when you find yourself

Find Yourself - Brad Paisley

Recently I've been feeling like I wish I had a little bit more direction in life. For my whole life - up until this past May - I have known exactly what was coming next. Summer would pass and I would go back to school for the next year to further my knowledge, so that I could then go home for the next summer and empty my brain, just to go back the following year to rinse and repeat.

Then I graduated. And now I have a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Warren Wilson College, with a minor in Spanish, and it's not doing much for me. Granted, if I wanted to I could have applied for graduate school and gone on to more education ... and I'm glad that I didn't do that right away, but now I'm feeling, well ... lost. I don't want a career ... I want a next adventure. I don't want to pick something that I have to do for the rest of my life. Luckily - I don't have to. But it would be nice to do something that's a bit more fulfilling than retail.

Teaching perhaps? I'd love to try it before I commit to it. Admission for a cool school up here in New England? I could do that. Admission representative for Warren Wilson in New England? Haha ... that I could definitely do. Cafe/bookstore that provided a place for creativity, relaxing, homework, etc? I could write a book I suppose ... but what to write about. Perhaps I will parallel my dad's book about being a gay parent and write a book about having gay dads. Could be interesting. Probably won't be very profitable for some years as it could/would take a while to write.

So in the mean time I am in search of a next adventure. I dream of traveling. I dream of being a photographer. Or a journalist. But those might be next-next adventures. After I have some more of this thing they call "life experience."

Can I just go back to school now? There are so many classes I wish I had had time to take - photography, ceramics, history, creative writing, english, biology, chemistry, astronomy ... the list could go on for ages. But as it assures me in the song by Brad Paisley:

"When you go through life
So sure of where you're headin'
And you wind up lost and it's
The best thing that could've happened
'Cause sometimes when you lose your way it's really just as well
Because you find yourself
Yeah that's when you find yourself."

Cheers to life. And the next adventure. Hopefully it'll fall in my lap here soon.

fall, is that you? already!?

It was a bit cool today to say the least. As soon as September hit it got much cooler here in Maine. The temperatures were already dropping at night to the point where I was closing the windows and wanting to curl up under multiple layers of covers to stay cozy warm. And it still is, which I love.

Fall is here. Already. It's true. Tomorrow's high is 65. And that's probably about as warm as it will be again until spring next year. Wow. This is different! That's for sure. It's an abrupt adjustment seeing as what I'm used to is it being warm out until at least October in North Carolina! But I've moved to Maine, so I should stop expecting Carolina weather.

It's really beautiful though! And I still really love it! We have a wood stove at my house and I'm looking forward to the time when we'll have a cozy, crackling fire in it to keep us warm. But I can wait a little bit before I really want it to be that cold. It's about time for long pants and sweaters, scarves and fleece coats, puffer vests, hats, knitting, cups of hot cocoa, and snuggling under blankets. I adore this time of year. I absolutely love it!

Today Scott and I went on an adventure to Harpswell, Maine. There's not much there and it's really beautiful! We went out to Orr Island and Bailey Island - we drove until the roads ended. We got out and took in the utterly speechless beauty of the coast, with the waves gently rolling in onto broken-shell-littered beach, and the many shades of gray that danced across the sky as the sun crept behind the clouds.  We decided we couldn't have asked for a much more perfect day.