Let's Get Rich and Buy Our Parents Homes in the South of France

The last post I published I wrote something along the lines of listening to music that makes my soul happy and I've kind of been dwelling on that thought quite a bit. First of all, I love that phrase. I love talking about my soul because I'm not really sure where it is or what it looks like or what it's trying to tell me but I've always liked a good mystery. I just know what makes it happy, and I guess that's all that matters. And this song makes my soul happy, like a Christmas morning happy. Her voice is beautiful and darling and if we lived in some strange universe where we chose our qualities and perks, her voice would be my first pick.

So enjoy.

And have a fabulous day of course.

All You Have is Who You Are

Sometimes I lock myself in my room and sit criss crossed on the floor next to an open window and contemplate my life. I let the night tune of wind and crickets dance through the air as I think about who I am and where I want to go and who I want to be.

Sometimes I cry and sometimes I pray and sometimes I do a little bit of both. 

Sometimes I just sit in silence, a sound that is a lot louder than one would think. 

Sometimes I let my dog join me and we sit and listen to whatever song makes my soul happy at the moment. I let her lay in my lap and in exchange she listens like an old friend. 

And sometimes, I think it's healthy to be alone. At the end of the day all we have is who we are, not your bestfriend that you hang out with so much that you're practically the same person. Not the girl that you watch from a distance, desperately wishing and trying to become. Not your parents or the sibling that overshadows you. 

I've been having a lot of these moments of thinking and reflecting and contemplating. I think about the people I love and the relationships that need mending. I think about what kind of person I'm perceived as, even though I don't think I should be. I think about what's the most important and what doesn't really matter anymore and things that aren't a priority but should be. I think about how four years ago this time in my life seemed so far away.

I think about how if my life was a salad, I would've made at least a dent by now.

So spend some time soul searching and path carving and life realization making. And most importantly, spend some time with yourself, because that's all you have. 

Have a fabulous day. 

The Last Quarter of the Year

I saw my first Christmas commercial today.

In September.

In the middle of 80 something degree weather.

While I changed into shorts and a t shirt because mother of all things good it's too too hot outside.

But praise Jesus for the first ring of Christmas bells. Yes. I'm one of those people. Extra emphasis on those if you weren't following me.

I love Thanksgiving. I love my feet are going to fall off because it's so effing cold soccer practices. I love boots and scarves and long sleeve t-shirts. I love red sniffling noses that are the aftermath of only two minutes outside. I love it. All of it.

Not to mention the transitioning season of fall that seems to be looked over far too often. Halloween, Halloween candy, Halloween decorations, old school Halloween Disney movies, Halloween Halloween Halloween. And the leaves, oh the leaves. Mustard yellow. Crimson red. Sun bleached grass green. Yucky insect chewed brown that ties all the colors together. 

I'm in heaven.

My calendar shows way more months have passed than months to come. Only a few pages wait their turn to be showcased for thirty some days. The year is tying up in a bright red Christmas patterned bow.

We're in the last quarter of the year. Make it fabulous.

What Else is New

I'm juggling too many balls at once.

One or two or sometimes even three have to drop before I can accomplish anything. Sometimes I have to let all but one drop to the floor with a thud so I can do what needs to be done. Some days I can toss them up and let them circle in the air with ease and others I'm scrambling to pick them up. 

Long story short, I'm struggling. Not necessarily to the point of I'm way in over my head and something is going to have to give, but the piece of sanity I'm holding on to is slipping from my fingers. But what else is new. 

On the bright side I'm regaining my school-soccer-dance-homework-blog writing legs.

And to be honest I have nothing of real substance to write today. So I'm just not going to write.

Side note: ohmygoodness little tiny droplets of dew are my new favorite thing. The list changes quite frequently if you haven't noticed by now.

Have a fabulous Monday, if such a thing exists.

What I've Been Up To

I've been writing.

Not blog post writing, but story writing. And you have no idea how good it feels.

I've had a dream to become a published author since my second grade teacher told me I had a gift for writing. Oh, how I loved her. She was so sweet and kind and I absolutely adored her.

But those years have passed and the internet has thoroughly discouraged my writing career. I'm a chronic Googler and my condition was sure to arise as I thought about what a life as an author would be. It's a hard business to get into, kind of like the acting world. It takes knowing the right person and a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work. And it's not that I completely gave up on my dream, but I've re-steered my path on a different direction and the best part about writing is that until you actually (if you ever do) get published, it's something that you can do on the side.

And a few years later, I fell in love with a different career and I thought that maybe I really wasn't supposed to be a writer.

But just a few weeks ago I got the writing bug. My brain clicked while riding in the car. The rain, the roads, the cars, everything spilled into my mind, sentences formed, paragraphs linked together. I had been bit. I wrote through the two hour car ride on my notes app on my iPhone.

Along with all this writing and day dreaming and even more Googling, I've reconsidered adding writer into what I could possibly some day become. It doesn't exactly change my career plans as I've heard of so many people who were nurses or teachers or managers or stay at home moms who took up writing and then two years later they found themselves as a published author. And at one point you would most likely have to choose one career, but if you can, why not have your cake and eat it too?

So maybe some day I'll be published. Or maybe some day I'll just have multiple word documents sitting on my hard drive. Either way I'll just be happy to be writing.

And aside from the constant itch to sit at a computer and write, all I can say is holy Jesus where did all this homework come from. That's all I ever do anymore. Come home and write papers. Go to soccer for an hour and a half. Study for three different tests. Take my shower. Do thirty million different worksheets. Go to bed realizing all I ate for supper was a rice cake with peanut butter and a side of orange juice.

HOMEWORK HOMEWORK HOMEWORK

Really if I put in as much energy into my writing and this blog as I did with homework this past week I could've typed a blog post everyday and gotten halfway through writing a novel.

I always go to bed realizing there's just not enough hours in the day and contemplating how much more I could do if I just quit sleeping. Seriously. I usually get about six hours of sleep every night and do you know how much more writing and studying and laundry I could get done if I didn't just sleep through all those hours?

Like honestly, is sleep really that important?

Anyways, I'm short on time and praise the Lord the pizza delivery man is knocking on the door with my lunch so this is as good as the closing is going to get.

Have a fabulous day.

All You Can Do Is Live It

Have you ever thought about how there's someone out there who is having the best day of their life?

Someone is finding out that a long awaited kidney will soon be their's. Someone is giving birth to a beautiful little baby. Someone is tying the knot with their best friend. Someone is finding out that their book is being published or their song hit the number one spot on iTunes. Someone is meeting their child for the first time in an orphanage tucked into the far corners of the world.

No matter how sucky or awful your day has been, there is somebody out there who is currently living through the best moments of their life. And for some reason, I just love love love envisioning this. Thinking about how someone, somewhere is having a hell of a good time, soaking up every moment of the best day of their life while I'm sitting in math class.

And then there's the opposite.

Someone is finding out their child has died. Someone is finding out they lost their job. Someone is finding out their spouse has been killed in the war overseas. Someone is finding out that the lump in their arm is something so much more. Someone is sitting at home, contemplating if their life is worth going on with.

Life could be worse.

And it could be better.

But every day of your life can't  be the best day ever and neither can every day be the worst.

Life is hard. But at the same time it is so fulfilling and beautiful and wonderful and fabulous. And at times it can be completely working against you and nothing is going the way it should and things are awful and discouraging and just plain wrong.

Life is all these things. It's fulfilling and awful and beautiful and discouraging and wonderful and lonely and fabulous and I want to punch the wall sad.

And I just don't understand it.

So I guess the only choice we have is to live it.

Have a fabulous day.

P.S. Let's all take a moment to acknowledge the watermarks on these pictures. Like do you realize how much more legit this makes me feel? And over the next couple of weeks I plan on slowly going through all my old posts and watermarking ALL those pictures as well, so pray for my sanity please. Carry on now.

August Favorites

(Woah, September first where did you come from? Let's reel the calendar back to August for one slim moment and forget that I'm late, shall we?)

1. Steal My Heart Shirt {Forever 21} {$12.80}

Forever 21

Okay, I'm calling it that cut off shirts are coming into style. They're tomboy-ish, yet they still have a touch of feminine qualities with rhinestones and cool patterns (I have another that is light blue with a tie dye type pattern). I love love love this one and I like to pair it with colored jeans/shorts and I sometimes shake it up by adding my denim vest.

2. Bruises {Train ft. Ashley Monroe} {Free! or $1.29 on iTunes}

So, I usually do clothing and jewelry and make-up and all that jazz, but today I'm shaking things up a bit. I am absolutely in LOVE with this song by Train. Usually when I sit down to write, I either play music under my iTunes library or make a play list through YouTube as it's free and this song is currently my favorite to write to. You can obviously listen to this on YouTube to your heart's content or buy it on iTunes for $1.29 or if you're a little rebel and do it illegally, like I'm not here to judge, just do what you gotta do.

3. Target Studded Swim Top {Target} {Clearance for $6.98}

Target

So I know summer is totally over, but this is AUGUST favorites which in case you forget is still the last glorious month of summer. And who knows, maybe you live below the equator and your currently recovering from winter and you're in serious need of a bathing suit top, like you never know. Anyways, my parents are major cheap when it comes to bathing suits as holy heck women's bathing suits are all expense and sold separately and complicated. To be honest, they usually only buy me one new bathing suit every summer (or two if I'm going somewhere cool other than the typical week long beach trip), so when I go shopping I look for tops and bottoms that can be matched with other tops and bottoms. This is by far my favorite top as it goes with all my bottoms and isn't the typical plain and simple "go with everything" top. I'm obsessed with studs and the color gold, so this one was an obvious win win.

4. V-Necks {Target} {$5.00-$9.00}

Target

When I was in middle school, I absolutely LOVED v-necks. I was very (very very) fashionably challenged back then and I'm pretty sure I wore a v-neck almost every day. I don't exactly wear a v-neck every day anymore, but anytime I'm running late for school or I don't want to get too dressed up, I'll wear a simple v-neck from target and pair it with a cute long necklace and/or earrings. I love how Target changes up their colors frequently and if you catch them when they're currently trying to sell their old colors to make room for new colors you can get them pretty cheap at five or six dollars.

5. Cross Necklace {Forever 21} {$2.80}

Forever 21

I've been looking for a simple cross necklace for some time and I absolutely love this one! I'm not a fan of the picture as the color isn't exactly the same as my necklace's, but it's the best I could do. Recently I've had this big craze in gold jewelry. If there's ever a choice between gold and silver I'll almost always go with gold and I have very few pieces of silver jewelry nowadays. Maybe it's just me or maybe I'm actually on track with the latest fashion and gold jewelry is so in and I'm just unawaringly buying a lot of it, who knows.

Have a fabulous day.