:)

I wish I was clever.

I'll work on it.

But in the meantime, what I really want is a puppy.

This one, actually.

Not the one with the sunglasses. The cute little furry one.

I've been feeling a little contemplative/profound lately.



Do you mind?





Thanks, I'll go ahead.

This is quite possibly the most beautiful picture I've ever seen. I don't know why. I can't explain it. But it makes me want to laugh and cry and dance and lay on the ground staring at the sky. It makes me happy and sad and loved and lonely and energetic and exhausted and confident and terrified and so many feelings that I think I might combust, but it makes me think that's okay too.

And I can't find it anywhere! I found it randomly on yahoo images. And I want to buy it and frame it and make it as big as a wall so everyone can see it and make it so small that I can hide it somewhere unexpected so that only I can ever see it.

Sometimes I'm a hardcore realist. I can be so pessimistic about love that I don't believe it exists and I think it can only ruin lives. And sometimes I can be the most hopeless romantic. Cheesy love ballads can make my heart soar.

Why is that? Why is it that people can hold all of those emotions and all of those ideas? Why don't we just explode?

You want to know something random?

Please, indulge me.

I was at a bar on Saturday night and I met a man. This part of the story really means nothing, here's the big part. This man said something that struck me. He said, "You need to stop waiting for life and start experiencing it."

WHOA.

Maybe I was a little smudge drunk, but I'm sober now, and that really is an incredible thing to say. It's an even more incredible thing to do.

Take a second now. Think about it. And then try it sometime. But preferably soon. I'm going to give it a shot.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It's been a rollercoaster week, I can tell you that.

On Monday, I spent most of the day trying to relax while having all of the homework for the upcoming week keeping my mind restless.

On Tuesday, I survived. Not bad, not bad at all.

On Wednesday, I felt lonely. I don't know why. Sometimes it just hits you, I guess. I dragged myself to my classes much against my will. I dragged myself to dance rehearsal and tried, but my heart wasn't in it. And it showed.

On Thursday, I was hungover with loneliness. I felt physically, mentally, and emotionally drained. Was it that the sun had disappeared? By the end of the day, I reclaimed my happiness by taking a break from self-pity and cooking with friends. Friends and cooking are two of my favorite things.

Today, the sun came out to say hello again and so did my optimism. However, my hope for the weekend is pretty low. Rehearsals every day make refreshing my spirit kind of hard.

But I'll pull through.

Let's hope loneliness doesn't come knocking on my door again for a while.

Back to the Grind!

At the end of my quarter-life crisis, I have determined that I most definitely will not pursue a career in theater. I love it. But it's a hobby, and I would be miserable in the world of professional theater.

However, for the time being, I'm remaining a Musical Theater major. It's doubtful that I could complete any major in two years, and my scholarship runs out in two years. So as it is, I think I will finish the degree I've started and then see where the world takes me. I can always go back to school for something different or go to grad school for something different.

The BIG news is that I have (kind of) moved in to my own apartment! Hallelujah! Although I treasure my past three roommates, living with someone and being friends with someone are two entirely different things. I am THRILLED to have an apartment all to myself. I'll tell you, dorm life was NOT for me.

Hopefully, there will soon be pictures of my apartment when it has surpassed its "caught in a tornado" stage and reached its beautiful stage. We shall see!

Love.

Quarter Life Crisis?

I'll tell you what's scary, and that's not knowing what you want to do with your life.

Especially when you thought you know and never thought you would give it a second thought.

So now I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do next year:
Finish my theater degree at TU?
Change majors but stay at TU?
Change majors and transfer?
Go to culinary school?
Take a semester off to figure it out?

And then after that, I have to figure out what I'm going to do with my life:
Theater?
Psychology?
English?
Cooking?
Law?

On one hand, it's great to have so many choices. It's great that I'm not trapped doing something I hate with no way out. But on the other hand, it makes it that much harder to choose.

And it's scary when you realize, WHOA. I'm an adult. My parents can't make my choices for me anymore. What. Am. I. Going. To. Do.

Doubt

Since I was ten, I have never doubted what I wanted to do with my life. I want to do theater. I want to perform on the stage. I want to move to New York and be on Broadway.

But for the first time in ten years, I'm having doubts. I once read a quote by Michael Shurtleff that said something along the lines of, theater is only for the certifiably insane. If you can be happy doing something else, by all means, do it, because it's a hard life. I've known that. I've accepted it. I've always said that I would be miserable unless I did theater.

But after the hardest school year of my life, I got really burned out on theater. I can't listen to any showtunes without getting irritated. I have very little drive to do any theater. I've spent a lot of the summer volunteering at a hospital in town and I've been very happy doing it. I know I couldn't be in the medical field like both of my parents are because I'm not a science person. I would be miserable in those classes. But the work I'm doing is more of paperwork and dealing with people. I feel like I'm helping people, and that makes me really happy. I feel like I'm doing something for someone else, which is a feeling I don't always get from performing.

It makes me wonder. There probably ARE a lot of things I could be happy doing. I love studying psychology. I love reading and enjoy writing. I love helping people. I love cooking. But I have a full scholarship for four years. I'm almost done with classes for my theater degree. If I changed my major now, there is no way I could finish in two more years. And I can't afford to stay longer.

So I can only satisfy myself now by being relieved that I chose a BA degree instead of a conservatory program and hope that the theater program I start on Sunday reminds me why I used to love theater so much.

Here's hoping.

Harry Potter World

So I went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I also went to Disney World, and that was awesome, but I can't talk enough about Harry Potter.

I walked in the gate to Hogsmeade as a tuft of steam issued from the Hogwarts Express and the Harry Potter music being played swelled to a climax. The moment was perfect, and Hogsmeade was just as I had imagined it. I started crying. Everyone there looked at me like I was crazy, but the experience was unreal! You can laugh at me if you want, but if you're a Harry Potter fan, you understand. For eleven years I have wished and dreamed that Hogwarts really existed. I would say that Harry Potter defines my generation. We are the kids that spent their eleventh birthdays looking out the window for their owl with a letter from Dumbledore accepting them into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. We are the generation that waited in three hour lines to buy the next Harry Potter book when it came out at midnight. We are the generation that locked themselves in their rooms until they finished the book so no one could ruin it for them. I walked onto that street and all of these fantasies were realities.

I had a butterbeer in the Hog's Head pub with some friends. I rode a dragon. I bought a chocolate frog in Honeyduke's. I looked at Extendable Ears in Zonko's Joke Shop. I bowed to a hippogriff. I walked by Hagrid's Hut. I toured Hogwarts and saw Dumbledore's office, the Defense Against the Dark Arts room, the Herbology Wing, and Gryffindor common room. I played Quidditch. I got attacked by a dragon, dementors, and the Whomping Willow. I ate lunch in the Three Broomsticks. I saw a wand choose a wizard. I looked at robes for sale in Dervish and Banges. I met the conductor of the Hogwarts Express. I saw the Goblet of Fire, Hermione's dress for the Yule Ball, and the Triwizard Cup. It was the most perfect day I could have imagined.

Maybe it's silly that in twenty years, the best day I've ever had involved living in the world of Harry Potter, but I've never been so happy in my life as I was walking through Hogsmeade. No one can ever tell me again that magic isn't real.