Thursday, June 25, 2009

So long, Astoria.

I don't think anything can rival the feeling of sitting on the bow of a boat,
beer in hand, good music and company,
and a perfectly sunny, breezy day.

I was sitting in the library yesterday after my class working on
my Wall Street Journal assignments when I got a call
saying, "Let's go out on the lake."

And let me just say that I have become disgustingly responsible.
I go out of my way to maintain order in my apartment even when we have no visitors,
and, despite it being summer, I still try to get my assignments done early enough
so that I can spend my evenings doing some leisurely reading.

So at this moment when I received that call, I thought:
Fuck it. I need to be a kid.

So I tore up my daily to-do list and went.



When I really sit and think about it, it's so blatantly obvious
that I am crossing the threshold into real adulthood without even realizing it.
I mean, I guess this is something that needs to happen.
But I have plans. Wtf?

I'm graduating in May. Moving to Maine until December.
Coming home for Christmas. And then leaving for Costa Rica for four months.

These plans I'm pretty proud of, but daily to-do lists?!
Who is this painfully boring person?

Everyone made fun of me for taking my planner with me out to the lake yesterday,
but I never leave home without it. It's filled top to bottom with every due date, lunch date,
and play date. And I can't even find the time to go home until August.


I need more lake days.
I need more days of driving around singing to the Ataris and the Starting Line and all those other silly bands that scream "this is who you were when you allowed yourself to be carefree."

Hell, I just need to step out of my apartment more. Allow spontaneity back into my life. Let myself enjoy my freakin last summer.

Work and class and memos and assignments.

I can't wait until Farmer's Market Saturday with Gabby.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Come with me. Together, we can take the long way home.

My life right now is similar to my drive home. I hit every yellow light but kept on cruising.
I didn't, however, get pulled over for racing the reds; so I guess in a metaphorical sense this can be considered good.

It's funny to think how, at this moment, I am every hopeless cliche that I ever hoped to be in high school. Dream job on a yacht, good group of friends...going to class and working out during the day and sitting in coffee shops at night.
I have to admit that these things are much more romantic on paper than in actual life.
I feel caught somewhere between alive and pathetic.

My fingers have been buring to write lately, and the fews things that I've scribbled have been horrible at best. But I got an unexpected message from an old friend asking how I was doing and if I still wrote. Alas! A reminder of who I used to be and who I used to like being.

This summer has been shakey and unfamiliar, and I've found myself feeling completely disoriented. That message was exactly what I needed to remind me that I used to be someone before I was this empty shell of a person. So I took it and ran with it...

My semester was all work. 9-4 classes, followed by an unpaid internship that often required unpaid overtime, and my weekends were entirely devoted to the responsibilites that a newly 21 year old shouldn't be so overly concerned with. I've become dreadfully responsible, and I almost convinced myself that I enjoyed becoming another clone in the hustle and bustle of our work driven society. The main tragedy is that I wasn't enjoying any part of it.

And then my relationship came to a crashing (burning) end, and I began to question everything I knew about life and love and God.

I can't say that I've found any answers at all...but then again it's only June.

This summer has been far from ideal.
I don't go out, and I'm burdened by my adult limitations. (I have to work for my money? I can't go anywhere I want, whenever I want, with any friend of my chosing?)
I'm too broke to go out, and even if that weren't true Knoxville is a ghost town by night and full of work driven zombies (like myself) during the day.

But, as if God himself had given it to me, a friend recommended: Here, read this book.
And handed me a copy of Eat Pray Love.

This small work has begun the transformation of my summer.

To keep it terse, it was as if Elizabeth Gilbert had crept inside my head and caputured my silliest emotions and then articulated and developed them in a much wiser and more poetic way. I fell in love and will continue to reread this book throughout my life as a devotional and a spiritual.

The most wonderful thing I've gained from this book is a vow to myself to make this summer one of beautiful simplicity.

I'm writing again, and I'm working my way back to the positive aspects of my younger self.

I want to be hopelessly romantic to a fault because that means I believe in love.
I want to go for walks and watch sunrises because that means I can make the most of my surroundings.
And I want to sit and enjoy the newly painted walls of my apartment because that means I can enjoy simplicity.

Gabby and I don't have cable, but we have wonderful movies and a coffee maker.
There is a fantastic half priced book store not 10 minutes from here.

And I just bought two new books to occupy my time: The Old Man and the Sea and 47 Roses

This is the start of a very happy beginning.