pretty pointless, but still...

Los Angeles, and the setting sun

It's sort of frustrating realizing that you've been doing something for a while and there's no point to it. Like why I stopped trying to keep the cat off the kitchen table, why I don't wear my glasses anymore except to look smart, and why I stopped setting my alarm for 5:45 AM when I know without a doubt that I will not get out of bed until 6:05 AM.

This is the realization Nick and I came to last week when we were hashing out how we were going to get from point A to point B with our relationship (hey, I know you're reading this and I just don't want you to care that I'm telling the good people of the Interwebs that we strive for quality and direction with each other. And just so everyone knows, we're still going to move back to the Northwest and open a food cart. Friends get a discount). And it is also the realization I'm coming to with this blog. I don't really know where I'm going with it. It is inspiring to see dedicated bloggers, writers, and speakers choose a concentration like sewing, cooking, adventuring, or religion that they consistently tell stories about. 

So I've been thinking about what I write about: People, events, things that strike me as important to my life, little life lessons, transitions, comedic happenings. Since I moved to California I have been listening to audiobook comedies during commutes and have rediscovered the importance of humor in my life. To look at life with Tina Fey tinted glasses. And it has lifted the burden of so many stressful things! One day I hope to compile many hilarious stories that probably only my mom will read, and that will be just fine. But right now, whatever I'm writing about is good for me. It is awesome to take a memory, a stressor, a feeling, a realization or connection, a story you feel is worth telling and taking the time to put it down on paper. The cathartic process is important to me, and to all writers, but maybe the content isn't always.  

Anyways, so yeah, there's no point. And there's no point to this post. But I don't want to stop writing. I love to write about the people in my life and where I'm going, what I'm doing, what I'm discovering. And that's okay for right now. Because they are just stories about life, and we're all living it. 

Heaven on the inside

I've been thinking a lot lately about how heaven is something that lives in me. It is a feeling, not so much a place right now, until one day it will become a place. I set up a lawn chair on the roof of Hacienda Buena last night, and it took two trips to get my book, journal, and smoothie up there. The sun was setting over this hill that I sometimes run on. I could see the dip of the city, the hills bursting up on either side and the glitter of sunlight speckled across the windows of houses. Heaven before has seemed so far off- a vacation that may or may not happen, something I'm trying to save up for and so sometimes I don't have my hopes up about it. 

And I've been wondering if the times when I've felt like I've really lived, fully and wholly, if I will ever feel like that again. How I felt alive in Spain, or with certain people, or when I had no where to go but open roads with zero plans. If I will ever feel free and wild when the pressure of jobs, family, and bills can't be ignored. I miss that feeling. But I'm beginning to feel it again- and here in the most unlikely of places and times. Far from my home and my people, and yet freedom and wildness and love came to me on the roof at sunset. The realization that God and heaven are a part of who I am. 

Perhaps I would acknowledge it more if I turned my phone off, sat in silence, smiled at people more, gave folks the time of day, loved deeper, judged less, forgave more. Remembered and told the story more.

Heaven is a feeling right now. And I can read about it, think about it, see pictures of what people think it will look like. But I can have it now, I think. I have everything I will ever want or need inside me, waiting to take off like a jet. Just gotta say the word, and we're off. 

I think this is beautiful; just wanted to share it.

doesn't always seem important

it doesn't always come as a stranger hands you a piece of paper

doesn't always come as a ring on your finger

doesn't always come as a hand is placed on a rock, the ascent

to the summit you've been staring at for years--

being part of something important

comes sometimes as the globe rolls slowly to it's side,

yawning. 

you wander along in a desert

and the stars drop off and the sun motions to salute

the morning; pressing off the body of mountains-

witness to yourself arising to newness-

the ongoing story of the universe

and the sentence you write

with your life