and don't forget son, there is someone up above.

"Oh, take your time. Don't live too fast," Lynyrd Skynyrd sang to her life's advice, and she rolled down the window a bit further. "Troubles will come, and they will pass."

"It's not always that easy," she told to no one in particular. Her hair was skirting across her cheeks in strides, and she squinted at the closest green sign. 230 miles to Oakville. Sighing, she brought her left knee up to her chest and then proceeded to stick her leg out the window.

A trucker honked behind her. Oh, go stick it in the nearest rest stop, she thought.

"Forget your lust, for the rich man's gold," Skynyrd serenaded. "All that you need is in your soul."

She thought about the boy she left behind. The one who would read to her late at night, her head in the crook of his arm. The one that told her she was pretty in her gray zip-up and ball cap. She thought about him, and then stared out the window.

There would be no turning around now.

"We're all looking at the same sky," she whispered to herself. "It's not as if I'm leaving everything behind."

She pushed her foot down on the gas and picked up the pace. The lines were dizzying, overwhelming. Mountains smothered the boring landscape of nothingness for miles.

Her cell phone rang, and she glimpsed at it. Bryson.

"Hey," She said into the phone, her leg still dangling out of the window.

"Don't you worry, you'll find yourself," Skynyrd's voice slowly faded as she turned down the volume to hear Bryson's voice. "Follow your heart..."

"Oh, who are you to tell me to follow my heart?" She asked into the receiver.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," she muttered. "What are you doing?"

"Calling to figure out when you'll be home, actually. Mom's been trying to get a hold of you all afternoon, wondering what you want for dinner."

Her brother spoke into the phone, but she couldn't hear him. The wind rushed in waves, streams, ripples. It cleared her mind.

"Bryson, I'm not coming home. I'm in Tennessee."

"You're where?" He asked, his voice taking on a higher pitch than usual.

She shut her phone and placed it back in the cup holder. She turned the radio back up. A woman with a twang sang about getting lost in the mountains.

She pulled her leg back in from the wind. She let the truckers pass, honk. She thought about his letters, his rustic smell.

It was roughly 210 miles to Oakville. She had never been to Oakville, but she thought it sounded nice.

"You only get one chance, to live like this," the twangy woman sang.

"Isn't that the truth," she spoke aloud. "Isn't that the truth."

don't linger where the moss slowly grows

there comes a point when you have to stop being afraid.

you have to make the first move, take the first step, blindly move forward even if you don't know if it's right.

you move forward through the uncertainty, through the fear, through the not knowing.

you move forward into the arms of what you want.

don't linger, don't second-guess, don't hold back. Just go for it.

what, really, have you got to lose?

a finger across the cake icing

So, instead of spending my moments worrying so far into the future about what I will be doing after I graduate college, I've decided to spend those moments thinking about this upcoming summer. Wow, I suppose that's still kind of far ahead, huh?

I have the hardest time living in the present.

Picture this: I was sitting at my laptop this afternoon, headphones dug into my ears, searching Google for clues to my future. I know I need to find an Internship. Publishing companies and Literary Magazines and any other writerly career look highly upon those students who have experience...and an Internship would do just the trick. This is the thing, though. There's always a thing.

I don't particularly want to move to New York City....or Los Angeles. I don't think I'm as big a city gal as I wanted to be, at one time. I don't think I could tackle living in NYC by myself. And Lord knows I am not "West Coast". Good grief, no. I really have no desire to live, even for a summer, in either of those places. And those are where all of my prospective Internships are located, which is not surprising, not at all.

So...the kicker is this. I've been thoroughly doing my research, and there are Internships abroad that sound absolutely lovely. Argentina. Peru. South Africa. Honduras. I can't help it. I am in love with seeing the world. I think I left myself in Africa, and I would give anything to go back.

I could live with a family, incorporate myself into the culture, eat the food, learn the language. I could spend my summer writing, writing, traveling, and writing. I could meet the locals, have a favorite "spot", wear the clothes, be myself. And who am I? I am that girl that keeps fidgeting in class because the sky looks so blue out the window. I'm the girl who gets so stir-crazy in Erie that she drives hours, aimlessly, until she stops at a farm to buy freshly picked raspberries for no apparent reason, and then goes back to the apartment to make a pie.

I'm the girl that has tasted her future, a finger across the cake icing, and wonders desperately how she can get back to where she once was.

...And maybe this is my opportunity. I need an Internship, and they are just as available in South Africa as they are in California, New York.

So. Come with me. :)

From way up there, You and I, You and I

I think this is my new favorite song :)

You and I - Ingrid Michaelson

Don't you worry there my honey
We might not have any money
But we've got our love to pay the bills

Maybe I think you're cute and funny
Maybe I want to do what bunnies do with you
If you know what I mean

Oh, let's get rich and buy our parents homes
In the south of France
Let's get rich and give everybody nice sweaters
And teach them how to dance

Let's get rich and build our house on a mountain
Making everybody look like ants
From way up there, you and I, you and I

Well you might be a bit confused
And you might be a little bit bruised
But baby how we spoon like no one else

So, I will help you read those books
If you will soothe my worried looks
And we will put the lonesome on the shelf

Ooh, let's get rich and and buy our parents homes
In the south of France
Let's get rich and give everybody nice sweaters
And teach them how to dance

Let's get rich and build our house on a mountain
Making everybody look like ants
From way up there, you and I, you and I

8 messages, 15 texts, 13 phone calls later

I'm no good at keeping in touch. Anymore, I just plain ignore it. I purposely ignore the fact that my phone rings and rings and my Facebook wall fills up with posts asking me where I've been, what I'm doing these days.

Well? I suppose I'm just doing my own thing, whatever that is. I've been ignoring my Semester at Sea friends, and my Hughesville friends, and my college friends for no visible reason. This probably makes me sound like a complete and total idiot. What kind of person does this, you ask? Well, me. The kind of person who has no good reason to ignore the people who care about her. The kind of person who is afraid to keep in touch because she feels like everything is slipping away.

When everything, everyone spirals out of control..what else can I do? My arms are open as wide as they can get, and even then I can't grasp the situation, my relationships that are falling away faster than I can pick them all up.

I've been writing letters, trying to get myself back on track with people. I am not a phone kind of person, anyway. I see that you've called me, but I won't call you back. Sorry.

I just have this pessimistic outlook right now, and I can't shake it. Even the beautiful flowers that I bought for our kitchen table aren't going to make this go away. Delving into the five novels that I'm currently reading won't sweep me away from my life.

I need to get away, but even that has become impossible.

"that's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight"

Everything is changing, moving, and I am in the middle, the only one standing still. I don't like it.

I came back to school so excited to be in the midst of friends, new english classes, an apartment. I came back ready to delve into this year head first, to tackle my days head on with enthusiasm and optimism. I came back and I knew things would be different... but I didn't expect the drastic changes in everything, everyone.

It's so hard for me to catch my breath around all the chaos and constant changing. I'm stressed. This is stressful. I guess I'm trying to find my place in the middle, while I'm standing still. Many people my age are getting engaged, married, having babies. Many more are moving on to jobs, graduating early, and here I am, wondering what I'm supposed to be doing.

It's all happening too quickly. So, I ask what now? I suppose I need to start looking at Internships, making new friends so that I actually have someone to live with next year. I need to figure out if I need to start checking out Grad schools, or if I can save enough money within these next two years to travel again right after college. I want to be a writer, not necessarily a bum on the street. I also want to be a writer, not the kind of person who gets a job doing something that I despise and regret.

I wish I could figure myself out; it's too hard watching the people around me moving on to other things, when I can barely move on to the next week without wondering how to catch up. I don't like being left behind.

And are we there yet?

This past Labor Day weekend, I found myself. I found myself, and I found myself, and I kept finding myself. I was maybe hoping to catch some shut-eye but I knew this was a slim to none chance. My family is always on the go, somewhere, anywhere, and so am I. I never sleep anymore, not really.

I made the 4.5 hour trek home, the wind providing new ways for my hair to become tangled and twisted in ways that a brush could never touch. I shouted along to the sounds of Ingrid Michaelson and Nirvana, John Mayer and a little bit of old school N'Sync. I found myself smiling for no particular reason. I was going home.

Saturday morning, I found myself sitting with Moni, chatting about a profession in psychology and Narcolepsy. And then I got called into the doctor's office, and I found myself wincing as the young and most likely inexperienced nurse poked and prodded the Hep A shot into my left arm. Although I asked for a SpongeBob band-aid (because Gavin thought that would be SO cool!), I recieved a nice road-runner bandaid, complete with the sting and aftermath of a shot worse than Tetanus. Moni punched my left arm several times on the way home, by accident.

That afternoon, I found myself yelling "Surprise!" with a bunch of Blue-Hairs at an 80th suprise birthday party. My family thought it might be nice to attend this birthday party for an older gentleman at our church. I have only really spoken to him a few times, so you can imagine my reluctance to go...but I found myself sitting on a chair that was constantly being attacked by gnats and bees of various kinds. Our pastor and his wife chatted me up about the trip. He wouldn't let go of the fact that I had been proposed to several times. I told him it was because I had Blonde hair. He said maybe it was because I was pretty. I kind of liked his answer better.

Sunday morning, I found myself sitting in a car with the windows down at 7:30AM. I was half-asleep, but ate my way through the buffet at breakfast with Moni and Mama. I learned that my mom had once been engaged to my dad. This woke me up. I had no idea. For whatever reason, I just decided they were high school sweethearts and left it at that. Nothing could have been more engaging that a conversation about the proposal over scrambled eggs and french toast sticks.

That afternoon, I made small-talk about Jimi Hendrix with a man who had a really lazy eye. I tried not to offend him by staring too much. I found myself eating lunch at a family reunion in which I had no blood relations. I did not know a single soul there except Aaron's intermediate family, and so I sat and chatted with my Aunt about sex and nude drawings. I must attract the kind of people who dare to start odd conversations with me. Maybe it's the blonde hair. The glasses?

That evening, I found myself in the arms of my best friend whom I have dearly missed all summer. We glimpsed the blue and orange sunset together, and he reminded me of what I love about being home. We shared fifteen frantic minutes, promises flying, smiles catching, and then it was over, but never for too long.

On Labor Day I drove an hour out of my way after visiting some friends at State College. I got lost and even my GPS couldn't save me. The entire trip back to Erie took way longer than usual, and it rained and I arrived back exhausted and hungry. But I find myself here, with my newly acquired cactus, simply content. Exhausted and still a bit hungry, but content.

Found.

the minor wrinkle, kink, uh-oh to my life plan.

For the past year or so, I have considered Grad school to be an inevitable in my life, the next obvious step for me to take after Behrend hands me a nice diploma. I also naively thought it was for everyone...just something people did to gain a Masters or Doctorate in something, to have a more professional resume, or something along those lines.

I'll admit that I am a naive 20 year old. I don't know much about life, really. But who does? My suite mate was sitting in our living room the other day and I asked her what she was studying. She held up a few books that had the words "GRE's" and some form of study guide material splayed across front cover. I was naive enough to ask what the GRE's were. Yeah. I asked that. Since I've been in college, I've been living under the impression that my awful and torturous days of SAT's were long since over. I apparently thought way wrong. The GRE is basically the entrance exam that Grad schools look at to determine who gets in and who does not. I assumed Grad schools accepted more people because the applicants are clearly more qualified than meager high school graduates applying to colleges. I thought Grad school was more prestige, minus the SAT/ACT-like entrance exams. Boy, oh boy, was I ever wrong.

So, I went to class the next day only to hear from my Advanced Fiction Writing professor that if BFA (Bachelor's of Fine Arts) majors are looking to get their Masters at Grad school, they should be able to go for free. I then asked how this was possible. He made it clear that many people with their BFA's simply become Teacher's Assistants at their presumed Grad school, and ride through classes and boarding for free. I recoiled upon hearing the idea.

It's not that I wouldn't give teaching a chance. No, it's more like I hyperventilate when I am asked to speak in class, let alone help teach a class...I would probably hyperventilate, get hives up and down my neck, and then pass flat out. That's kind of how the whole "talking" thing works with me. I don't consider myself socially awkward, by any means, but I am not a talker. I never have been.

My professor also bluntly mentioned that if BFA majors don't go to Grad school for free, there is really no point in going at all. This was news to me. I know that I don't have to go to Grad school, and I know that if I did...I would not go for a teaching degree. So, what would I go to Grad school for? Are you prepared to hear my foolish, are-you-out-of-your-mind answer? I wanted to get my Masters in something because I love school. I'm in love with the classroom environment, and I love reading novels, textbooks, any kind of scholarly material I can get my hands on. I am addicted to learning.

Of course Professor Noyes is one professor with an opinion...and I know that the decision is ultimately up to me. But what would I do with my life if I didn't go to Grad school right after my four lovely years of college? I know this sounds absurd...but I can't start my actual life in two short years. There's no way. I'm not ready to give myself over to some dead-end job until I write a novel or find a magazine to work for.

I feel like I need to go to Grad school, if only to prolong actual working life. I feel like I need to be more qualified if I ever want to work for a decent magazine corporation, or publish something of substance. And of course travel is always in the back of my mind. I would be the first one out of everyone I know to hop in my car and drive away into the sunset, heading anywhere with only the change in my pocket and a glitter of hope in my heart. I would leave in a heartbeat.

So, what do I do? Unnecessary Grad school loans, or the stifling working world? Dropping everything and traveling for a year? I don't know. But I don't want to be stuck in a rut right out of college like so many people my age are finding themselves to be in. I need to escape the rut. I need to do something, anything, to go somewhere and do what I truly desire to do.

I need to sleep on it for a while. And I suppose I shall.