Feels Like Freedom

First of all, let me begin this post with a sort-of apology for my absence. The past few weeks exams and studying for these exams decided to swallow up all my time and sanity (stress...). Fortunately I have made it through my exam period to come out alive and ready for relaxation, because the end of my last exam on Friday meant the beginning of summer for me! I feel extremely excited and giddy with the thought of so much FREEDOM ahead of me. The inevitable boredom, loneliness because all my friends are out of town and going-back-to-school stress all haven't set in yet and right now I am certain that this summer is going to be THE BEST EVA.

Initially my plan was to come up with a post schedule for this blog during the summer, so I could be more active on here and fight my boredom with writing as much as possible. However, I decided not to do it. This is because this summer I want to do things differently. Every summer at the begin of my period of relative freedom, when I'm filled with start-of-summer-excitement, I always come up with a list of projects-to-do, books-to-read, movies-to-watch and experiences-to-have. I have never succeeded in completing any of these lists, because after two weeks of 'the most intense summer experience ever', I come down with a case of summer burn-out and stay inside while marathoning Gossip Girl for a week.

This summer this hopefully won't happen. Besides going to the US to attend a leadership/politics-program (I'm so excited and nervous. omg.), a trip with my family and the aspiration to finally get that summer job, I have nothing planned for this summer. No lists with to-do's or to-read's or to-see's. I can just do whatever I want. Off course I will read and watch movies and go out with friends, but this time it will just come down to what I feel like on a particuliar day. I'm not going to force myself to read Great American Literature or 'visit at least three musuems with a friend' if I don't want to. Because that is the thing with to-do lists, they are a lot easier to write down than to actually complete.

Maybe I'll be able to make the most of my freedom this way. By just doing what I want, reading what I want, watching what I want - simply living how I want - I might actually become a bit more capable of understanding what I want and like and what I want to spend  my time on when I have full control over it.

Maybe just one to-do: Go see TFIOS

A Blogpost in Four Acts

Some random Tumblr art, to add to the haphazardous-ness of this post 

*Warning: Very random and long post ahead* Everyday my summer vacation draws closer, but I'm still in that state where I know it's coming but its just not there yet. While I'm constantly occupied with Life, thoughts and inspiration come in short spontaneaous burts. Like weeds sprouting through a cracked pavement that consists mostly of exam papers. At the moment I just don't have the space to string all these instances together and find the recurring theme (if life ever has one, that is). Therefore I decided to employ my illustrious talent for list-making to create a somewhat readable account of thoughts and observations I've been having lately.

1. I want to posses all beauty, all at once
I've been experiencing moments of enormous happiness without reason lately. I think I might be falling in love with life. I just never realized happiness could be so addicting. The more I posses it, the more I want of it. In my brightest moments my mind will go on a trip to every beautiful thing in life. Ones I have experienced in the past and ones I wish to experience. The latter are especially strong. I want to posses all these instances, all at ones. I want to lose myself in a Cambridge library, enveloped by epic tales written in words from the past. At the same time I want to serenade a wasted youth, kissing a boy with a late summer-smile in a parking lot, illuminated by the multi-coloured lights of 7-Eleven. (I'm romanticizing, off course. That is what happiness does to someone.) I want to conquer the busy Parisian streets. I want to revisit my old summer home. I want to listen to The Clash, but sing along to Taylor Swift in the same instance. I want to live the stories on my reading list all at the same time. I want to make new friends and catch up with every one I lost contact with. I want to  rekindle old passions, while performing every act unknown to me. I want to experience all beauty and I want to have it be part of me. I want to be made of beauty. I want, I want, I want..... I want to live.

2. Sometimes meaning is overrated
I'm a constant narrator of my own life, searching for wrung-out metaphors and hidden truths in every moment  I divide my days in clearly defined acts as if they're part of a play. I do all this, because I'm continually searching for Meaning (with a capital M) in my every action. Recently, I watched 'Big Easy Express'. It's a documentary about the tour Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros and Old Crow Medicine Show took across the US in a train filled with music. Unlike many other movies about people doing something remotely artistic, very little is said in this film. No one tries to come up with some deeper truth behind their travels and music, except simple  enjoyment. I have been looking at my days a little more as if I'm on the Big Easy Express. I've found that a lot of moments don't need to have Meaning (with a capital M), to be good and make me feel all good inside. Not everything is part of a greater narrative, exploring some main theme. Sometimes things just are.

3. Misery is the new black
Feeling good has made me realize a lot of people I spend a lot of time with and believe to care about really enjoy the idea of feeling bad. They wear their negativity like a cool accessory. Expressing they hate this band, or that movie or these people makes them even more cool, or should I say 'edgy'. I have to admit I have taken part in this many times, but now I simply don't understand what the big deal is with hating things. It sure isn't a productive way of living. Perhaps it's because when we believe that having common interests helps to make friends, we are faced with two options: Finding people who like the same thing(s) as you or finding people who hate the same thin(s) you hate. Often it's easier to find someone who also doesn't like (or actually just doesn't care or doesn't know about them, but nods when you express your dislike) One Direction  instead of meeting someone who shares your love for Katy Perry/80s movies/thrift shopping/Rupert Grint/Lord of The rings. After all, the enemy of my enemy is a friend.

4. Life comes in waves
The first months of this year weren't the best times for me, I felt like things had gone very dark and didn't believe brighter days would come again. Yet, like the changing of the seasons, they did. All it took was waiting. Now that I'm living right in the middle of the good times, I still posses the knowledge that this happiness, like my sadness, is also fleeting. I'm usually very sceptical when it comes to Balance-YingYang-Inspirational Quote-stuff, but I do want to believe that life is like a scale held in balance by Good Stuff and Bad Stuff. I feel like they come in waves and the only thing I can do is ride the good ones and wait for the bad ones to ebb. The believe that I control the way life plays out is still very alive within me, but spending some time in the Bad Stuff-wave has made me realize that sometimes shit just happens  and all you can do is try to deal with it as far as your capability allows. Maybe this is all just Good Wave talk, but for now it works as a pretty solid philosophy. (Or at least, the best one I can come up with at the moment ;) )

Kudos to you if you go through this blogpost, I'm not really sure what it was meant to be either. What has been up in your life lately? Let me know!

Poorly Taken Pictures of Happy Days

I'm feeling really really really good *insert bouncing emoticon*. The past few days I can't stop myself from smiling. What I'm experiencing is not the kind of happiness that comes with all sorts of 'buts' and 'howevers', it's the good kind. The simple kind. The outside world hasn't changed much, but my inside universe feels shifted somehow. To record my probably annoying and certainly fleeting positivity, I decided to take capture some shots (with my just decent phone camera) of things that made me happy today.

My floral skirt tells me I am the cutest flower princess in disguise. My face is unfortunately to engrossed in the art of taking mirror pictures to show it.

A heart my friend drew on my hand and my bracelet that I wear almost every day. If you look closely, you can see my name ingraved in it.

'Johny Boy' by Twenty One Pilots. A song to conquer the world to.

I bought these on a whim a while ago, expecting to never wear them. They are my favorite sneakers now. 

School can actually be fun/interesting sometimes.

I love Sylvia Plath. 'How does one read books of poetry?' is the question I ask myself the most.

'Ariel' and 'On the Road'. Designing book covers must be a cool job.

Life's a Ferris Wheel

Life's been keeping me busy, so I haven't had the chance to post as much as I wanted to. With the summer coming up there is a ton of stuff to be finished before everyone decides to relinquish their responsibilities for several weeks. Not just in school, but outside of it as well. I'm drowning in assignments for final grades and in the meantime friends, clubs and family want to meet one last time before 'the big break'. 

As life speeds up, I can feel my thoughts slowing down. Something is constantly happening the present, so there simply is no time to lose myself in that world outside of clocked hours to come up with new philosophies. When I do manage to have a few minutes to myself all I want is to be passive. I don't think. I don't write. I don't draw. I'm just very tired.  

I like it this way. Not giving my thoughts to much room means they can't trick me and let me fall in crippling spirals of anxiety. Things happen and I react to them.  I simply keep going and don't question it. This has resulted in me feeling quite well (if I say so myself) lately.

Yet, I feel that this constantly moving person isn't really me. Sometimes I imagine my life as a train that is speeding through a station. I am sitting inside of it, but I'm standing out on the platform as well. From the grey concrete I can see myself sitting in the train seat, moving quickly towards a new destination. I see the small windows fly by. I can even feel the gusts of wind the speeding vehicle creates, but I'm still an onlooker left behind. I'm not really there. 

I like thinking. It's part of who I am and I consider my capacity to do so an extremely valuable asset. So when life prohibits me to do so it isn't strange that I feel lost. This does make me fearful of the future. The more I grow up, the busier with 'life' I become. Which is logical, since you don't fulfill responsibilities by having introspective thoughts and scribbling in your diary. When I take this conclusion further it would result in the very teen angsty-belief that when you grow up, you lose yourself. I don't want to believe that and I really don't want it to be true, but maybe that doesn't matter because life asks me to keep going. 

Fave song at the moment

The worst kind of lost

I think I’ve outgrown my home
I’m kind of feeling lost wherever I go 
And I could be staring it right in the face and I wouldn’t know 
I think I’ve outgrown my home

These are lyrics from the song 'Out on my own' by Gabrielle Aplin, who has somehow managed to perfectly articulate all that I have been feeling lately. Only months ago the town I live in seemed exciting and full of life to me, but now all that I can see is overly visited hang out spots and repetition of scenery. Also school and all the drama and worries it brings no longer has the ability to fully occupy my mind. It feels like a place that already belongs to my past, but somehow is still part of my 'present' and will be for another full year. 

Since reality feels like it doesn't fit me anymore I've been looking for homes in other places. In books and art and music. I've been reading stories I used to love and watching movies from when I still fit their tween demographic, but even these tales that I could once find so much comfort in feel like they no longer belong to me. The girl I used to find between the lines of 'This Lullaby' by Sarah Dessen (a novel I used to love when I was younger) is lost. 

The book I'm talking about

I am not sure what brought about this sudden feeling of outgrowing my current life. For someone with a set plans and clear goals for the future the longing to move on would be logical, but with me that is not the case. I have no clue where I am headed and it doesn't make me feel like some whimsical free spirit floating through life. On the contrary, my thoughts of the future are mostly filled with fear. 

I recently read a diary post on Rookie by Britney in which she wrote that as teenagers we are doomed to be cynical untill we see more of life. I believe she is right and that is also what makes me so anxious about the future, because what if it only makes me more cynical? What if I never find a place that fits me? 

When I was younger the future seemed like a fantastical and terrifying unknown to me. I believed that when I would graduate I would ride off on a road with no destination, meeting cool people and experiencing amazing things along the way. I would truly live. Now that I am actively planning for college, summer draws closer and I will soon only have one year of high school left all the mystique is gone from my future. I know I will go to college. I know what colleges I will (probably) apply to and attend. I know what they look like. Hell, I even know what kind of room I will probably be living in once I graduate. This is no adventurous roadtrip through life. 

Yet, (like I mentioned earlier) I have no sense of the direction. I know, I'm paradoxical. All these images of days to come seem empty to me. The same kind of empty my life feels like right now. It's like I'm floating, following the direction of the stream, while I know I should be swimming. I should actively be filling that fantastical unknown with experiences and people and meaning.  I am lost, but not in the way that feels like liberation. My kind of lost feels like an old sweater that I have gotten too big for. It fits a little too snug around the chest, my belly peeks out awkwardly and taken it off is a hard task. 

The Gabrielle Aplin song I mentioned