I am reconciling myself to the idea that I probably need to break up with my boyfriend.

Tomorrow, I must remember to buy tickets so my dad and I can go see PAUL SIMON in concert together this summer. My dad is the reason I got into Simon and Garfunkel, and his birthday is in May, so when I was thinking of who might be interested in seeing Paul Simon with me, I realized my dad would be perfect. When I give him his ticket I'll give him some big old story about my vivid memory of "the day I started hearing music," which involves him putting on a Simon & Garfunkel record on his OG record player, and me hearing "Cecilia" and suddenly going "What IS this awesome stuff?" and my brain snapping it all together at once, this is music, and that moment was the first time I encountered music and paid attention to it and "got" it as other than background noise and scene-setting.

I am also looking into volunteering at the WXPN music festival this summer, which will be in July.

If I break it off with my boyfriend tomorrow night, I plan on using it as a springboard to "quit [local college town]" for 30 days (along with alcohol and weed) and push a Change in my life. I haven't gone 30 days without smoking bud in a little over 3 years. I want to take a detox of both these things anyway, but I find it is easier to make such initiatives "stick" when you tie them into other life events or decisions. For instance, I had a toxic group of friends many years ago that I needed to quit. Right around the same time I was moving out of state. When I moved, I simply dropped them all without comment, and it was a lot easier to drop them by using the move as - I guess a lever or something - to help make the drop/no-contact happen. It'll be easy to avoid [local college town] and my bar immediately post this break-up because I won't want to run into him, or drunkenly text him and make backwards steps.

But it sucks to break up with people, and it's painful, even if you want to do it or if it's the right thing to do. So I'm not committed to tomorrow. But...it's coming. I cannot deny it anymore, that the end is coming.

Edited to add my first non-paint-by-numbers painting (in progress, not complete, but surprisingly, happily, more okay than not):