The Last Week Before...

This is the last week of school.

Summer begins in two days.

Are you understanding what I am saying right now? I am saying that the semester is over!

Today and tomorrow I have a few straggling class meetings, Thursday I have to grade and officially submit the rest of my grades, and then Friday--beautiful Friday--summer vacation officially begins!

Friday is named Day 1 of the next 100 Days adventure which I will be happily pursuing this lovely summer. I have so many plans, and in some cases, the lack of plans is as appealing as the plans themselves! At any rate, here are my summer plans:

-- Write EVERY DAY and produce a complete screenplay before the summer is over (at least)
-- Go on adventures daily
-- Remodel Treasured Details
-- Go to Tennessee
-- Go to Kansas
-- Go to Montana
-- Go to California
-- Go to some concerts for some bands I love! (I have my eye on Bon Iver and Josh Groban in July--separately, by the way)
-- Spend quality time with friends and family
-- Be stress free!
-- Find a job

One Week

This is the movie that's inspiring it all.

Check it out!

100 Days

At the moment, I am obsessed with the idea of the last summer of my "youth." This year I finished the single greatest accomplishment of my life to date (ahem! I told you I would mention it every chance I get!) and now I am sitting in the pleasant, shady little spot that is still fresh enough to be comfortable: educated and not yet employed. It's too soon to be worried, after all I have had a number of interviews already, they just can't hire me yet because I am still teaching until the end of next month. I am not worried about anything right now except perhaps the thought of getting a job sooner than I want to. Right now, I am anticipating a summer of fun, abandonment, daydreams, books, writing (yes, that again), adventures, road trips, and anything else new, unusual, and in any way exciting that I can squeeze into my schedule. I am hoping to make the whole adventure an adventure in and of itself. It should be a period of discovery, hope, newness, and starting all over again as something different. Or maybe just starting over as myself again, because it's been a long time since I've been that, and I miss it. I miss me, the reader, writer, adventure-loving dreamer. And now I am free to be what I want to be again!

I have this fascination with road trips, though not usually in the form of road trips themselves, but rather in the form of road trip movies. This weekend I watched One Week for the first time. I thought it was an amazing and incredible movie... I sympathize with the main character entirely; I mean, it's hard to imagine what one would do at only 29, hearing they have cancer and will likely live for only a short time. I can understand his desire to have an adventure. It makes me want to have my long-awaited adventure now, before I have to make it fit into the little piece of my life that's left. I love stories like this though; it's important to think about life like this. Haven't we always been told, profoundly, to live like we're dying? If I found out my time was through, there are a lot of things that I'd want to do, and being with everyone I love for every remaining moment of my life would not be the plan. There would be time for that, but that wouldn't be everything. What about the adventures we dream of, the parts of our lives that we have always wanted and yet we never pursue. We only have a single life to live, just one opportunity to realize and fulfill those dreams. We should take the opportunities that we are offered and use them. We cannot let our dreams go to waste! Once our lives are over, no one is going to live our dreams for us; if they haven't been fulfilled, they will simply die when we die. 

I have a goal to pass the next 100 days (well starting in about 30 days, when my semester ends officially) having daily adventures of searching and discovery--I hope. I will document those days, and I will have them. I have a trip to Tennessee planned, and a trip to Montana planned, and a trip to somewhere all by myself in the planning. I am dreaming of that adventure now. The time will come...soon!

Bored

My real friends say I'm waiting for what started long ago
And life is what you make of it.
So come on now let's go
Cause still I'm bored lately
Do you feel the same?
Being young it drives me crazy...
And this world's insane.

Road Trips, and Other Adventures

I have finished my Master's degree.

I keep reminding myself of this lately because, for some reason, the reality of it hasn't quite kicked in yet. I know that I am finished, and this opens up a few doors to me in terms of possible future adventures. I realize that I haven't done nearly as much as I wish I've done. Some people have made fun of me because completing a Master's degree is doing something, something big, but then again, the people who say it haven't done it. My Master's program has been a matter of locking myself into the deepest privacy I can get myself into and writing alone. All of it has been writing alone. Yeah, what an adventure. I have to admit, of course, that the completion of my thesis project and my Master's degree has been a personal achievement. It was worth everything it cost me, but now it's time to live a little.

Tonight I watched my favorite movie Elizabethtown for perhaps the hundredth time, and I was

reminded again of all the things that used to inspire me when I was younger. I remember the phone conversation between Claire (my heroine) and Drew... "Everyone has to take a solitary road trip at some point in their life--just you and some

music." I have wanted to follow this advice for the past six years, and I have decided that this year might be the one where I have to follow through. I want to get my music and my car and myself and hit the road.

There are a million things I want to do, and life is too short to save them.