Prochain arrêt...

I guess the irony of the (not very unique) name I chose for my blog is that we never quite arrive at a destination, but life is really more like an endless ride with intermittent stops. You choose the vehicle- I think I prefer a high-speed train, sharing a cabin with my best friends and family or perhaps sometimes an unwanted guest between certain stops. Anyways, I could extend that metaphor for pages.  The point is, I have arrived at a pretty big station.  I am incredibly excited and anxious to finally have my own classroom to walk into at the start of the school year this fall.  I have been immersing myself in everything I can possibly imagine- books, websites, people, materials- and they are inspiring me more than I ever imagined.  However, I feel overwhelmed at how much information is out there, how many different approaches there are to one thing, and it is absolutely mind-blowing.  Didn't someone say, "You don't know how much you know until you know how much you don't know"? Well, I'm learning there is a lot that I don't know, but I can't wait to find out.

I so did not take this picture- from the TrainWallpaper website.  I kid you not, that is the website.

"There's no point to any of this..."

"It's all just a... a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know... a Quarter-Pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter become a cackle... and I, I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt."

Troy (Ethan Hawke) from the 1994 film #RealityBites

I think Ethan Hawke is a pretty mediocre actor, but he has some of the best, most quotable lines in film.  Anyone seen #BeforeSunrise?  (I'm also a huge Julie Delpy fan- see #2DaysInParis.)  Anyways, this quote is pretty apt, I think.  It's not meant to be depressing or anything.  And I don't smoke, so insert some other vice there- drinking coffee, maybe.  Instead, I think it's kind of relieving.  We shouldn't always be so worried about what the point is all the time, like who we're supposed to be, or who we're going to end up with, or where we're going to live, but maybe it's more important to just sit back and enjoy the things we can while we're still alive.

For instance, I also happen to love the sky before it rains.  I also love the windows open on a summer's night.  I love my dog, especially when she's sleeping at my feet, like right now.  I love reading books- like actual books, just holding them in my hands or even just looking at them all in the bookstore.  Hopefully iPads and Nooks don't totally destroy this one for me.  What do you love?

 Stormy skies (and the tobacco fields)

 The city lights

 Little kids

 Puppies (even when they're not really puppies)

My brother reading to his daughter (she's 4 now)

Sunflowers

Sunsets

Let's try this again...

So, it has occurred to me that lately I am in an excellent place to start doing this again.  I started  and stumbled along for a little while, and then got to a pretty bad place in my personal life, and to not talk about it would have been impossible, and to talk about it would have been just pretty much the worst idea ever.  So I come here now from a good place, and a place where perhaps I can actually talk about some things that may be interesting, maybe even useful to someone other than myself.  Really, I just want to write again because I no longer have my college newspaper as a venue.

 I have found a semi-teaching job at a good public high school in the area, but I sometimes work some pretty thankless 13-hour days.  I like my job because I get to work with the same students every day (different from substitute teaching), and because these are students who really need the help.  The only problem is that usually they don't want any help and they will do anything sometimes to avoid me. I feel like sheepdog trying to heard them from their study halls and the library to the classroom to get them to do any work.  The students are mostly 9th and 10th graders who have very little grasp of reality, and are failing many of their classes, if not all of them.  I think there are moments of clarity though when I get through to them, and they are mostly good kids.  I would be lying if I said I wasn't dying for spring break.

Hopefully these will get better... I'm just getting my footing again...

When I wrote this earlier, I was watching my nephew, who is so grown up now, play quietly while his younger sister was napping and his twin was out at a friends.  It's funny how they can be terrors one minute and little angels the next.  But I love them always.  It is their 6th birthday on Monday.

Don't let the bed bugs bite

First, let me post a correction: I forgot to give photo credit to my wonderful paparazzi this past summer, Damien Favre.  I wish he were always around so I could actually have photos, but at least I have some great memories eternalized because of him. Thank you, Damien!

So I can't sleep.  There is so much to do and I want to do it all, and I get so distracted along the way that I end up not doing much of anything.  This seems to be a theme.  I'm good at getting things done, but there just are not enough hours in the day.  Lately, with the weather so cold and miserable, I need a lot of sleep, and food, and time to complain.

For those of you unaware, I was also attacked by these nasty little creatures most likely at my sister's apartment in the city.  I hadn't been allergic to anything until my 20s and now I need to take Claritin every morning just to breathe, I can't use medicine with Sulfa, and bed bugs make me look like leper, not to mention I get so itchy I can't stand myself. Who knew bedbugs are actually an allergic reaction?  Some of you have probably had these little guys crawl all over in the night and never even knew.  

Go figure.  

This is a great resource for those of you with a similar disposition:

http://www.bed-bug.org/

Anyways, I just wanted to post to give credit to Damien for his wonderful photo posted last week of me and my niece and hopefully write until I fall a...

This too shall pass

Call it a seasonal slump, call it whatever you want, but I think we're all getting a little sick and tired of this weather.  It has been one of the slushiest, most depressing winter seasons of my life- probably the worst that I can remember.  I've been feeling lazy and pretty much apathetic, which is not like me.  All I can do is blame it on the weather. (Note, I'm also blaming the weather for why I have been so lazy about posting.)

I normally hate when people complain about winter.  If you live in the Northeast and act surprised every winter that it's cold and it snows, then just move already.  No one is making you stay.  But at this point, that is exactly how I feel.  I just want to get out of here already... And if it weren't for the snow and my serious lack of funds, I would be on a Caribbean cruise sipping mojitos right now.  But I guess it's all what you make of it, right?

I love the seasons and we can't have spring if we never have winter, and the worse the winter, the better the spring, right?  It is the first of February and in a month it will be March already; that glorious month they say goes in like a lion and out like a lamb.  When you're feeling down and dysfunctional, just remember: This Too Shall Pass.

This post brought to you by the letter S:  Snow, Spring, then Soon it will be Summer, Sunglasses, and Sand.

Here I am with my niece this summer in the park.  Sun and Sunglasses. SO wonderful.

It's been way too long

This is really an easy-way-out post but I've been actually pretty busy lately (my usual internship, errands, friends, driving back and forth to CT constantly) so I haven't had a chance to sit down and collect my thoughts but I need to just say that I WILL BE WRITING SOON.  I have a bunch of drafts started about some pretty (what I think is) interesting stuff: music, jobs, etc. I've also ordered a bunch of books about online publishing and HTML/ Web Design so look for some attempts at changes here, as well as photograph. So stay tuned.

The Resolution

So I've been procrastinating for a few weeks.  I've been busy, for sure, but I've also been doing a lot of what you might call "self-discovery."  After my "experience" last semester, which wrought me at times with self-doubt and resentment, I've become determined to have a clean start this year and really focus on being that person that I want to be.  There is no better time to start than now...  I've got a new internship and a new outlook on things, and there was just no way I was going to start this semester with a messy room (although it probably will not last too long).

In going through the enormous pile of papers and notebooks and odds and ends that has accumulated over the past, oh, four years, and has lived in the corner of my bedroom since I moved into this apartment almost two years ago, I felt renewed and empowered.

Yet, I also realized something else.  At the very bottom of the plastic bin where these papers were living, was something I had been searching for for at least a couple of years now: a film my friends and I had made during our senior year of high school for Independent Study.  It was like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, an unexpected prize.

I watched it almost immediately.  It's a film about 20 minutes long called "Setback" and it "showcases"the snowboarding "skills" of myself, my best friend, our high school boyfriends, and our good friend Tiina (a Finnish exchange student that year) and also highlights the setbacks we endured while making the film (injuries, illnesses, finances, and scheduling problems). Not only did it bring back great memories, but it reminded me of how hard we had worked on it.  Between the research, the filming, the editing, and the snowboarding, we spent more time on that film that year than anything else.  It really reminded me how far a little hard work can go.  But mostly, how important it is to work at the things you love.

I never make New Years Resolutions; mostly out of fear that I will never be able to keep them.  However, this year I am resolving to just do more of what I love, to be the woman that the high school senior me knew I would become, and who I think I have become, yet sometimes forget to be.  If that makes any sense at all.

Life is about living and the key is doing what makes you feel alive.  This year I'm going to write more (hopefully this blog will help!), read in my free time, reteach myself how to play my guitar, and hopefully go snowboarding at least once.  Everything else will fall into place.