BE YOUR OWN HERO.: State of the Union.

Whoa! Long time, no see. Sorry about that, I kind of forgot that I had a blog for a hot minute (okay, okay, more like two months.)

I've been obsessing over the movie, "New Year's Eve," because cheesy movies like that are the cry of my heart. Because of this, and since I haven't posted anything I've written on here since the dawn of time, I wanted to share my new year revelation from a year ago.

I think I am supposed to write my resolutions on the 31^st of December, before the peach drops in Underground Atlanta, but since when have I done anything the normal way? I thought so.

I spent New Year’s Eve with my next door neighbor, a 78 year old woman who lives alone. She hires her grandson to watch after her, but he isn’t good for anything, just a 30 year old kid who thinks he’s entitled to everything even though he doesn’t do anything. He wanted to go out to a party for the night, so JoAnn (the neighbor) asked if I would be okay with staying with her (she has a bad knee, a new knee, arthritis, and a bad back so she’s afraid of falling). I didn’t mind so I grabbed “The Awakening” and walked over.

I realized how much I look up to women like her. JoAnn suffered from a childhood illness and was paralyzed for most of her life. She played basketball in high school, graduated from a business college and worked for Lockheed Martin as the lead “typer” and shorthand writer. Her children are odd, her husband lives in North Georgia, and her siblings are dead, but she’s still a sweet old lady with a dog and a house that she bought and paid for herself. She reads her Bible and tries to help out her grandson even though she knows he’s not a good kid. For her circumstances, she is still an incredibly strong woman who has not allowed life to make her bitter.

And then there is Kayla Jones. I met her my sophomore year when she was a senior and I knew that she was the girl who I have always wanted to be. She wears cool, hipster clothes and always seems to have a good hair day. She left for Chicago after she graduated high school, in hopes to transfer to the university the next year. I thought it was so neat, that she could leave and have an adventure like that. She moved home by winter though, saying that Chicago wasn’t what she imagined it to be. She didn’t go to community school like she planned; therefore she didn’t meet people and really just worked and went home. I remember how excited she was to see the city and she even bought maps of walking paths she could take so she wouldn’t have to worry about using the car or a bus. She told me after she moved back that walking around wasn’t fun when you had to do it all the time and that she had to carry around pepper spray because it was true what the people in the South say, the people from the North aren’t very nice.

So she came back home and enrolled at KSU. I haven’t heard from her all summer, which was weird, but then when we met up a few weeks ago (at the Fun concert, at her birthday party, and at dinner at Canyons) she told me that she spent the summer on yet another adventure. She packed up everything she had and went to Mackinac Island, Michigan. She went to follow her boyfriend, Greg, and to work at a bicycle shop. Greg dumped her three days into the trip however, and she was stranded in a resort island eighteen hours away from home.

She stuck it out, found an apartment on the other side with two other girls, and went looking for a job door-to-door. She soon spent the summer as a Starbuck’s barista, making gourmet coffee for disgruntled tourists who were frustrated at the cost of everything. But she had fun. She met a group of kids her age and she spent the days working and biking around the island, looking through clothing boutiques and antique stores.

To me, that seems quite fantastic, glamorous almost. I so badly want to go on an exploration like that (minus the boy, that is probably why she didn’t have as much fun) to pack up and go to a place I have never been before. To rent an apartment and get a job for the summer, to bike around (not use a car) read and write, listen to music, meet people, and just enjoy life is truly the cry of my heart. It sounds like the plot of a book that I would read and quickly fall in love with. A book that I would memorize and swoon over, underline passages, circle vocabulary, and make lists about all of the things it has inspired to me do and to think.

It all seems so wonderful.

my new year’s resolution is, to have adventures and common sense.

So the State of the Union: Resolution style.

Have a 4.0 at the end of the semester

Not worry about money (I have a job, a savings account, and tuition is already paid; I truly have nothing to worry about)

To put more thought into my outfits

To expand my music tastes

To plan an adventure for the summer, but know that I should be living out an adventure in Savannah as well

Study my Bible

Be calm

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