so let the wind blow us to wherever it says we are suppose to go

Quito, Ecuador

Bocas del Toro, Panama

Cozumel, Mexico

Lagos, Portugal

Chefchaouen, Morocco

Travel is an intensified feeling—maximum thrills per minute and one of the last great sources of legal adventure. Travel is freedom. It’s recess and we need it… Connecting with people carbonates your experience. Extroverts have more fun. If your trip is low on magic moments, kick yourself and make things happen. If you don’t enjoy a place, maybe you don’t know enough about it.  Seek the truth. Recognize tourist traps. Give the culture the benefit of your open mind. See things as different, but not better or worse. Any culture has plenty to share. Of course, travel, like the world, is a series of hills and valleys. Be fanatically positive and militantly optimistic. If something’s not to your liking, change your liking. Travel can make you a happier American, as well as a citizen of the world. Our Earth is home to six and a half billion equally precious people. It’s humbling to travel and find that other people don’t have the “American Dream”—they have their own dreams. Europeans like us, but with all due respect, they wouldn’t trade passports. Thoughtful travel engages us with the world. In tough economic times, it reminds us what is truly important. By broadening perspectives, travel teaches new ways to measure quality of life. Globetrotting destroys ethnocentricity, helping us understand and appreciate other cultures. Rather than fear the diversity on this planet, celebrate it. Among your most prized souvenirs will be the strands of different cultures you choose to knit into your own character. The world is a cultural yarn shop, and Back Door travelers are weaving the tapestry. Join in! –Rick Steves, Europe Through the Back Door

Kiev, Ukraine

Venice, Italy

Bavaria, Germany (Neuschwanstein)

Innsbruck, Austria

Zurich, Switzerland

Toledo, Spain

"I wait for something under a streetlight. It won't be long because it's dark, it's cold, it's one of those nights where something out there keeps me alive. But I don't know where to go. So I think I'll sit and stay here a while til I figure it out. So, let the wind blow us to wherever it says we are suppose to go. 

When you WANT something but can't name it.. it's something you've never seen before- OPEN THE DOOR! It's something you've always been afraid of.. and now all you want is more." -Joshua Radin

"With every sun that sets, I am feeling more like a stranger on a foreign shore with an eroding beach disappearing from underneath. 'Cause I'm a man that hides from all that binds in a mess of fading lines. I always fall in love with an open door with a horizon on an endless shore as I look around at the ones standing right in front of me. And then my mirror speaks with irreverence like a soldier I can't command that sees a frightened child in the body of a full grown man." -Death Cab For Cutie

I should know who I am by now.

Joshua Radin, Winter

i just love that. mistakes need not be fatal. 

mistakes need not be fatal.

hm... sounds like something I've mentioned before...

the next few weeks, i will dedicate to reminding myself of these things.

you deserve a smile with no regret

One of the topics of an entire anthropology class last week was, "Can you live without compromises?" And immediately, my answer sprung to my mind. No. 
I've been thinking a lot recently about forgiveness. I have always considered myself "too forgiving." Being mad at someone takes hard work. It is stressful to save up all your emotions and keep them to yourself. I have also always considered myself too honest and rarely afraid to offer up my opinion. However, many of these personality characteristics I have always seen for myself have been recently questioned. I have suddenly realized myself staying silent and trying to lay low. There isn't much of an explanation for this, other than my own frustrations that I don't have an explanation. There is a Nip/Tuck quote from the last season where (I'm pretty sure it's) Christian says something along the lines of- "Where does it come from? This capacity to forgive? How do you do it?" and Sean's answer back was, "How do you not?"
How can you not forgive? Its a simple necessity. A necessity like breathing. And without compromising, forgiving and cutting other's slack, life is way more difficult than it should be.
The part of forgiveness that I am blurred on is when time gets involved.
This phrase has been on my mind. It seems like yesterday, I was holding onto you for better days. (Great Big Planes) 
I'm quite certain that line was written about a lover. But there aren't so many differences between a lover and a friend. A favorite and much quoted author of mine wrote this in a book titled Handle With Care “Besides the obvious difference, there was not much distinction between losing a best friend and losing a lover: it was all about intimacy. One moment, you had someone to share your biggest triumphs and fatal flaws with; the next minute, you had to keep them bottled inside.” 
In the same book, she later wrote, "Anger… is too fierce a flame to last for long."
And I deeply believe both of these things to be true.
Though I am still begging to miraculously wake up tomorrow morning and be at ease with uncertainty, I am also still trying to mentally sort out changes that have taken place in the past year or so and how all of that is affecting me. I guess it just hits me harder on some days than other and today is one of those days. Joshua Radin sings about this. He says, Everyone keeps saying, "nothing helps but time." Time is ALL I own. And time won't stop replaying over in my mind. I watch the hours slow down. So I crawl underneath my blanket, where I can hide away. I know I can't take it anymore. Cause I see now, it's just one of those days.
It can be easy to do the initial forgiveness phase. To listen to the apology, to talk it out. The resolution is a small slice of heaven. It is the living up to the resolutions you made which can be so difficult. When my resolution is that I have to let go, time passes and I realize I have been successful in one sense and haven't at all in another. If it still upsets me to think about a situation does that mean I didn't actually forgive?

I'm not entirely sure this post even makes much sense. As usual, there are deep roots in many thoughts, situations, and people all floating around in my head thinking about all this. I just think I needed to be reminded that forgiveness is a huge part of my life and I will never "master" the concept. But for the friends that I have with whom we are negotiating forgiveness between each other, I am deeply thankful. I know I fuck it up from time to time. I love being given the endless chances to recover. It shapes me and makes me a better person.

And I hope that with others, where forgiving seems off the table... I just want to say, I'd really like to see it up for some discussion. Because after all, It's not always rainbows and butterflies. Its compromise that moves us along. My heart is full, my door's always open. You come anytime you want. (Maroon 5) In a post already full of lyrics and quotes, what's one more? The past few months, I have had this song on repeat. I've found comfort in its words, but I have a new stipulation with the advice. Freedom is forgiveness. Hold your breath and count to nine. Hoping somebody soon with find you. Go on, the stars are watching. Just say, just say what you're feeling. You know, you know, you've got to take a bow and do it your way. It's okay. It's okay. It's time for you to prove within your ruby shoes, you deserve a smile with no regret. Now, go be free... (Erin McCarley)


Compromise moves us along. Without it, someone is certain to be left behind.

melancholy procrastination

things i miss/am craving/NEED in my life right now

cappuccino con canela (Florence, Italy)

Agua de Sevilla (T de Triana- Sevilla, Spain)

Saturday errands with my Momma (Roswell, GA)

Patricia's jelly (Florence, Italy)

my Jetta that smelled like crayons

Nokia with Snake

student directing
the IMPACT-O-MATIC (Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN)

cross-stitching

The Burt Show

SNAP

Nip/Tuck

Gerber Daisies

Triolade Milka Chocolate (Europe)

Lucian P. Smith (The Boys Next Door)

Girl Scout cookies with Sparkling White Grape Juice- perfect bad day cure
exec meetings crammed in the little office on the floor

recess 

being wildly-madly-cannot-breathe-in love

Mom's beef stroganoff 

95.5 the beat

coloring books

tap

Almduler (Vienna, Austria)

The Roxy (Times Square, New York City, NY)

those peach flavored hard candies (Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, ATL)

scuba diving mesmerized while time is completely frozen

LOST

GAC macaroni and cheese

Sangria sailboat (Lagos, Portugal)

Lizzy's Honda with the bright colored lei 

snow piled so high outside you can make a huge snow fort (Salt Lake City, Utah)

pledge parties at Dexter's

sexy motherfucker (JJ's Cathedral- Florence, Italy)

Spanish sliding off my tongue like hard candy

Royal Red shrimp

making up our own choreography to Spice Girls and boy bands

Jodi Picoult book so good- you-can't put it down

ice skating birthday parties

croquettas (Spain)

the excitement waiting for AOL to dial up and make all those weird noises

afternoons hanging out in the GAC parking lot

"we are grown, but cannot see. lost our world of make-believe. simple times now seem so far... use to be in my backyard. yeah, the world was still in my backyard. but we are okay, we are alright. we sing very loud. yeah, we're singing, we are okay. we are alright. close our eyes, close our mouth yeah, we shut our eyes though we're in doubt. and so it goes, we can never seem to find the time we lost though we try at any cost. we try...but we are okay, we are alright. " -Joshua Radin, "We Are Okay"