Rachel Ray

Today I had an amazing photoshoot with my friend Jared Burleson, whose photography I can't praise enough. Check out this link to see what he can do: http://www.mississippics.com/ (Our newest pictures aren't up yet.)

I've been trying to figure out what to do with my life for the next 6-ish months until I leave for Europe. I need a project, a goal. Otherwise I feel like I'm wasting time. I like to be productive. I have school of course, but I need a life outside of school.

So I have a Rachel Ray cookbook... and I'm considering trying to cook through it. Kind of like that movie with the chick who did Julia Child's cookbook, only easier because it's Rachel Ray and supposedly it'll only take me thirty minutes. I'm a college student; I only have about thirty minutes for anything outside of schoolwork. I am no cook. I'm quite terrible in the kitchen. It's a thought. I'll ponder it for a bit. I don't really believe in New Year's Resolutions, but maybe I'll do something different this year. After all, I will be in Italy and France. I ought to know how to cook something, right?

Why am I awake at 3:00 in the morning?

Cast Away

I watched Castaway this weekend - the movie where Tom Hanks is alone on an island for four years. It got me thinking. I don't think people are meant to be alone. I don't think I could make it alone on an island for that long. Completely, totally alone. We are made as parts of a whole, as beings made to interact. That's why we have language. It is what makes us who we are.

On a side note, according to my French teacher (who is from Paris), French people are more lazy than Americans. Crazy!

Self-Motivation

I think I'm going to go for a run this afternoon.
But before that I am going to the nursing home to set up a time to begin volunteering every week.
I'm going to order a new bow for my viola so that I can begin learning again.
I'm going to open the guitar case and attempt to play again.
At work tonight I will compile a massive Italian vocabulary list.

It's time to start being the person that I want to be. No more excuses. Everything in me is meant for more. I don't just mean travel. I don't just mean languages. I want to be a better person. Well, I guess, who doesn't? But I want to improve myself and the way that I spend my time. I am so wasteful of life.

Tension

May next year is when everything begins, and I feel as if I've been living in a daze waiting for the moment when I'm waving goodbye at security and boarding the plane at Memphis International Airport. Then I will be gone. GONE. For one year, give-or-take a few weeks here and there. ONE YEAR. France and Italy. I will be living the dream that for so long has simply existed in my mind's eye. It is now at my fingertips and it begins in May.

I try very hard to live in the present. But with an incredible journey awaiting me, it is difficult to think of anything but that. Seven months is a long time, and I want them to fly by.



And yet, I do not. I want to savor every moment of the next seven months, for something spectacular could unfold. I would not dare miss a second simply because I am waiting. I am torn, torn between reality and dreams.

I feel as if my perspective of life at the moment is on a balance beam, balancing in a tense in-between. Tension. Life tension.

Time, Time, Time

It's Thursday morning. But by Tuesday afternoon, I was ready to leave. I had only been here two days (and not even two whole days). This feeling, this "travelbug" if you'd like to call it that... it's eating at me.

I really need time. More than anything in the world, I am in desperate need of time. Time to take for myself and just explore. Explore not only the roads and everything that is connected by them, but also to figure myself out. This routine allows no room to breathe. I love school and my classes and the place itself, but I am just suffocating. I don't really even know why. I just need to leave for a while. I really need to get up and go somewhere, anywhere.

Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
--Pink Floyd

Killing time. Have you ever really considered the concept? We use the phrase often - "Oh, just killing time." But can time actually be killed? Assasinated, murdered? Tossed 6 feet deep and covered with soil?

Possibly. What is time? A human construct. There is a future because we say so, a past because it happened and we remember it. There is no way to live in the present because the present is inconsistent, dynamic, unceasing. And yet all we can do is live in the present because the future is nonexistent and the past is already gone with the wind. So can this concept that really exists only in the mind be extinguished? What would you have? Can humans live in infinity, knowing that it will end?

Rainy Day Playlist

There is this quiet that just envelopes me at times that is simply impossible to elucidate. I've felt extremely mellow for the past few days, just in a sort of haze. Maybe it's the weather getting me down, or perhaps the music. Don't get me wrong, I've been perky and energetic and happy. But it's just sort of in a daze. As soon as I'm alone a moment, it seeps in as I breathe, through my lungs and into my bloodstream, controlling the beat of my heart and the heaviness of my eyelids. It's could be compared to a movie, when a scene plays to a particular mellow song. I feel like my life has been lived on a soundtrack lately.

The Rainy Day Playlist consists of songs by Amos Lee, Ben Folds, Billy Joel, The Bonfire Orchestra, Damien Rice, Diana Krall, Drew Gatlin, Five for Fighting, The Fray, Jack Johnson, Jeff Buckley, Josh Ritter, Regina Spektor, and Train.

I'm hoping that a roadtrip home Friday evening will pull me out of this funk and out the rolled-down windows. Or maybe a good run set to a different type of music.

College Campus Travels

So the Plaid backback has returned once more to its proper job - carrying books. Many, many books. Monday, I carried around 12 books in the backpack and two in my arms. My shoulders are bruised. Classes are only three days in, and I'm already exhausted and lacking sleep. I just have to readjust to the routine of only being allotted a maximum of 4 hours a night for sleep. I usually sleep about that much anyways, but during the summer there is at least the opportunity for more sleep. Not here, my friends.

Perhaps I've just developed a more cynical view of college after being so burned out last semester. I just don't see much originality here. I see thousands of people a day and can't tell a single one apart from the other. Maybe the color of your shirt is slightly different, but, ladies, your oversized tank top or tee shirt looks exactly the same as everyone else - don't fool yourself thinking you're something special. Just because your Nike shorts have a different color or pattern doesn't make you different. I guarantee you that Nike mass-produced those and tons of other girls own the exact same pair. Possibly even a few other people on this campus. You blend.

I myself am guilty of this, of course. I certainly am no hypocrite. The two days a week that I don't work - and therefore need not dress nicely - I am in an oversized (or most likely properly sized) tee shirt and some form of comfortable shorts/pants and shoes. Blending in with everyone else and knowing it.

It amuses and annoys me simultaneously that so many people are here doing absolutely nothing. Nothing with their lives except wasting someone else's money (because if it were their own, no doubt they'd be doing something productive with their lives.) Partypartyparty, it's the name of the game. Don't get me wrong here, I'm no prude. Partying/drinking/etc does not bother or offend me at all. It's a part of life. I just have a problem with people who make it the only thing they do or are interested in. I just want to meet more people who really are using this education and milking it for all it is worth and using every second to learn.

If you stop learning, you stop growing; and if you stop growing, you stop living. If you stop living, you might as well be dead. (I hope that's obvious.)

There is something bigger than this.