California

I open the curtains and look out.

The morning sun is shining, but I am not fooled–

It is winter, it is freezing. There is no snow on the barren ground.

I miss the storms, the way the flakes fall in pretty little patterns.

He has never known anything but California.

 

I find that sometimes things aren’t quite aligned:

What you want and what you have,

What you dream and what you do,

Who you want and who you’re with.

 

I came to terms with the loss of him months ago and yet

I go back to when I was not so alone

When it was not so cold outside.

But it is a frigid Monday. I put on my parka and my boots.

 

I open the door and look out.

The sun is shining, but I am not fooled–

It is winter, it is freezing. There is no snow on the barren ground.

I’m here hoping for a storm, with the flakes and the patterns.

I am not in California.

 

A time or two

Every once in a while

I think of you and I am destroyed.

Once in a blue moon

I remember how we thought

nothing could touch us–

how naive; that was a lie.

There has been a

time or two where

I have thought how much I missed

the adrenaline that was spurred on by you,

vicious and heated.

There has been a

time or two where

I wished it would come back to stay.

Not anymore though,

and especially not

today.

Take your own advice, for once

You know what you’re talking about. You know what you’re talking about, and I know that you know what you are talking about.

Often times, people second guess themselves and seek out other opinions, when they’ve known the best decision for themselves all along. After all, there are a lot of factors that go into making big life decisions, and who knows those factors as they relate to you better than yourself?

You don’t need approval from others to make yourself happy. If there is nothing to be holding you where you are, then go. Don’t ever become complacent because you fear repercussions from others.

Do what you would tell your best friend to do. Do what you would tell a stranger to do. Do what you want to tell yourself to do.

So…blogging?

There are a lot of expectations in the world. I, for one, have too many for myself, and don’t often live up to them.

But are all the expectations you perceive real? Or simply a figment of an intense imagination? And what happens when what you expect yourself to want and what you actually want, don’t really match up all that well?

I think I dream of a stable, accomplished career; a career where I’m revered in my field of choice as an expert or a visionary, where I’m making groundbreaking discoveries and attaching my name to projects and research and working countless hours because I’m dedicated, much moreso than my colleagues.

But I often worry that what I’m working towards is a fantasy that I’ll ultimately hate, a dream-life that’s been cultivated from recognizing what people respect (“my daughter’s a doctor/lawyer/foreign diplomat/successful entrepreneur” always seems to really awe people at social gatherings) and not from gathering my own experience in life and deciding which were meaningful to me.

Everyday I spend hours pouring over hydrocarbons, and equilibrium constants, and photosynthesis–but I wish I was out meeting new people, seeing new places, running ultra-marathons, and whatever else tickles my fancy.

I think what I’ve come to learn from this introspection is that life is a balancing act. This is not a new revelation, I know, and it’s definitely a bit cliche, but when you can take your own experiences and solidify a cliche it begins to seem a lot more genuine. Maybe I’ll never realize the dream I have right now, and maybe I will. Maybe I’ll choose something totally new. Maybe I won’t love it, but hopefully I’ll at least like it a little bit. Maybe I’ll get the chance to travel for a couple weeks out of every year, and maybe I’ll never get to run an ultra-marathon but maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to run in the Boston Marathon.

Trying to plan out life too early is a flawed system. When you’re twenty years old, you don’t know what is going to happen, and you don’t know why. The world is a crazy place, but people tend to find their place in it as soon as they stop trying to.