weblog the first: in which she catches you up and gives up 'busy'.

Where do I even begin after so many days and weeks and months (maybe not that long, but it feels like forever!) of not blogging? I obviously survived spring semester. MEANING I AM ONE SEMESTER AWAY FROM GRADUATION, YEE-HAW!

In the meantime I managed to smash my finals to pieces, get un-hired from the job I have been interviewing for (and planning on) since JANUARY, move home, get re-offered the job, decline the job, go back to work at my old gym teaching mostly preschool classes (my dream come true!), and have an oddly fantastic summer of humdrum and few excitements. Let me be that selfish person no one likes to read from and talk about all my minute life details for a quick minute (if you’d prefer to skip them, please move on to another blog post, heh) :

A best friend got married, another best friend weds in two weeks, and- oh yeah- I started dating someone :D (we’ll get to that in a minute). I went to the beach with friends (first no-adults-present beach trip and it was so lovely and surprisingly contained very little alcohol), and to Atlanta a couple times with my family. My boyfriend (Casey) came to my hometown and hung out for a few days. I saw my best friend off to Peru for a month, my brother off to Ecuador for five weeks, Casey off to camp for two months, and another best friend off to Ecuador for two months. For the first time in years, I didn’t watch fireworks on the Fourth of July. My little brother started dating someone that I actually like. I reinvented my iTunes playlist and committed new songs to my heart. I continued working on my New Years’ Resolutions and stopped biting my nails at one point. Sadly, that didn’t last very long. I worked on my spiritual and mental discipline and became accountability partners with my dear cousin. I wrote lots of letters. I moved into my first apartment with my dear college roomie (the most recent one {oh, and SHE started dating this wonderful guy that is so great for her and I love him so much and he loves her so much and it’s just splendid}). I started counting calories, eating healthily, working out, and cut out cokes. I started growing my hair out and tanning and biking and walking and actually feeling good about myself for the first time in too long. Preschoolers -and Casey’s campers that I don’t even know- stole my heart. I spent a lot of time on Netflix, watching HGTV, reading, drinking coffee, and laughing and crying with my family. I washed my car with my nephew and taught my other nephew to wink (almost). I went to antique malls, bought professional teacher clothes, and went to see movies in the theatre for the first time in months. I poured my heart out to my brother, my best friends, my parents, my boyfriend, my sister… basically I poured my heart out to as many people as I could because it’s good for me and for our relationship. I became obsessed with Hannah Brencher and the moreloveletters.com mission and hope I will be forever. I lapsed into futile, depressing, impure thought patterns and had to be saved (more than once). I held a funeral for one of my heart’s greatest dreams (also getting to that one later). I read a book that changed my life. I haven’t touched a piano in months and it has been superb. I bought a ridiculously soft blanket and fell in love with it. I worked beside adults and kids whose lives are absolutely devastating wrecks and am still working through how to process that, how to love them, how to pray for them, and how to convey how much I care about these people that I really barely know.

ALL THAT AND SO MUCH MORE! It’s been INSANE but in the lovely, un-busy way. 

I’m boycotting busyness this summer, and over my life in general. I'm tired of competing against my friends to see who is busiest, who has "too much going" to hang out, and the like. While I plan on being real about my commitment level (or lack thereof) to social activities, I refuse to use "busy" as an excuse. Maybe "making lesson plans" or "exhausted" will pop up frequently this fall, but I'm also going to be investing in people. Maybe those people are only my students, my colleagues, and my roommate, and I won't be very able to hang out with people that I am not forced to see. But I plan on trying dang hard to make time for people at every opportunity. I'm not using "busyness" as my crutch for being selfish and uninvested anymore.

(click to continue to weblog the second)