I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING

Before we get into this: a couple of things.

1. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING TOMORROWWWWWW.......#WEARELOUDER AND IZZA GON BE EPIIIC.
2. Because I am going through some major life changes...you know, COLLEGE and MOVING and LIFE WHAAT, I don't know how much I will be able to post on this blog. I'm crying about that, seriously. I am addicted to blogging. So for the new chapter, I'm going to do it as much as I can, but I make no promises on how often. :( *sobs inconsolably*
3. In the works but still: it's time for a revamp. This blog - I love the look, the vibe, etc., but sometimes old parts of life need new coats of paint. (FYI I almost typed "paint" as "pain" like, nooOOO lets keep pain to a minimum please lol.) I'm thinking peachy colors and cute goldfish. Either that or pastel greens and cacti....THOUGHTS? (Seriously please comment. I love you're comments. They show up in my inbox and I'm like, everyone loves me this is great.)

OKAY I'm done --- TO THE POST.

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Let's face it:

I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING.

HA.

I mean, I'm moving to a completely different town in seven days.

I'm going to be learning a trade that, YES I want to be in, but I have NO experience with whatsoever. (It would have been beneficial to have seen a birth and know that I can actually do what I'm doing.)

After three months, I'm moving to YET ANOTHER completely different town that I have never been to AND I'M LIVING THERE FOR A YEAR. (Although this one, how bad can it be, I'm only 50 miles from the ocean. #WIN)

Back to the point EXCUSE ME BUT WHEN DID MY LIFE BECOME AN EXPERIMENT IN HOW MUCH STRESS I'M ABLE TO HANDLE.

I mean come on SADDJLKDFFIOEPUIOUSE K K K K K I'M FINE I SWEAR BUT WHYYYYYYYY.

I'm freaking out. My mom is freaking out. My sisters and dad are freaking out (they don't show it. Nice one, guys). My dog is freaking out (she doesn't know details but she's smart. She's catching on.) My best friend would be freaking out but she has her own worries. I think the worship team is freaking out, but to be honest, in the year and a half that I've played with them I still haven't figured out when they're joking or not.

The stress level is about HERE.

Ya know?

And within this washing machine of emotion and chaos and fingernails-digging-into-the-walls-so-as-to-slow-my-departure....I have incredible peace. I'm doing what God wants me to do. Everything's cool. (Which is super weird because I go from lghjlsdlsdlksGRAAAAARG to oh hey cool bro in about 8.9 seconds. I am THE emotional roller coaster.)

So what I have another 150 meals to make before I leave. So what I don't have housing for when I move in January. So what I don't even know if I'll like midwifery. So what I'm essentially getting up and walking out the door of my previous life and rebuilding it in an unknown location with unknown materials. SO WHAT.

It's ok. It's ok.

Life is an adventure. And I'm realizing more and more what exactly it's about:

Not finding true love. (that's simply a really awesome bonus)
Not being the best person.

Not being happy.

Life isn't a race.
Or a game.
Or a punishment.
Or a reward.
Or something that we do over and over and over
and have absolutely no control over.

We are ALIVE. We are living and breathing and we get to create our world and yeah, usually it's an experiment and a blank page and we have to face this every. single. day. But SO WHAAAAAT.

Do you know how amazing that is?

Like, ok I believe I believe that there is an optimal version of our life that God has given us an opportunity to find.

AM I THE ONLY ONE EXCITED ABOUT THIS?????

Let me say it another way:

College is not cheap. Even weird college like I'm going to. And yet somehow God has provided every step of the way. He gave me this really awesome job where I was able to sack away 3/4 of my paycheck every month. He made that money multiply. He gave me extra opportunities to house sit and clean and play piano and get paid for it. And I was freaking out about how I was going to make the money to pay for my second semester (first semester $$ came together pretty well) and now I'm looking at my account and guess what? I'M ALREADY HALF WAY THERE.

There's no way I did that.

He did.

I just, like, GAAAAAAHHH
GOD IS SO GOOD.
YA KNOW.
HE LOVES ME AND
HE'S GUIDING ME
AND I JUST CAN'T.

Like, if it's one thing God has shown me through this is that I am so not worthy, and yet I'm his. I'm his kid and he's going "do you trust me to jump into this? I promise that I will catch you and it will be beautiful".

I am overwhelmed. I am freaked out. I am stressed. I am excited. I am nervous. I am listening to sappy soundtrack music that makes me cry. I am terrified. GO READ ISAIAH 40. (Especially verses 11 and 31.)

*MIND. BLOWN.*

End of conversation.

So yeah - I guess what I'm trying to say in this caps-lock-emphasized, loooooong, I-have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing post....is that He has got you so much more than you realize. And we're talking about the star-breather, breath-giver, pathway-maker, all-knowing, bigger-than-the-universe, ever-present-ever-loving GOD that has got everything. under. control.

So I'm freaking out. And I don't have any idea what I'm doing. And that is totally, completely, underestimatedly and wonderfully good, because it is in those moments that I have no doubt that God is in control of my life, and that is WAAAAAAYYY better than me being in control of my life.

I'm actually glad that I have no idea what I'm doing. Weird. Awesome.

if places were people no.3

I thought you were a shortcut.

You took us the long way 'round.
With stops at every station.
Pauses after every sentence.

We never went
faster than
50 miles an hour.

26 hours is a long time to sit and stare
memorize each other's faces, skin lit up by
dimness of walkway lights, reflecting off the scratched, plastic-y windows.

Maniacal laughing clatter of steel wheel against steel track
annoying complaint of rubber window lining against foggy glass to the outside
Almost distant stubborn stomach grumble of the machine taking us to somewhere

You are that in-between place
That interpretation
That 'please wait while document loads' symbol.

You will always come back
But sometimes you will sleep
And Destination will take your place

Sometimes you will go on holiday
And Preparation will visit
To get us ready for you again.

Sometimes your face will change.
You'll grow a beard, or something else ridiculous will happen,
Like the time your eyes changed colors.
And sometimes I will need to memorize that face
Over again.
Take the journey twice.

Sometimes you don't make sense.
And yet you are almost constant and consistent
But you are nothing twice
You are never the same
You are In-between

We had better get used to it because
Consistent is different than static
And change is different from chaos

And sometimes you will drive the train backwards
And north will be west
And east will be south.

And I don't mind.
I love you very much, more than I thought I would,
Because I thought you were a shortcut, someone
I could pass by without a second glance
And you very much weren't.

Which is to say
I like your scenic routes better.

In-between is nice.
Even though it is the definition of patience
and You never had a dictionary.

Which is to say
I thought you were a shortcut
And you showed me the world
And stole my calendar
And my time
And my heart
And now,
I live for the limbo
The in-between
The changing
The unexpected hairpin curve that says
Pay attention.
You don't have time for second glances.
You may not come this way again.

(WHAAAAATTTT. Yeah. Hi. I'm not dead or anything I just haven't posted in FOREVER. Sorry 'bout that. But anyway, if you're interested, the idea for this one was from the train trip we took last October. Fun stuff. LOVE Y'ALL. I'm going to post again soon so stay tuned.)

(ANOTHER NOTE BECAUSE I FORGET THINGS: remember last year when i did that blogtober series? I NEVER DID DAY 18 (the horror) but it was supposed to be "This week I..." and really, that week before the 18th i had gone on a train trip, which is what this post was based on. basically: i finally finished blogtober and its july. isn't that great?)

writing (because i need it) 4.21.16

some days you feel like you have to scream.
and since you're at
________________ *insert public place where you
are expected to behave like an adult*  you can't.

so you scream in other ways.
you wear the crazy dress and the flats.
who cares?

you text your grand total of TWO friends,
and you tell them all your wierdest jokes again
and you laugh hysterically in your head, mostly at yourself
but also...well yes, just at yourself, and you feel a little mad
the losing-your-mind kind of mad
when you do it.

and you use
BIG
EXPRESSIVE
GESTURES
AND ENTIRELY TOO MUCH capslock.

you be wierd.

you mentally scream and you write it out
you sing and dance along to songs in your head
intermittent stops to go "wow that is such a good song"
and you daydream  to get away
and you wonder how far you could get on what's left
of the gas in the tank of your car

you write out the crazy
fill white space with typed black

eat lunch somberly
greet clients quietly
with perfect smile
practiced phrases

still mentally yelling incoherently; still screaming like a banshee
and you wonder how people would react if they had mind readers
and they could watch yours

you wonder what they would say

would they be like:
wow she never stops.

no seriously. make the screaming stop.

or more like
why on earth does she think about this? i thought she was above that.

or maybe
yep, it really is time to put her in a mental institution. 

the good thing is they don't have a reading-your-mind machine yet
and so i'm safe
from everything except my own weirdness
and my mental noise
and there's nothing to stop me
so i keep on going.

i write out the crazy.
it just keeps coming and coming
and i know i sound incredibly calm about the whole
ordeal but
i'm not
its too noisy to be anything but
indifferent.
an adult in a room of three-year-olds on caffeine.
that's what its like.

it will die down, die out,
like cotton from the cottonwoods only come around once a year
the puff balls, snow of the summer, they blow away
eventually.
just not right now.
and probably not tomorrow.

not until i write it out.

i'll go on a binge of taking in:
art and music
poetry
nature
soaking in rays of sunshine
and warm summer breezes and
digging my feet into garden dirt
and then washing them in the muddy water of the pond
and i will end up with brown skin criss-crossed with tan lines and a clear mind

after i write out the crazy.

but not until i have drowned the scream in the sound of everything else
flushing it, taking in, and writing out all of it, good and bad
waiting until it quiets like a babe who needs rock music in the car to silence the wails.
blurring like sharp pictures of summertime
because you can only take the blur
not the sharp because the sharp is too specific.

and you feel like those photos because you know
what the picture looks like behind the blur.
specific. colorful. purposeful.
the prints are there, confident and mocking.
you're the picture, all those. the purpose radiating from you,
like you could lead it into battle and win, every time.
but you can't take it. and neither can anyone else,
so you blur.
you blur the pictures.
you blur yourself.
dulling it like alcohol on the senses,
like the stuff they use to numb your teeth at the dentist
like the 'snow' that used to show up on tv screens when you hit the wrong channel.

write out the crazy, the noise
the screaming.
don't blur it, dull it.
use the pointy end of your pencil, the
click of your fingernails on the keyboard.
use the sharp to dig out the stubborn rocks.
push out the crazy so it don't build up.

(ON A SIDE NOTE: SPEAKING OF INTERNAL DEMONS...CHECK OUT KATE'S POST. IT'S AWESOME. )

writing (because I need it) 2.16.16

they say to write until you can't NOT write
they say to write until it hurts when you don't
until you write better than you talk, think, and see
how?

describe what a jellyfish looks like to a blind person

what does music sound like, to the deaf?

how does heat feel to one who has lost the nerve endings in their fingers?

give a voice to someone who has never said a word

make ice cream for someone who has only ever eaten cake

give it the soul and sixth sense that everyone has

take life and offer it to the dying
lend vision and sound
share some taste buds

that's what writing is

how do i breathe? 
how do i see, taste
how do i feel and touch
what is the meaning of emotion?

my voice is my own language
some sentences come out like i've pasted them into google translate
the basic meaning comes through
but some words just aren't the same.

some languages have words that English doesn't
some languages don't translate into mine and vice versa

komorebi - sunlight filtered through leaves
meraki - to leave a piece of yourself in your work
hanyuaku - to walk on tiptoes across hot sand
bimyou - "meh", "not bad"

and i feel that when i write
talk and create people see part of it
but they also see the underneath description that says
Sami-ese, number of  speakers: 1
all they understand is the
butchered explanation of what i'm really trying to say
one that doesn't even come close

UNTRANSLATABLE
LITERAL
"ALMOST"

but not quite

write it anyway
write it because it hurts.
write it because if you don't it might write itself
on the walls of your brain in big black
bold letters that will never ever ever come off.

write so that it does not become permanent
toska: unexplained spiritual anguish

write to get it out

write to keep clean.

neon

^ it isn't neon. but it's light. same change. same difference.^

there's a tipping point.
a spot in the journey where it is realized
that change must happen, or we'll
slip off the edge of an ever-tilting world.

we get slapped in the face and realize
that its not right.
for once, realize
that something has to give,
and that something is self.

in that moment
we are not infinite
we are not finite
we are not average
we are not special
we are merely changing.
we are neon.
we are bright
like new-born stars
like dying stars

we change.
flashes, on-off-off-on-on-off
inside to out
out to in all of the above
back again
and we
change
to neon.

like flares in the wilderness
distress signals
black boxes.

send out the warning,
the message
the decleration.
i've changed
i'm lit up.
i'm neon.