not quite what I wanted.

"...seems like nothing is black and white anymore,
shades of grey and I feel a weight over my shoulder
it's tough getting older
I always thought that I knew where I'd want to go
but now I'm here and I find that I'm still getting colder
it's kind of tough getting older..."

Remember being a kid? You had the best part of your life in front of you. Everything mattered so much - and so little. You'd cry yourself to sleep over the smallest things, but when you woke up in the morning, you had a fresh start and everything was okay. You could be yourself because everyone else's opinion didn't matter that much. Your clothes didn't have to match, and Disney movies were the best. A snow day was the event of the year. It didn't matter that you had to make it up later. The surprise day off and the following hours and hours of snowball fights and sledding and snowman-building were more than worth an extra day spent in school when you should already be off for summer break. The best thing about traveling was staying in a hotel with a swimming pool. The laughter and innocence of childhood makes it one of the best times of most people's lives.

What I remember most about being a kid is the way I looked up to people who were older than I was, and therefore "cool." I had a babysitter when I was seven who lived across the street from me. She was fifteen or sixteen when she started to babysit for my family, and kept babysitting for us until she went to college. She ended up getting married to one of my childhood friend's older brother. She could do cartwheels and draw exact replicas of Disney cartoons without tracing them. Somewhere in my piles of papers, I still have a Snow White forest scene that she drew for me. She would bring her algebra homework and complain about how hard it was. I thought she was one of the coolest people ever. The high schoolers I'd see pass by at NRCA or at church were cool simply because they were teenagers. I had a camp counselor when I was nine who also babysat me and my siblings for a couple years. I still keep in touch with her. She was someone else I looked up to.

Anyway, I thought that when I got to their age, I would be automatically cool just like them. I thought that I'd have a million friends and drive a carful around most of the time and blast music through my open windows and sunroof. I thought I'd be getting phone calls pretty much daily and going out with guys whom I really liked. I thought I'd be babysitting so much that I'd have a full bank account even after going out with friends all the time. I thought I'd have a fun summer job and go to the beach every weekend. I thought I'd graduate high school and go off to college (the decision as to which college would be easy) and meet "the one" and get married immediately after graduation. I knew what I wanted to do with my life and I had a plan.

Unfortunately, my childhood dreams didn't come true. I had an awkward freshman and sophomore year, with friendships that were fickle at best. Toward the end of sophomore year, my life started to get better, and junior year was much improved. During the spring/beginning of summer of my junior year, I began to get to know some people that I had more or less known for years, and became friends with them. Because of that, this year - my senior year - has been the best yet. But even so, it hasn't been perfect. Almost every one of my friends...this year and every year before now...has let me down in some major way. Some of them I'm still friends with. Some I'm not. The freedom I admired so much in the teenagers I looked up to as a child I really haven't had. My babysitting jobs have happened, but not as much as I would've wanted, so my bank account isn't as high as it could've been. And college decisions? Oh so difficult.

Being "grown up" is not as easy as I thought it would be from a seven-year-old's point of view.

so you think you can dance?

Whenever I watch a movie that is based around dancing, it makes me wish I could dance. It really makes me wish that I had stayed with dance when I took lessons when I was five and six. And again when I was nine through age eleven. I took pretty much every imaginable dance class that was eligible for my age - tap, ballet, jazz, some kind of contemporary dance class that had a name I can't remember, and a class in which we did a little of every type of dance, including dancing from different cultures. I was in a few dance recitals and a production of Pinocchio while I was in England. I didn't particularly excel at dance, which makes sense because I didn't excel at Upward Basketball, Kicking for the Cross Soccer, gymnastics or flag football in fifth grade P.E. But seeing someone dancing makes me think, "I wish I could do that!"

I think one of my crazy/might happen/only half serious goals is that at some point in the future I want to learn to dance a little bit better. :)

I have quite a few of these unwritten dreams for the future, and who knows how many of them will come true? A few already have, and a few have passed me by. At random times I feel like writing them down so I have a tangible list to check off when God is amazing and lets one of them come true. But then I don't because I feel like writing them down makes them less interesting, less desirable, less possible. Who knows? Maybe one of these days I will. But then again, maybe I'll just tuck them away in the back of my head and wait till God makes them come true.

a day in the life

Yesterday evening was a time when I noticed God abundantly showering blessings on me. He reminded me of the way that he'll give me good things like crazy when I trust him and try to be in the center of his will.

I went on an adventure with my friend Vicky. First we had dinner at Panera Bread - have you ever noticed those signs in the parking lot that read "park at your own risk?" Just a little odd... :) We had a really good conversation and then drove to both the Raleigh and Wake Forest Target in search of a coat for Vicky. I got a super cute dress on sale for $9.98 which was really exciting. I pretty much love sales. We sampled some of my favorite Austrian chocolate which they now sell in North Carolina (!) and got home in time for me to wave to my parents as they backed out the driveway on their way to Barnes and Noble. I was able to get some good music from iTunes with a gift card I got for Christmas. (As you can tell, it's the little things in life that make me really happy.) I had a late night, so way later than I should have been up I had the funniest conversation over facebook with Lilly, the sister of one of my best friends ever. The topic of this conversation is highly confidential (coughpineconescough) but all I can say is that I haven't laughed that hard in forever. The mix of Lilly's personality, the topic of conversation, shared memories and events that occurred while our chat was going on made the level of hilarity get to the point where I was seriously considering literally rolling on the floor laughing. It was probably one of the funniest nights of my life. Both yesterday night and this morning I've gotten several texts and facebook messages that really encouraged me.

I have to say that I love it when my life goes right. :)