future class!

Sometimes Emily and I chat on gmail. Sometimes we say really ridiculous things. Sometimes I just want to copy and paste them so I can remember them always.


me: what are you doing right now?

Emily: i'm in history class. "taking notes"

me: ah

what is he talking about anyway?

history is over

it's done

let's move on

Emily: hahah

me: we can't be living in the past all the time

they should have future class

tell me what's going to happen in the FUTURE

that would be more helpful

Emily: haha

that would be awesome!

me: Daniel and Revelations class isn't gonna cut it

Emily: future class! hah

i'll talk to my teacher about that after class.

me: yes please do

i'd prefer my institution to offer THOSE classes

what could we call it besides future class?

Emily: umm...

the next revolution

???

to epic of a title?

it might be a let down to people.

hah

me: yea too epic

Emily: hah

ok

me: we wouldn't want people's expectations ot be too high

you know

life is boring sometimes

Emily: yeah wee don't want the future to look bright

ha

me: no definitely not

Emily: hehe

i'm paranoid that she's going to know i'm typing

hah

me: what i do is just stare at the teacher for a little bit and look really interested...then every once in awhile i'll furrow my brow like i'm really trying to digest what she's saying...

and then you're set for a good 5 minutes of not listening

Emily: hahahahhahahha

ok i'll try it.

just furrpwed

furrowed

me: good....

Emily: ok.

i'm set.

haha

breathe

I find myself grumpy lately. I'm exhausted and stressed and tired of plodding through responsibilities. I don't feel free. I think that's what's bothering me. Lack of freedom is making me waste away.

Yesterday was our last day of school. It was a push, a big push up until the bitter end. But even though that phase is over (thankfully), I'm in a new phase of stressful things. Pack. Move. Clean. Buy a plane ticket. Or am I driving? Or am I caravaning? When am I leaving? These things I do not know.

But there are always going to be other things aren't there? What am I waiting for to LIVE? I can't remember the last time I went on an adventure. A real adventure. The kind that gets your heart rate up.

I'm ready for the life drought to be over. Let it rain!

and then it was 2am again.

When I stay up too late (like tonight) my tummy starts to hurt and my eyes start to burn. Right at this moment I can feel my body start to shut down, it's giving me the "please, for heavens sake, let me go to bed" signals.

But I will not cave.

Spanish test comes at 10am tomorrow morning. Necesito estudiar mucho mas anoche. Que lastima yo se.

(did I even say that right?)

my gut

I woke up this morning knowing that this was going to be a stressful day. I hate that. I hate knowing it. If it comes up quickly...fine, I'll take you on stress. But don't just sit on the edge of my bed and greet me in the morning. You'll make me grumpy.

Need to know for this blog to make sense:

I applied for three internships for the summer. These internships were for...

-Shared Hope International (an anti-trafficking non-profit organization in Washington DC. Unpaid)

- National Coalition (an anti-trafficking non-profit organization in Cincinnati, OH. Paid.)

-World Vision ( in the communication's department working with PR stuff. Unpaid)

Lots of things happened in between application submission and now...but I won't take you through the roller coaster of events. I've already gotten off the ride and am going down to look at my picture on that screen near the exit... I've got my hands in the air and a really unflattering look on my face (why is it impossible for people to look good at the very second they're going by that dang camera?). What I'm saying is, what's done is done. I cemented my plans for the summer today.

Last week Shared Hope offered me an internship with them. YES! This is exciting! But then World Vision was still really interested in me...and I'd been asked if I wanted to interview for a different position at World Vision. One that does feature writing for the web page. Writing stories about real things, with real people.

And that's what today came down to. Shared Hope asked for an answer by 5pm...and so I bumped up my interview with World Vision from Friday to today at 1pm. Meaning that, if World Vision offered me the internship I would have to make a decision in 3 hours.

Before I went into the interview I was pretty set on Shared Hope. I thought that the internship with World Vision would have to be pretty tempting to get me to sway.

Well, the interview was awesome. Ok. Swayed. And at the end of the interview she offered me the position. I told her I'd let her know tomorrow. And then...the countdown began. A big decision was going to have to be made ASAP. Stress mounted. My eyes got a little watery at one point. Some deep breaths were required. Friends and family emptied their pockets with cents. And some talking with Jesus was necessary.

What's best? Where is God leading me? Do I choose to do something that is so centered in something that I'm passionate about? Or do I go with an internship that would teach me tangible skills, with a world renowned organization that's doing things I believe in, and family and friends all around?

"What does your gut tell you Tara?" people said.

I sent in an email declining the Shared Hope internship at 4:58 today.

I'm going to World Vision.

uncensored...sorry.

This is my niece, Addi Rae. It's hard for me to express how much I want to see her.

My eye has been twitching forever. It's the right one. Just the right. All last week it was twitching. They say it's lack of sleep. It's my eye lid saying, "Um. EXCUSE ME. heyheyheyhey. I'd like some more quality time with your cornea.heyheyheyheyhey."

I haven't gone to bed before 1am in over a week. School is crazy, you know? It's just constant. It's constant juggling. I could fill my entire day with school stuff. But I won't. I refuse.

We are mean to our bodies, us college students. We're always shortchanging them...which actually translates into shortchanging ourselves. We're shortchanging ourselves. Well, duh. Let's all take a minute to apply a life lesson ..................................................................................................

I've been listening to "Brick" By Ben Folds. It's about a girl getting an abortion, I think. It's from the perspective of the boyfriend. There's this one part in there that just...sucks. It's after it's all gone down and they're driving home and it says...

Driving back to her apartment
For the moment we're alone
Yeah she's alone
I'm alone
Now I know it

Alone. I've felt that before. Well, not that. I haven't felt that. But man...to be with a crowd of people and still feel alone? It's awful. It's the worst kind of loneliness, I think. Why don't you get me!? you're screaming in your head. But nobody notices... thus feeding the loneliness.

We're built for that you know. for companionship. relationships. investing. We're built for investing, dear friends. If we don't invest, we don't live.

I have a week and two days left of school. 2009-2010...you're almost finished. You'll get rolled up in the memory bag, and will from now on be referred to with sayings like..."Remember when?" and "Man, I miss..."

I got offered an anti-trafficking internship in Washington DC. I haven't said that yet on here. Mostly because I'm not positive what's going to happen. It's unpaid, and I need somewhere to stay. For free. See. There lies the complication. It's weird asking people to open up their homes when you don't have anything monetary to offer...it's even weirder asking people who know people...and it's even weirder getting names from people and then writing them COLD TURKEY (I think this is actually a reference to quitting smoking or something...but I wrote it and I'm keeping it) asking them if they know anyone who would be willing to open up their homes. I'm just depending SOLELY on generosity. I'm depending on good Samaritans who, amongst all the junk they already have going on in their lives, have to think about a potential stranger inhabiting their space for three months.

But I am excited. I'm not using exclamation marks because I'm not really in that mood. My face is very...normal right now. No expressions. Just...my face.

My friends are hurting. This year has been fairly low key for me. Not much drama, not much emotional turmoil. But my friends...man they're hurting. and I hate it. Even the ones who don't talk about it...I see it. and I hear it. and I hate it.

I was walking to my car today and thought about emily's blog about the mass slaughter of people that spilled over right outside the hospital in Chad where she was an SM( I may not be remembering this right...check her blog if you want the details). She saw people who were murdered. murdered. I remember her writing something like "I always thought that there was good in everyone. But now I don't know." I thought that today. I thought about how we manage to all hurt each other, but we're all good. We all WANT to be good. Is everyone good? Do serial killers have good in them? [CONFESSION: so when I initially wrote this I wrote "cereal killers" and I didn't catch it until after I posted it. Maybe it's always been that way in my mind... maybe I've been picturing Captain Crunch and Tony the Tiger throwing it down all along.] Do they long to be loved and cherished? Maybe they did once...but that opportunity passed and now they just want to squelch all the good.

Well now I've run off and talked about serial killers [again "cereal"] at one in the morning when all my roommates are asleep. And now I'm scared. There it goes...my overactive imagination. Running wild and free through all the corners of my brain. There's this bump that makes up my forehead that sticks out a little further than...the other part of my forehead... and someone once said it was my imagination station. It's where all my imagination is stored. I think that's a good explanation for it. It's better than calling it a beluga whale bump.

Well I think that's it for the night. I wanted to write...and I did. It's ridiculously choppy and basically breaks ALL the rules of writing (sorry Amanda). But it's uncensored...and sometimes that's what I want from people. I wonder what it will be like reading this in the morning. There's not really a theme to this so here... I'll draw one for you so you can feel satisfied.

Let's love better. Will you help me love better? I'm bad at it.

20 replays of "Brick" later and 1:45am. and my eye still twitches.

here's the thing about research papers... i don't want to DO them.

does it get any better than this? i submit that it does not.

here we go.

Some recent adventures among the end of semester chaos...


We went to an Ingrid Michaelson concert (which was amazing).



My car broke down on the way (which was not so amazing).




After the concert was over "no teeth" Ben, a nice little man, towed my car back to Collegedale late in the night. Thanks to Elisa and her AAA goodness it was free of charge. And what is an adventure without some awkward encounters? We're supposed to send this picture to his wife.


We slept on Ben's dock on his pond. There are no good pictures of this adventure...for a couple of different reasons. But here's what we got...

(isn't this one pretty?)

Ok. Now it's back to the research papers, book reports, presentations, and internship interview preparations. Too fast. This semester is going by too fast.