I Should Know By Now

This is kind of the opposite of my last post, but after my day....totally necessary. I remember at 12, 15, 16, (and if I'm being totally honest) 18, thinking to myself that in college I'd have really figured it out. You know, have my life all together. I imagined myself with better style, prince charming, a rockin body, great study habits, always traveling and plans in the works for that dream job. Since 12, high school, moving out, and three years of college, there's a lot of knowledge in this noggin of mine. For example, I know that Koolaid isn't good for you and turns your mouth red, I should have listened to my parents all those years, and  the difference between a psychopath and sociopath. But the person I believed I would be at 21 apparently is still on vacation. The girl I expected to be would probably have learned these lessons long ago and would be in general, pretty freaking awesome, too bad at 21 I'm four coffees deep assessing Buffy the Vampire slayer as a career option.


So here it is, the life lessons I should have learned by now:

• Procrastinating only means that on Sunday night when you could be going and doing something fun you will be at the kitchen table trying to figure out how early you would have to wake up if you wanted to put this off till Monday morning. 

• You'll never do it in the morning.

• Besides that your mom thinks turtle necks are a great fashionable piece and your dads still think your too young to date, they are pretty much right about everything. (Ughhhh even typing that was painful).

• People's hearts, including your own, are more breakable than grammies fine china and there's no getting rid of that kind of scar.

• It's OK to stay home and do nothing sometimes...Or clean the floor that never seems to clean itself.

• If you wear white you're gonna drop something on it.

• There's a bottom to 4 ft tall snowbanks and if you try and climb over them, you're gonna reach it. 

• Always tell the truth.

• After eating chicken tenders and just one more brownie, you still wont like salad without dressing or go for a run tomorrow.  

I'm not the girl, that at 12, I imagined I would be. Today I dropped ketchup down my white shirt while  climbing over the 4 ft tall snowbank that filled my moccasins, I was told I broke someones heart, there was no way I was getting salad for lunch, and I'm writing this instead of my 60 page essay or calling my mom back. But hey, I betcha in 5 years I will, you know, have it all figured it out. Till then....you can find 21 year old me skiing in CB wondering why onions aren't what repels vampires.

Happy Sunday.

10 things I know to be true

Sarah Kay: amazing, inspirational, creative, AND amazing. 

If I Should Have A Daughter, Sarah's TedTalk is the one that got me hooked. As a spoken word poet, Sarah has a way with words that I can only dream of ever having. She stands up there and lays it out so that no matter who you are you can relate, not only can you relate, but laying in your bed late at night you want to stand up, clap and cheer. She's that kind of speaker. 

With lines like, "I would recognize you anywhere by the hiccup in your swagger." you can't help but want to hear more. 

But one of the most influential bits from her videos was from that first time when I listened to her speak in If I Should Have A Daughter. She explained that one of the ways she gets her students to write poems is to have them make a list of the 10 things they know to be true. The list shouldn't be something they have to thing about too much and should be written down pretty quickly. So here's the 10 things I know to be true. 

1. I am procrastinating writing my Forensic paper FAR too long and it's going to bite me in the ass later tonight. 

2. People should travel, the only way to understand the world is to see it with you're own eyes. And traveling alone, at least once, is the best. 

3. Loving someone is not always enough, doesn't always make it good for you, and isn't always something that will last forever. 

4. There is something calling me, deep down, and I need to go or I will always wonder. 

5. My need for a bigger and better adventure is going to get me in trouble some day. 

6. I want to find someone that wants to go on every single adventure with me and know about every one they've already missed. The likelihood of that person living in Crested Butte seems pretty dismal today. 

7. A million little pieces is not really enough to explain a person, I think we are each a million little pieces multiplied by however many people we have ever let influence us (positively or negatively) and the million pieces that make them up as well. 

8. There is a need for more time to watch sunrises and sunsets, listen to Tom Petty, and dance with someone in the kitchen. It does more good for a person than drinking or drugs and cost less. 

9. People, in general, are good natured, it's the things they come to know and hard facts they have come to face that change them. 

10. Childhood is something that should never disappear. There is a Peter Pan in all of us that is screaming to get out. Let it. Go ice skating in a disco outfit. 

These are the ten essential Jes-isms, they make me me or at least who I want to be...

Sarah goes on to say that on this list that someone has one thing the same as is on your list, someone else has something completely different, someone has something completely new to you, and someone has something you thought you knew all about but looks at it differently. So what's your list?

The long way home.

There's something about a long car ride. You forget your troubles. Forget you even are in the car at times. You have to focus on just one thing and nothing else really gets in. If you're alone it's you, the white line, the yellow lines flashing past, and the music. If you know me at all, you know this is what I believe in. I don't believe in god, I'm not big on church, that feeling, where nothing else matters is what I believe in.

I'm big on that moment just before sunset where the light is just right, no matter where you are it's beautiful and the whole world seems to have paused except for you and your car. The windows are down, your almost always passing a field, and Tom Petty miraculously comes on the radio as if the DJ were seeing the same thing you are. And for just a second you're wearing rose colored glasses, you completely zone out and there's nothing more important going on in the whole world than this moment. There's no real explaining that feeling, you just know it. Every time you feel it you want to feel the wind beneath your hand, sing a little louder and more than anything, have someone with you looking over, seeing the same thing. You don't really have to speak, you just understand. If you're alone, you don't go home and tell someone about it, you just smile a little bigger and wish they only knew.

I think somehow in the busyness and lack of sleep this year I forgot what those moments were like. Going to California I realized that those moments are not only more beautiful here, at home in Colorado, but that people here have the mindset to really appreciate them, it's when we forget that that we lose what makes where we live what it is and become the kind of people we do everything to avoid. I believe religiously in forgetting my feet are touching the pedals, feeling the wind beneath my hands and above all else, that even after the sun has gone down, that tomorrow there's another opportunity for the DJ to play Tom Petty at just the right time.