words for a rainy day.

My coffee is too hot and it burns my throat going down. I still drink it though, not waiting for it to cool off. Today is the first real day (of fall) when I can feel the damp of the rain and the cold just around the corner and I can breathe again without choking on the heat in the air. This changing time is always my favorite time of year; I don’t like extremes, I like the fading of season-to-season. I suppose that fall, in a way, is full of life, not like spring when everything is growing but in the way that everything seem more alive and vibrant during these few short months. I’m going to savor them, drink more than my fair share of Starbucks and take pictures of every leaf and love life because as much as fall is the beginning of the end of the year, this feels like an ending for me too.

I think too closely about endings and beginnings and how they flow in and out of one another. The end of something marks the beginning of something else, and so on.

This is the beginning of...what? My last fall in high school, at least.

Rainy days make me introspective.

And all of this is news to you, but I failed the written test on Tuesday, passed it on Thursday, and I've only driven once since then. I'm in love with my Illustrator class and Pre-Calc isn't horrible. I'm back in a place I haven't been in years, meaning that words mean more than photos and it feels so good to write, as evidenced by the first two paragraphs. My job is perfect and I haven't met anyone I don't like yet. Relient K sings Justin Bieber and Switchfoot has a new album out on Tuesday.

Here's to a happy fall.

prepare for crazy, please.

I haven't exactly been blogging every day, not since I've been back from France. Part of this has to do with the sheer number of hours during the day that I've had to fill. Obviously, that doesn't make sense, but you know that feeling when you have so little to do that you can't bring yourself to do the things you should do, such as blogging? Right, that feeling. 

School is starting back up again. It's going to be a light, easy year for me, the high school portion. The nine college credits hours I'm taking, plus my job, plus high school, should manage to fill my time pretty effectively. If everything goes the way we're hoping, I should graduate in June, one year early.

I began writing this post last week, and as usually happens at the beginning of the school year, the plans for my school were completely different. Currently, the plan is this: I'll take eleven classes this semester, nine or ten next semester, and graduate in June.

Next year is very uncertain; I'll explain more about that in a later post. 

Basically, I just wanted to warn you/fill you in on what happening in my life right now, and offer up an excuse as to why I haven't blogged in eleven days. 

High school starts today, my IWU class started on Monday, and I'm nearly three weeks into Taylor. 

That's life right now. How is school/work/college/whatever else going for you? 

remember this for me.

"My heart is drumming in my chest so hard it aches, but it's the good kind of ache, like the feeling you get on the first real day of autumn, when the air is crisp and the leaves are all flaring at the edges and the wind smells just vaguely of smoke - like the end and the beginning of something all at once." -Lauren Oliver.

This is what I want to remember about the beginning of this school year: 

I want to remember the way I felt, driving down the road at ten thirty. There was the split-second-decision when the perfect song came on and we drove straight past our turn, just so we could listen to it. The windows were rolled down, we were singing along, and it was perfect.


I want to remember the gut-turning feeling in the middle of my stomach. It was there the first day of work, and there while my shaky hand wrote down the order for my first table. It was there when, sitting in my first Taylor class, I wondered what I was doing there, and if I really wanted to do this again.


I want to remember the lighting storm a few weeks ago. Again, we were driving home at night. The lighting split open the sky again and again and again. I sat in the backseat, my head craned towards it, awestruck, and little frightened.


I want to remember friend things, best friend things, regular friend things, this-is-going-to-be-a-weird-story things. I want to remember playing carpetball in the backyard at youth group, and the way all my friends know I won't drink Dr. Pepper. I want to remember falling asleep while Mumford and Sons played in the background.


anything special you'd like to remember about the school year thus far?