Evolve or remain.

 I'll start simply. I don't believe in doing things systematically. I don't think that really gets anyone anywhere, or at least... anywhere worth going.  I respect it. If it has worked for you, I'm very glad that it has. I just can't believe in it for me. I've never been someone who could sit, study, pass exams and learn everything everyone told me I needed to learn. That process angered me.  I cried my way through my college algebra class and almost failed Chemistry. Studying Spanish as my second language was frustrating and I stopped going to my Geology class all together. My biology lab pushed me to the limit of my patience, and all of that is barely the beginning of what taught me the only lesson that stuck.  It's so important to find something you're passionate enough about to not be so bothered by the seemingly pointless and stressful little stuff along the way. Passion matters. I'll say it again. Passion. Matters. More than you could ever thin...

I used to see people driving sports cars, wearing designer clothes, dining in restaurants with mood lighting, handing credit cards to cashiers like their total didn't mean anything and I always just thought, "That's it. That's what it's like to live a good life." I used to see people living like that and I wanted it more than anything. As a little girl I wanted to be a doctor someday, and my dad always told me that if I followed through on that, then eventually I'd be living a life like those people.  But people change, and thank God for that because my idea of a good life is so, so different now. My idea of a good life is no longer dependent on nice cars, the tag on clothes, night life, or anything else even remotely tied to money. My idea of a good life now is exactly what I have - even in the midst of a global pandemic and some of the hardest circumstances I've experienced yet.  I live entirely and unapologetically for the littlest things. Conversat...

 A few weeks ago I told one of my friends that it was almost time for me to start writing my 2020 wrap-up post, (like I do every year) and her response couldn't have been more... real.  "How are you even going to do that for a year like this?"  I had to think about that for a while. To be honest, I think I've been ready to write this one from the beginning. The first few weeks of the year were the only ones that were normal, and there's been a lot of times this year when I've come here to write just to get away from all the weird, wild sh*t that's been going down since.  A lot of 2020 consisted of unkind days. I had to make a lot of painfully difficult decisions. I walked away from a lot of people and a lot of positions - and a lot of the time it seemed like part of me was watching it happen and yelling back, "What are you doing? Why are you doing this? How could you? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS!?" The other part of me learned that raising my voice in ...

Today as I turned the corner onto the main road on my way to work, I caught a glimpse of the hot pink sunrise in my rear view mirror and a rainbow up ahead of me. A sign from the universe, I figured, that even though I had slept through all 3 of my alarms, maybe the world would be soft and kind instead of chaotic and cruel first thing on a Monday morning. Somehow, I was still ahead of schedule. Still early, I used every red light that stopped me as a chance to breathe. Now that I’m done with all the important tasks on my to-do list for today, I’m here. And while I’m here I’ll remind you that everything I write is emotionally charged. I don't write to make anyone proud. I don't censor myself to keep anyone else comfortable. Everything I produce is a product of something I experience very intensely. Everything I bring here lives a full life in my head and my heart first. 2020 has done nothing other than provide me with more than a sufficient supply of difficult things to exp...

When I started writing, I thought writing about my life would be easy. I've never been so wrong about anything - and I've never been happier for that to be the case.  Lately, it's been hard. Both life itself and writing about it. I've had a lot to write about, but very little energy to put into that. It's difficult to explain myself when I say I "don't have the energy" to write. How can I not have the energy to sit at my computer and type? How can I not have the energy to put what's happening in my heart on a blank webpage? That's a part of this process I'll probably never understand, and of allllllllllllllllll the things I don't "get" in this life... that's my favorite.  Because while I'm wondering how that can be possible, I'm living. Moment to moment. Conversation by conversation. Mistake by mistake. Lesson by lesson. Loving it all. Loving how incredibly lucky I am. There are soooooooooooo many things that keep ...

Never before have I had to work so hard to come up with an answer to a question as easy as, "How have you been?" In all honesty, I’m at a place in my life where I’m not sure a good answer to a question like that exists at all. I’m 22 and things are weird. I have more responsibility and more freedom than ever. I'm more in love and also more alone than ever. I'm still practicing making my own rules and when to allow myself to break them. I'm trying to beat into my own brain that I don't owe anyone anything, and that this is the most important time to respect myself and draw my lines without a single apology. I'm learning how to rest without guilt, how to love without letting it rule me, how to make peace a priority, how to finally not fear change, and how to live without always being wrapped up in an unrealistic idea of "the way things should be." It's hard. It's busy, and it's beautiful...  but it's hard.  I'm in recovery now f...

Somewhere along the line, I made the decision to stop accepting half-love and half-assed anything. From myself, from the people around me, from the life I'm determined to cultivate. It never was enough, and it never was going to be. I got tired of trying to force things to be worth more than they were. I got tired of wasting patience on things that I shouldn't have ever had to wait for.  I know. That sounds like a very easy decision to have to make- but it has been the hardest. The best, but the hardest. It has been the source of bridges I've had to burn, and walls that I've built up and torn down again over and over. It has been the core of what keeps my hands moving across empty notebook pages at obscene morning hours while the world around me rests peacefully. It has been the border between me saying "goodnight" and "goodbye," even to the people I thought were the closest to me.  It has been wild, and awful, and messy, and beautiful, and sometimes...