I wish that every day of my life could be like this past Saturday: Sun, punctuated by pointless rain showers and occasional trips inside to continue hydrating and eating.

The more I think about it, my life is like this past Saturday.

I stay optimistic like sunshine, and then some pointless rain showers come to give me a hard time. The thing about these pointless rain showers is just that. They are pointless. I think a lot of you can figure out what I'm saying, no matter how cryptically I'm putting it. I think that sometimes you need a little bit of rain in your life to make you realize how good you have it when it's sunny out. Sometimes that rain comes in the middle of the night in the form of a lapse of judgement, and sometimes you wake up to rainbows and blossoming flowers and all that good stuff. I think that with the flowers and everything nice, you realize that life isn't as hectic as you once thought it was. Maybe all of my problems have been resolved within the past week and it's not possible to be as stressed as I once was. Or maybe it's because I'm a little over a week away from summer and haven't let it hit me yet.

Regardless, my life is like Saturday because I can drag my ass out of bed to get my shit done and have a damn good time. I dance on top of the stage that is my life, and I throw myself into crowds of people like it's my job. Most importantly, I have some of the best friends in the world standing right there with me.

I imagine that when you do something for yourself and just for yourself, the final outcome must be satisfying.
I feel that lately, I haven't been doing things for myself as much as I deserve. I'm constantly ruled by everything I've scheduled for myself. The study hours I must complete, classes I need to be at and functions I need to attend. I am constantly making sure everyone else around me is happy before I even begin to care about myself. I feel like it might be time to put a stop to all of that and start doing things for myself more often.

something i can't define : ]

I can't shake the fact that I resemble a deer or Ben Franklin in like, 80% of photographs. Or the fact that my fingertips hurt in a way fingertips should not hurt. Regardless, I'm in one of those weird moods where I know that I should be asleep and not writing... especially since I have nothing good to be writing about. I mean, I guess I could reiterate my point that my birthday is always a letdown, but I've been saying that for weeks now. I could blab on and on about how my friends, sisters and family have been the only reason I have not thrown myself into traffic (even though some of them are the reason I would feel that urge at all). I'm going to abstain from doing all of that and fall back on what is probably my favorite subject to write about- going places that are not here.
Today my uncle showed me 300-some pictures from his and my grandma's recent trip to South America. At first, I wondered why my grandma, someone who thinks that her homeland of Greece is flawless and doesn't realize it is a third world country much like the rest of the world, would go to South America. Or my uncle, who, upon arriving in Turkey for the first time two summers ago did not leave the ship except to take pictures of the Royal Caribbean ship coming into the port next to us. I, on the other hand was almost sold away to marry some Turkish man in exchange for camels and a rug or two. Before I completely lose track of why it's so strange to me that my elderly relatives were in South America, let me elaborate. My grandmother is eighty four years old, talks to strangers, and refers to anyone hispanic as "espanols," as though they would not guess that she was referring to them in a particularly unappreciative sense. All of this being said, she is a sweet woman and a die-hard lover of all things Chicago. She has season tickets to the Cubs and the Bears, and gets around better than most 40 year olds. My uncle is at least twenty years younger than my grandmother, his sister, and does not have his driver's license. The two of them combined are quite the pair. So, imagine my grandma and uncle in South America.
Think about how many people you even know that have been to South America even. Exactly. I want to go there. Any unpleasant situation I am put in, I am almost always thinking of what exotic location I would rather be at. 9am on Tuesday rolls around and I'm staggering across the quad to my math lab. I would rather be jet-lagged and sleepless at 4am in London than listening to someone whose first language is obviously not English try and teach me word problems. I am stuck in traffic on 294, what else is new. I would much rather be back in the mixed traffic of bikes, cars, animals and buses in Beijing than stuck in my own car. I can go on and on, but I feel like that would be redundant. The outcome to any unpleasant situation is that I'd rather be doing it somewhere new. I love Chicago, to the point where I play Kanye's "Homecoming" every time I come back to the city after a long time. To me, there is nothing like driving down the back roads of Lake County or watching the sunset over the lake. As much as I could see myself anywhere but here, I can see myself in Chicago forever. Maybe it's like I need to go away to find out where I truly belong.
From what I've already experienced, I can take a part of whatever distant city I'm visiting and bring it back home with me. A part of my heart will always be somewhere in Greece, lost somewhere between the Parthenon and the caldera of Santorini, but in place of that missing piece, there is something more. Upon leaving Greece, I found something to identify with. I think I truly learned to appreciate spending time with myself in San Antonio, and I found identity in a gift shop in Edinburgh, Scotland. Jamaica taught me that you can wake up in paradise and find that your entire world has been changed and will never be the same ever again, but if you stick together, you can make it through just about anything. Somewhere in between Michigan and Wisconsin, I learned that when no one else seems to be there for me, I will always have my best friend, and that it is always a good idea to go to the bathroom while still in civilization. In a Norwegian fjord, I learned how to breathe for the first time.
From Dubai, I want to experience and appreciate a culture I otherwise do not agree with. I expect Bali to teach me serenity, and in Cairo I want to feel infinite. I want to read a French newspaper in a cafe on the Seine River. I'd like to understand what the words meant, but it's not completely mandatory. I'd like for tourists to stop me and ask for directions in Istanbul. I'll speak Greek to anyone and everyone I meet in Thessaloniki. I want to drive from Chicago to Los Angeles without feeling any particular regard to time. I want to watch the sun rise over Sydney and watch it set from Santiago.
I want so much out of life. Now that the haze of the past few weeks has dissipated, I feel like I can finally see where I am headed again. My God, it feels so good to see again.

always coming down from the night before i met you

I haven't been able to write lately, and it's really bothering me. So I guess I'll ramble in hopes that it'll form something of quality.
Lately, it seems that everything is getting piled on. Right now is either a test, or a giant, hectic mess. I feel like it's the latter, but I'd like to stay optimistic that it's just a test. A test because I've been selling myself short lately, and I know I can handle things if I look at them the right way. There have been nights these past few weeks where I prefer not to fall asleep, and mornings when I wake up before it's light out and wonder why I can't sleep past dawn anymore. Tonight, I looked through a bunch of old pictures and saw how much fun I was having- at the beginning of the schoolyear, or even a few weeks ago. I've managed to allow myself to get so consumed with things that are bringing me down, that I overlook the simple things. I forget to eat because I worry about things I have no control over. I worry myself to sleep and wake up exhausted. I feel like I have such a large part of my life missing, and I can't seem to find it. I know that it's not just because certain things having ended that I feel this way, it's something more than that. 

I need to find it.