it? 

The way it makes you ache for things you thought you'd forgotten about: people who are part of your past but somehow make it to your future, places you've been but haven't seen for a time, and things you haven't remembered until a song or a place or a person triggers them...it's really just not fair sometimes how easily you get swept back into a mess of used-to-be's and remember-when's. 

But all those used-to-be's and remember-when's are important, because they've built the going-to-be's and here-and-now's and sometimes it's okay to live in those memories for a minute—the present seems all the more spectacular if you do.