things work out . . . question mark

there comes a time when you just don't have any idea where your life is going.

it's a little frustrating, especially for list-y people who want to have everything figured out and every square in the planner filled months before any of it actually happens. what's so bad about wanting to plan ahead?

I thought that I wanted to be in Paris by May, but maybe that's not quite right just yet. but then if that's not right, then what is?

on the way home from work, I was telling my dad about all of my fears, which is quite a long list---trust me, this is only the beginning of it:
I don’t want to go alone
what if I don’t get along with the people in my group
what if I can’t speak the language
what if I’m spending six thousand dollars on something that I’m not supposed to do?

I guess it all boils down to the fact that I’m afraid.
but let's face it, I’m afraid regardless of if its a mission or a study abroad.

sometimes I forget that my dad was eighteen once too, and that he had to face all of these fears. sometimes I forget that I can learn the lessons through someone else and not have to figure everything out on my own.

he told me that he finally realized that he could be afraid or he could get over it.
he took a step back and remembered that every returned missionary he talked to said that it was one of the best things they'd ever done, regardless of if it was easier than they thought or harder than they could have ever imagined.
he saw that it all worked out.

and so he stopped being scared.

I guess I'm just letting my fear overrule my faith, but it's a little hard not to after trying to figure this out for three months. I mean, since when have decisions ever been easy on me, especially ones that could affect the whole course of my life??

that conversation with my dad really made me think. it's not like I'd regret giving the Lord eighteen months of my life. would I regret it if I didn't? maybe. probably.

but what about my fears and inadequacies and inability to talk to people and not being ready?

as my dad said,
everyone else survived.
everyone else loved it.
everyone else made it through,
even when it got tough.

so why not me?

I feel like there are a lot of closed doors right now, not just closed, but locked up tight. no matter how I try to peer through the key hole, I can't catch a glimpse of what's on the other side.
but my dad said that when doors start to close and decisions get difficult, he takes a step back, lives the way he knows he should, and then somehow things open up.
it may take a day, it may take a month, but somehow, things work out.

well, I better make sure I'm living right because I definitely need some doors to open.
and in case you couldn't tell, I have one of the best dads in the world.

the stars are brightly shining

What a beautiful way to celebrate our Savior's birth :)

Words and Catharsis and Stuff Like That.

Hi, I'm back.

I mean, no big deal its only been like six months, and wow, I've missed my words.

I've been writing a lot---I mean, I am at college and that's kind of what you do on an all-too-regular basis. But I haven't written for me in a long time. Like, I haven't written about stars and books and best friends and adventures and lessons in spontaneity in way too long. And also, my roommates thought that it was spontenUity, not spontanEity, I mean, awkward right? Good thing I'm working on expanding my vernacular, so that I can teach them correct verbiage :)

Also. How weird is it that I just used "roommates" in a sentence, because now I actually have roommates instead of brothers? I mean, I've been living with them since September but it still kind of blows me away when I think about it, and how they've kind of become my family away from my family away from family and how we get along and how we all just love each other. It's amazing how the unknown just kind of works itself out.

All day today I've just felt this desire to get my hands on a piece of paper and a pen and just let everything flow. I guess that my keyboard works just as well, but its funny how you have all of these thoughts that are flying around inside of your head, but as soon as you try to catch one and analyze it and write about it, the thought flits just out of reach, always remaining tantalizingly close but never close enough to touch.

So now I'm here, writing and babbling and enjoying the sounds of the keys clacking and my thoughts humming and the sight of black marks on a bright screen, because it is cleansing and cathartic and beautiful, and the longer I sit here the more I realize that I've missed it. Not only have I missed it, but I've needed it.

My writing professor loves to tell us that writing is thinking.

"I write entirely to find out what is on my mind, what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I'm seeing, and what it means." 

- Joan Didion

So does that mean I haven't been thinking for the last six months? Most definitely not. I just haven't been synthesizing my thoughts or recording them as well as I could have. But then I had this epiphany, mostly because I read this quote: 

"The writers who get my personal award are the ones who show exceptional promise of looking at their lives in this world as candidly and searchingly and feelingly as they know how and then telling the rest of us what they have found there most worth finding. We need the eyes of writers like that to see through." 

- Frederick Beuchner

I realized that maybe I don't have the most beautiful words in the world, and maybe I don't have the most exciting adventures in the world, but I am the only person who will see the world through an Ashley-colored-lens, and I am the only person who will write about the world from an Ashley-point-of-view, so regardless of if I feel like I have something special to say, I do, and regardless of anyone else cares, I care, and regardless of if anyone else reads it, I read it. And by writing and reading and writing some more, I figure out what I really think and how I really feel and what I really see in the world. 

So basically, I think I'll start writing again, and not just writing, but writing for fun, writing for me. Will I be consistent? I'd like to say yes, but probably not. Will it all be beautiful and poetic and filled with rhetorical devices? Definitely not. But that's ok, because it will be writing and it will be mine, and for now, that is good enough.