Finding the Gems

I get stuck in ruts. All the time. Sometimes several times a day. I can be up one moment and back down the next hour. I'm trying to accomplish something great, to inspire and be recognized. But then I try to find happiness in other things. Fake things. Fiction.

Am I good enough in reality? I need to find out, no more wasting time. I want to be less selfish, be a part of the mass and be there for others. I want to be a great sacrifice. To be useful. To put others before myself. I find this notion the most inspiring for me. To stop being one more mouth to feed, one more breath taking in air, and put my two-cents into this world. Put in my best efforts to make society better.

When I think of all those amazing people that made a difference, I know they weren't thinking about how much they want pancakes right now, or about having the best clothes, or even how much they wanted to be loved more than love other people. They were thinking about their next move. How can they improve? How can they help more? I admit, I am a terribly practical person, and it gets in the way of many things (including *ahem* romantic relationships) but I think its what is going to help me be who I want to be. It inspires me more deeply than anything. I believe being practical is a good thing. A really good thing.

To find my hidden gems and polish. To work hard every day of my life, pushing myself harder and further, that is a way I can live without regrets.

Daytrippin'

I think it's very important to take days to explore new or old places. To find new wonders, new trials. To think differently. It's important to go alone.  When you travel alone, you have the opportunity to depend on yourself that you don't have when you're settled at home. You learn what you can handle, how much you can take. But then you learn to expand and cover everything else that you never knew. You expand so much that you begin to cover the horizons and the stars and then you make it back home and you are bigger and better than who you were before. You're different but you're the same because you spent your travels becoming your true self. With no one else to tell you how to be.

Saying Goodbye

You know, to my hair that is. It's been a long journey with my long hair. It was short, it was long, it was dip-dyed, it was chopped it was red, it had bangs, no bangs, you get the picture. I change my hair a lot.

Well anyways, It's all getting chopped off tomorrow. That's right, it's pixie cut time. What better way to celebrate/mourn the life of my hair than swooning and collaging?

This was the last time my hair was blond. I took this picture right before I dyed it red with henna. I'm ready to see my natural color again after a year of being a red-head.

I always love changing up my hair avery once in a while. It's not that I'm not happy with what I have, but I just love the thrill of getting a new look. And it always changes, always grows, always turns into something else. And then you can start all over again with something new.

I think I'm ready for something new.

On Travelling

I think I'm finally realizing why it's so important for me to travel. I'm starting to grasp it softly. It's like a wind that blows sparingly. Not seeing it, hardly feeling it, but knowing it's there, somehow.

It came to me suddenly. As someone was trying to discourage me from going alone at all costs, how dangerous it would be; I would be better off playing it safe, going with a group, or not going at all- I had my own thoughts. Why are people so afraid of tragedy? Why are people so afraid to die?

I have my own thoughts.

I would rather take the biggest risk I possibly can, than stay stagnant, waiting for more-

Waiting for more life.

I need to see people, I need to see life. I don't think I have the ability to let life happen to me. I don't think I have been blessed with a life that just is. I need to watch life, to sit on the outside, to learn, to grow-

To never be satisfied with anything. To always keep moving, keep traveling, keep running.

This life is not ours. This life is not mine. The things we have are a gift that can be taken away just as quickly. We do not know what our gift will be tomorrow.

I have to keep moving.

That life is not for me to have. One that marries her best friend, buys her first house with a garden, retires and lives her life peacefully-

Safely.

No I cannot live safely. I must risk it all. It is all worth the risk.

Life is the risk.

What I've Always Wanted

You all know the story. Every little girl is obsessed with horses when she is little and if she is still obsessed as she grows then it's meant to be.

You remember throwing coins into a water fountain? Remember the wish you made before you blew out the candles? I remember every single one- because they were all the same.

"I wish I had a horse".

Every time. And even still.

My sister Erika and I are still obsessed. To the core. Of all the rediculous and absurd things I want to do, horses are, and always will be what I want more than anything. If you're like me, and you don't know who Joe Camp is, then you need to read his book the soul of a horse. It changed everything.

A few months ago I had to make a decision. Probably the biggest one I ever made. When I got my new job last summer I was making a lot more money than I ever had, enough to change things, change the way I lived. It became a choice between moving out of my mother's house, and adopting/buying a horse. I went back and forth in my head constantly. I remember the night I decided it was a horse that I wanted. Matt will witness to my behavior that night. I'd only been that excited and high like that one other time in my life and I'm not about to compare a horse to the Holy Spirit of God, but I'll just say that I was crack happy. I couldn't stop giggling and screaming and making dinosaur noises... like the whole night. Then I read Joe's book, and I realized what I had to do. He made me see things through the eyes of a horse, something I'd never done, never seen, never been taught. And it made me see that where I am right now, won't do for a horse. I want to give my future friend my very best, and that's not my life right now. I don't have what it takes... yet.

I'm by no means giving up my dream, it just means that I'm willing to do it right, and not make sacrifices.

A Calling

I feel like in the last month I've completely forgotten how to slow down and just think. A thousand storms keep calling me to fight and now I just can't fight anymore.

So today I took a field trip. I used to come here a lot more often but Somewhere in the last year time has aged me.

What happened to my sense of adventure? What happened to my spontaneity? Where did my love for life leave me? Time has stopped everything in its tracks. And left me senseless- waiting for a call.

But today I answered. For the first time it seems in a hundred years. I came back to the ocean.

The ocean is my medicine.
      The mountains call me home.

Where Words Go

I've had the same journal since I learned the importance of words, since I learned how to see things- I'm still learning. I've had the same journal for four years. Since I was a freshman in high school. Though that says nothing of my competence to fill it, it means I only wrote down what I really believed was important, what I really want to remember when I flip through the terrible, angsty poetry and lyrics I've written in the last few years on days like today when I can read what states of mind I used to be in. I've written things that make me cringe when I read them, I've written things that make no sense, I've written things that I'm so glad I wrote down so I could remember later, and I've wasted a lot of pages doing so.

Like journals, life is living progress, and in our journals we breathe in that life with words, thoughts, anger, fear, etc. The only thing is that journals only have so many pages in them. I have four pages left. four empty pages. Now I'm not trying to say that My life is going to end when I fill those four pages, but my concern is: what is going to happen when the journal is complete? Am I going to lose those four years of growing up? I won't carry that journal around with me everywhere I go, and I won't remember to flip through them whenever I want. I'll have a new journal with me, completely empty. I feel like when those four pages fill up, I'll put the past four years into a box and lock it up. Does this mean I have to change? Must I say goodbye to the past and move on? Death is inevitable- the earth does not mourn the loss of its people. New life is created.
Alas! I will always hate change.