free for a while

oh, hey there.

i am grooveshark's biggest fan. every time this laptop is open, grooveshark is too. so of course i'm listening now. this song just came on. you should listen with me.

see, me and jack are best friends. we sing together everyday.

also, i'm drinking water out of a wine glass.

so let me tell you about this weekend. it was a lot of fun. my roommate's sister came to visit us from college in tennessee, and she brought three of her guy friends with her. and let me tell you, they are the most hardcore hipsters i have and probably ever will meet. they have the best, most grungy style, and they are so adventurous and unpredictable. they walk around barefoot, make gourmet deserts, play the cello, climb things, dance really well -i mean really well- they sleep in closets, sing a lot, make pasta, swim across lakes in their clothes, and i love them. they're so charming and i was kind of entranced by them. there, i said it.

coolest people i've ever met, probably.

they reminded me of peter pan and his lost boys.

in other news, i had a thought the other day. i'm a junior in high school, and i realized i'm gonna be a person soon. i mean one that matters. like, to society. kind of. probably not. anyway, a few months ago, i started thinking about what i might want to do when i graduate, because i know it will come sooner than i know.

...or so i've heard...

so i've been talking to people about what they do, what they recommend and so on. and my interests have been shifting and swaying and floating around like the wind, and i thought i'd never find what i really want to do. i've always wanted to be a photographer, but some people started kind of talking me out of it. (just because of money and whatnot. they think i wont be able to support myself.) and that broke my heart. so i got a little desperate...

for example, some of my past interests have been opening a bakery, being an event planner, a bee-keeper, joining an orchestra or something else musical, or even joining the coast guard or being a midwife. i mean, what the heck.

so what do these things have in common?? nothing. that's why i was confused.

but a few weeks ago when i wasnt really into much of anything except driving across the country to california, throwing education out the window, i was doing an economics lesson by dave ramsey and he said some things that almost made me cry.

he said basically that if you do what you love, money will follow. you shouldn't get a job because it pays well. that's his belief anyway, and i pretty much agree. because "how you spend your days, in the end, is how you spend your life." (i read that on a blog once) so why would you want to be doing something you hate just for money? that's sad to me. that's not living.

so with that bit of wisdom, i thought about it for a few days and realized that photography truly is my passion. it's always been there, though other things have come up and clouded it out for various periods of time. but i've loved it since i was little. just ask my dad. i dont remember a time when i didnt like it. and i know i get this love from him, because he was a professional photographer for years before i was born and when i was a kid. he taught me a lot about photography growing up. i love him for that.

so these past few months where i was considering doing something other than photography seems almost sacrilegious now. this may be cheesy, but it's part of who i am. photography is in my spine. it's one of my vertebrae. it's what i love. when i'm holding a camera or editing a picture, i feel like a painter or sculptor creating something. it gives me this warm feeling in my belly. it's my first love and i cant ignore that.

now i'm not saying i have all of this in stone and everything's planned out and i'll never change my mind, but i DO know that photography has always been, and always will be a constant love of mine. unlike most of the things i listed above. (except music. that's second on the list.) 

i believe if you love something enough, your passion for it will shine through and you'll have a happy life.

maybe this is a fairytale view of life, but i like it.

and for now, i'm goin with it.