on life and changes and graduation

There are a lot of changes happening in these coming months. Exciting changes, good changes!

We moved out of our house this weekend. It always amazes me how quickly my whole life can be packed up into boxes. My parents moved to Vancouver and I moved into my aunts house where I'll be staying for the next month or so until school's out and I can join my parents. 

I have my last shift at McDonalds tomorrow. Just under fourteen months and 109 shifts later, and I'm finally getting out of that place. Leaving this place, I have more bad memories than good, but the things like turning up the music louder  than we should have on all those dead nights, or cheersing and taking espresso shots on thanksgiving, those are the things I hope to remember. I'm happy to say goodbye, but am also grateful for the experience and thankful for all of the incredible adventures it has funded. 

Prom is a week from today. Grandma picked up my dress last week and I stood as still as I could on a chair while she made a hem line, then later started alterations. I was worried that I wouldn't have everything organized and ready in time for prom, but I'm pretty confident that I'm as ready as I can be. The spray tan is booked for Wednesday, nails for Thursday, and every other little detail has managed to fall perfectly in place. For a high school dance, this whole prom thing is turning out to be a preeeetty big deal. But this time only comes around once in a lifetime, right? 

After prom comes graduation. I still can't believe that I'm graduating high school in just over three weeks. I always thought that I would feel so lost at this point in my life, but I don't think I've ever felt more at peace. I was always afraid of losing friends after school, that was my biggest concern, but with a couple of friendships already lost this past month, I'm starting to realize that the ones who really matter are the ones who have been there for me all along, and will continue to be, even after high school is said and done. 

I'm really excited for this time in my life. Things are looking up, life is looking good, and I can't wait to see where these next few years will take me. 

travel is

Travel is more than just the seeing of the sights. It's more than a plane ride to a new place. It's the experience you have, the photos you take, the words you write, and the things you feel while doing it.

It's drinking mulled wine around a fire in the heart of Vienna, or sitting on Santa Monica beaches for hours upon hours. It's singing and dancing with complete strangers at Oktoberfest and all different nationalities coming together in one place to mutually enjoy themselves. It's the best dinner you've had at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Old Town Rhodes, or eating street vendor dinners on a bench in New York. It's walking the cobblestone streets of the market in England, or searching for shells and rocks in the shores of Cretes best beaches for hours on end. It's hiking to the top of an old ruin in a small town in Austria, or driving to Hungary and Slovakia for no reason at all at ten o'clock on a Tuesday night. 

Travel is more than just the seeing of the sights. Travel is what you make of it. 

i'm a little sad, i'm a little happy

I want to write, but I can't find the words. And I want to feel, feel something other than the uncertainty that's left me questioning every little thing in these past couple of days. I'm a little sad. I'm a little happy. There's something pretty awful going on right now and something pretty great, too, and even though the two are completely unrelated, I can't seem to celebrate the one thing without thinking about the other. I don't aim for happiness, because happiness is fleeting. Instead, I try to live my life for contentment, to be content in what I am given and what I am able to do. But right now I'm not content. I'm happy during the day and sad once the sun goes down, and I hope things will all go back to normal soon because I don't like this feeling one bit. 

thoughts on graduating

Six and a half. That's how many weeks of school I have left of grade twelve. Six and a half weeks left of high school ever. That's insane. 

Time is flying by these days. It seems like just last week that we started the second semester. There's so much going on in these next six weeks, too, that I know they'll go just as quickly as the last few have. It's exciting! The things I'm feeling are things I've never felt before. And they're so much different than what I imagined I'd be feeling at this point in the final weeks of my schooling. 

It's refreshing to realize that I'm still growing and learning. I always get so comfortable in a certain routine and can't imagine things being any different. I've thought many times that the friends I'm close to at any given moment are the only friends I'll ever be close to again, but life keeps proving me wrong in the best way possible as I grow closer to people I never thought I would have. 

I still don't know exactly what I'll be doing come September. Sometimes I have little emotional breakdowns and think, "I really need to get my life together", but most of the time, taking things as they come feels like the right thing to be doing. Sometimes I wish I had some sort of plans for the next year of my life, but if I've learned anything in life, it's that plans never go according to plan anyways. 

Life is GOOD lately. So good, and I can't wait to see how much greater it's going to get in the coming weeks. 

vancouver with madi

"We were still figuring out how to be in each other's lives without being everything to each other."

I found the above quote in a book I was reading a couple of weeks ago and sent it to Madi immediately because it resonated with our friendship in the last few months so, so well.

For the longest time, we were all each other had. Since we both moved around every couple of years and constantly had to make new friends, it was nice to have each other when we had nobody else. We haven't lived in the same place since sixth grade, but our long-distance friendship has been stronger than any I've had with people living in the same place as me. 

Before tenth grade, both of us moved again, and this time, stayed. We became close to new people, and further apart from each other, and it was sad and confusing because we didn't really know what had happened. Really, we were just trying to figure out how to be in each other's lives without being each other's only friends, and it was weird. But I think we've got it figured out now. We met up in Vancouver last month for Easter weekend to spend the long weekend with her parents, and it was so good to see each other again after five months apart. I'm pretty sure that's the longest we've ever been apart in our almost eight years of friendship, and it was sad!

We managed to sqeeze a lot into our five days on the mainland. Meeting Tom Felton at FanExpo and taking a day trip to Seattle were two of the highlights, but hanging out downtown Vancouver and cooking our first turkey dinner together was pretty good, too. 

I'm so grateful for Madi and our friendship. It's really refreshing when you don't have to hide anything from someone and can be one hundred percent yourself. Whatever happens in my life, I know I won't be without Madi for long. It's just nice to know that some things never change.