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

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!

Thinking About Dreams

Summer is a season of hope and dreams for me, but as I grow older, I find many of my dreams to be stale. Without dreams, I lose the essential part of myself that makes me "me." But, when I dreamed those dreams as a child, a teenager, even a young adult, I dreamed them with the anticipation of their eventual fulfillment. It disappoints me now to see how anticlimactic life really is. When will the fun, long-awaited part of it begin?

I would sound like a fool to say that life hasn't been beautiful, that it hasn't been filled with all of the elements that make life what it is: lessons, heartbreaks and love, memories of joy, adventures, and people who will never be forgotten. This is not the part that makes life sad for me, this is the part that makes the sadness of life bearable. It is impossible, though, to deny the sadness of knowing that certain dreams may not come true, especially those dreams that I still seem to hold out hope for. There are little things that I've always wanted, deep inside, and reading about them just doesn't make the cut anymore. I'm a terrible case of dissatisfaction sometimes, but where I once was content to dream and chose dreams over life, I am not unfulfilled by empty dreams. It seems useless to dream endlessly of certain things that have not occurred, yet without dreaming, I am not me.

So how do I keep the two happy without upsetting the delicate balance of each?