alma mater

What's the difference between change within ourselves as an individual, and a change in our environment that dictates a change in how we are seen?

What causes someone to act a certain way around some people, but a different way around others?

What gives people the status of "powerful" or "popular"?

What is the difference between being respected and being liked? Could anyone really be both?

What catalyzes extreme revolution, both within one individual, or within a larger system?

I have so many more questions than answers, recently, and it makes me slightly uncomfortable.

But then I think about it, and I realize that maybe it's good for me to be uncomfortable sometimes.

Is that another question within itself?

second chances

"perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in awhile so that we can see our life with a clearer view again"

reinvigorated, recharged, and ready.

barefoot

"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

brain drain 1/17

-nature vs nurture: dichotomy & vectors

-"you've become so much more yourself in the past 2 years"

-morals

-sunsets

-bob dylan and the eagles

-tempura

-sunshine

-"so if we had the same nurture... we'd be the same."

-finally grounded

wildflower

It's taken so long. So many empty hearted texts, calls for help on so many disappointing nights after empty days. It's taken so many tears and shakey conversations where I couldn't even express what I needed from my listener, other than someone to listen. It's taken so many arguments, so many excuses and attempts to pin the sadness on something tangible, in hopes that it would go away.

Isn't it fitting that in the end, all it took was one question.

I'm taking control again. A body in motion stays in motion, and I'm finally rolling. For months I've been sitting around waiting for things to get better, and it killed me. I shut down, I stopped thinking, I stopped writing, and I stopped loving until nothing was beautiful anymore.

Somewhere along the way I forgot that it's all up to me. It's up to me to be doing what I want to do, to be having fun, to be happy. It's up to me to open my eyes and my heart to new options, or simply appreciating what's right in front of me.

"soakin' up the way of life I was raised in, runnin' barefoot bloomin' in a summer shower"