Youthful Life: X

" People who smile while they are alone used to be called insane, until we invented smartphones and social media.”  Mokokoma Mokhonoana Another week of quarantine life.  Who would have thought this would be our lives? I went on spring break from my second semester of law school, and just never went back. Suddenly I, along with the rest of the world, was sequestered at home for the foreseeable future. Each day I spend some intentional time grounding myself in reality. This physical distancing still feels surreal in some ways. More and more I'm spending more time in the virtual realities of Zoom class sessions + hangouts, Facetime calls, texts, DMs, social media, video games, and on, and on. The entire concept of limiting screentime has gone out the window. I can't quite be content living vicariously so I do my best to bridge the gap between my two realities. I'm doing what I can to make this mundane. I'm ensuring that I still feel. I'm keeping my head...

" It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things." Theodore Roosevelt Time heals most  wounds . As I progress further into adulthood those words ring true. Much of the things that used to bother me, be on my mind, or take up my time don't anymore simply because most of them are temporary. Temporary issues warrant a proportionate response, oftentimes acknowledging it exists, and minimizing it. Oftentimes issues truly get blown out of proportion when with a little bit of time their impact is short-lived. If things only last a little while then those things really don't need to matter that much. Having more time to focus on what does matter means making the most of that time in the best of ways. Happiness by way of healing I am realizing happens when I'm not paying attention. One day heaviness is on my heart, I process through it, learn from it, and depart from it, but still a bit of weight re...

" It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."  Ralph Waldo Emerson What a gift it is to love and to be loved . There's something profoundly distinct about having the love you give to others be reciprocated with the same kind of passionate fervor. It's this almost overwhelming sense of peace, mixed with joy and comfort. It's an indescribable sensation. It's like being in the comfort of your own home, but home happens where you make it. Old friends are home personified. I have come to believe that undoubtedly as I've spent time away from my people, my legion, and my comfort. Every time I separate from them it's like leaving home for an extended period of time. Then, I see them again and I'm met with the warm embrace of a place I've seemed to always lived in - a place that welcomes me with open arms, cheek squeezing hugs, and big laughs. It's a place that has long felt both surreal to the p...

Truth - Life is a series of adjustments. We go through life taking things as they come and learning how to deal with them. Situations are fleeting, our surroundings change, and people come and go. The older we get, the bigger those changes can seem at times. We come to these realizations and have to take the time to process the information we're given and act as we see fit. Some things hit us harder than others and occasionally our epiphanies are delayed. Growing up is hard, and it never ends. Ready to go home? "Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it - memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey." Tad Williams I don't know about you but when I left home to head off to college I don't think I properly said goodbye - to my bedroom, my house, and most prominently my childhood. I didn't realize t...

Truth - There is absolutely no place like home. With adulthood however comes this nonstop striving to make place somewhere else. The cliché is home is where the heart is, but what happens if you are unable to put your heart anywhere else. Home is what you make of it and that can be anywhere or with anyone. Home is a haven, fortress, and safe house. It's where you go to get away from all of life's problem or at least get the sound advice to potentially tackle them. How do you recreate that mythical place? How do you make a brand new homefront? " The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned." Maya Angelou There really is not a straight forward way of going about it. What I realized as I wrote that initial question is that the word recreate was problematic. Remaking, recreating,  and reminiscing all begin with that important prefix "re-" meaning again or back. There can only be one original, that...

Truth - it may sound cliché but life really is a journey and its one of epic proportions. From start to finish life keeps you on your toes. You can never really know what's going to come up next, if you did then you'd miss out on all the suspense. That's the aspect of our lives that makes our stories so great, the ambiguity, the anxiousness, and the not knowing. We're tasked with taking what comes our way and working with it the to best of our ability. No one ever life would be easy or predictable. Time to write our own new epic - this is odyssey. “Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.”  Homer the Odyssey Does anyone else have vivid memories of their high school English classes and reading story after story to no end. They may have ruined my love for reading (apparently I have a problem with authority) but there definitely are certain stories I remember well. Homer's the Odyssey is one of them. Who can ever forget ...

The 20s are all about adjustments. The thing about college is that every year, every month, every week, and every single day are different. You literally never know what will happen. For me it feels like a random compilation of horribly epic awkward moments, and naively innocent oversights. It's a place of novelty, danger, and knowledge. It's like some sort of twisted social experiment (like the Real World ); late teens and early twenty-somethings picked to live on campus and find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. But what happens when you want miss home. This is homesick. The school year has barely started and I already want to go home. It's like I dread every single day being here. Whether it's because this semester has come with the biggest changes so far, or that nonsense last weekend or a genuine distress over being so far from home, the world may never know. I would venture not very far to say that the feelings of homesickn...

Being a teenager is all about making your way home. It's about packing up, loading up your stuff, and hardcore peacing out. Say your goodbyes, squeeze those hugs as tight as you can, and say something meaningful and then let go. Turn around, walk away, and don't look back. If you cry, let the tears fall down your face and then wipe them away and smile. We're out of here, getting into summer mode, and it's time to take me home. *Check out my vine (6 second video editor app for twitter) from the crazy day here: Are you ready for another epic adventure (shoutout to Teennick for finally air the final episodes of Bucket and Skinner's Epic Adventures) from yours truly? No advice, no morality, just a classic adolescent story of going home, quirks, chaos, randomness, and all. Saturday was my last day in Vermont for my sophomore year. I woke up completely dazed and confused as to where I was, contacts in, no retainer, and completely dressed from the night before. I ru...