I am going to use the money that my grandfather gave me for my education to travel through Europe and/or out West at some point during my early adult years. It's official. I know that he may have been thinking formal education, but I believe that traveling is like a life practicum. How to manage money and time, how to keep yourself safe, how to be flexible in difficult situations, how many times one can wear clothing before it needs to be washed, how to deal with strangers, how to protect oneself, how to live by the seat of ones pants, and how to learn by doing, not just theories. School is for book learning, and rightly so. But travel is the life experience that I will need. And besides, it's probably going to end up being my life at some point. In one sense or another. I will see this world, Lord willing. I will spread His love.
In other news, pretty unrelatedly, I love my friends. I've been actually spending time with all of them. This summer is going to be a bit of a challenge in that I need to manage both my time and money extremely well if I want to get much of anything done. Which is going to mean basically no normal hanging out activities, which means that I must get creative. But creative I am good at getting, got it? Like actually learning how to cook so as to not eat out as much. How to use the $40/week I'm getting from my mother for groceries to the best of my advantage, which probably means really really simple basic food that's cheap cheap cheap cheap cheap cheap. But still healthy. Haha which makes going to the grocery store like a trip with the Crocodile Hunter. "CRIKEY mate there's some $4/lb turkey!" Haha. I love my life. My extremely overactive imagination. And brain that never stops. Unless I work it to death with physical activity. Which I've been doing, and more regularly. Life is looking up. I'm not in Europe yet but I'm getting there. I'm saving as much money as humanly possible, or I'm trying. Wawa food is sometimes too good to pass up. Hah.
I'm almost 19. Not really a momentous birthday, but a year down nonetheless. One year single, and some days. I'm weirdly happy about the single part. Like it's my own anniversary. I should have bought myself chocolates and told myself that I love me. Hahaha, I totally should have. But I didn't think of it 'til now, and anyway if I ever told anyone they'd prob think that I was either a crazed freak that has been alone too long or a die-hard cynic. No one would see the truth of the situation which is that I am a completely normal just oddly humored girl, who for some reason would find such things hilarious for their offbeatedness. hmph.
PS I work all day tomorrow. But soon (June 1st-6th) I'm going to a linguistics and translation camp run by Wycliffe, and only a true real nerd would think that to be something to get excited about. But I kind of am. I figure if this is the life that God wants for me, this life of being a linguist, this will be one way to show me. I've felt led before, maybe I will again. It'll be exciting, meeting all the missionaries. A bunch of people who get exactly why I am such a language dork and don't care. =) I'm really looking forward to that. Not that I'm being all teenagery when I say it (though, being a teenager, there is always a little of that in my speech), but I feel that nobody really understands me when I talk about being a linguist or a translator. Yeah, people understand me when I say I want to be a teacher and that's cool. But teachers can teach anything, and while that's a bond it's not the same as language nerds, who I like to think of as communicators. The people that are just fascinated by the art and science of speech, meanings, construction of utterances, and the way sounds work together. I don't know if I even will be when I get into it, but I feel that maybe, just maybe, I will. I hope. I'd love a cool, interesting, and possibly slightly scientific place to belong. If that's not asking too much.
I also just saw Juno for the third time. Each time the movie becomes less silly and more serious to me. Like today I realized how this young couple made a new life, and then gave it away. Just that they made it together is inconceivable, because while out culture is focused almost solely on sex it's rarely ever focused on the by-product, you know, an infant. It seems in our society that we do go from one extreme to another in terms of sexuality, like Puritanical values turn into free love and such. But could it maybe be seen as going from "family" values, or focusing on the children and parents, to focusing on the self and pleasure and what seems sensible at the time? I don't know, I haven't thought too much about it. But I just feel that while the world is trying to shove down our throats that sex is such a normal thing to do, how it's natural, yet dirty, how it feels good, etc, but how if a baby results we should murder it to save ourselves? Due to mandatory sex education in most states, we know that sex produces offspring. It's the natural way of things. Yet we do everything in our power (i.e. condoms, the Pill, etc) to prevent it, to have our cake and eat it to. And in some instances I don't mind this as much. Like married couples who don't intend to have children, okay, that's their decision, and possibly one I'll be making. However when you're doing it just to have sex with as many people as you can what does that say about you and how you not only value yourself, but what worth you see in other people? That you're willing to use them for what they have and let yourself be used, yet not even "give back" in the sense that it will eventually culminate in the ultimate selfless acting of having and raising a child. It baffles me. The whole issue. That children can even be made in such a seemingly easy fashion. But yet how the issue of how they're made is so complex. I truly feel though that despite what the Bible says, the simple logic that ANY man + ANY woman = new life should give mankind some sort of weight to the decision to engage in it. Even if birth control has made the issue more simple, at least the women in the world will never let it become anything less than mind numbingly complex. Because while I'm all for free love, I just feel that I should stay sexually passive until it's with a man that I can commit myself completely to and in that way have the selfless angle that makes the selfish act of experiencing pretty much the most intense pleasure this side of the pearly gates a little more legit. Nah m'sayin'?!
Oh Lord, again with the deep philosophical bull mixed with random bouts of ebonics. I enjoy writing in this now, mostly because I'm almost certain that next to no one actually reads it, so I can experiment with styles. I really enjoy J.K. Rowling mixed with Sarah Jessica Parker from Sex and the City mixed with Jane Austen mixed with Juno MacGuff swirled in the guy from Blue Like Jazz, who is like me but a cuter posterchild version with a way better grip on meter and syntactic development. I basically love him just from his writing and wish that I could meet him. And his wife, since he has one and she's probably super awesome. ahhh. Someday I will have a super awesome husband. I'm not sure who he is yet, but I know that I will have the best one for me or I will have none at all. High standards? No, because he won't be perfect. He'll just be perfect for me, in all of his imperfection. As will I for him. And now I'm going to stop word vomiting all over xanga and get to bed, so that I can better save the patrons of the SVYMCA tomorrow, if they are so in need. Outdoor pool opens tomorrow!!! SO excited, this is a highlight of my year. Because work is a good deal of my life now. But yeah I'll stop now. Mkay byeeee.
Comments (1)
call me a real nerd, because i'm excited about your plans!! do you want to wear my "prime" shirt for you 19th birthday? :)