This Provincial Life

"Adventure is out there!" - Up

I like Beauty and the Beast, but honestly it's not my favorite Disney movie.

But lately I've been feeling a lot like Belle, in that I too want adventure in the great wide somewhere. (So much so that I bought this shirt!)

That's something I've been craving a lot lately (perhaps partially out of discontentment); but also just craving something new and out of the ordinary. I'd love to travel more. I'd love to meet new people and hear new stories. I'd love to learn more.

So I think something I'll be challenging myself to do this semester is to create my own adventure.

It can be something as small as visiting a coffee shop I've never been to or doing my quiet time downtown at the levy.

I'm pretty boring, so even watching a movie I've never seen before is an adventure for me.

If I'm feeling really adventurous, New Orleans is but an hour away.

Last weekend, Allie, Kire', Kendall, and I took a day trip to NOLA; and it was such a fun day full of things I'd never done before in a city I barely know.

Puzzle Pieces

I always forget how much I love spring time at LSU.

Maybe that's because I've only had one spring to love so far.

It is the first day of school for the spring semester. I'm sitting outside in the courtyard of the business college, eating a ham and cheese sandwich and drinking a juice box while fighting the wind on its insistence that I eat my own hair for lunch, and I am content.

I struggled a lot last semester with contentment, and I've decided I will not struggle with that this semester.

I've been fretting a lot about what I want to do when I graduate, and even what I want to do this summer. Or rather what I feel like the Lord wants me to do. If it's not on my mind, I'm trying my hardest to keep it from being on my mind; which actually means it's inherently on my mind!!!! And even without knowing what I will be doing in the future, I've wanted to hurry up and be there because logically if I'm doing what I'm doing, then I'll be past the whole process of worrying about what I'll be doing.

Yeah, that all made sense.

But in taking a quiet moment with the Lord this morning, He just asked that I wouldn't fret so much about something that is so far in the future that I forget to take advantage of today.

Hi, 2017

Hi, 2017.

I'm excited to meet you, as so many are.

I'm aware that we are already a whole 48 hours in to the new year, so that makes me a little late on posting my New Year's thoughts; but I hope my non-conformity/writing slack won't discredit me.

I'd like to say I don't fall prey to the idea that everything up until January 1, 2017 doesn't matter anymore and the whole "new year, new me" quips; but I do. I do fall prey. I don't think I can help it! There's a full 365 days ahead of me that I can do whatever I want with, and I never truly appreciated that until now. We tend to remember events in our lives by the year, and it's exciting to think that 2017 remains unblemished. There's something so thrilling about "new-ness." Something officially clean of whatever has happened in the past, and the fact that we can claim this year as our own.

But as beautiful as you are my new friend, 2016 was kind to me; and you have big shoes to fill.

A year ago, I was entering 2016 with anticipation and anxiety; for I would be spending exactly half of the year in a place of complete unfamiliarity. But what an adventurous half it turned out to be.

2016 gave me people. It gave me people from Australia and New Zealand and South Korea and all over the U.S. I love those people. I wish I could take every person's hands into my own and communicate how much their friendship is treasured... but I can't because that's literally so many people, and also that's weird.

I'll always look back on this year with a smile, but I won't say it didn't come without heartbreak.

The winter break has given me a lot of time to think, and my conclusion is that somewhere along the way, I lost myself.

The Roommate Diaries - Christmas Portraits

Happy finals week to us all!

On Saturday, the roomiez and I decided to take a break from studying to spend some time together and get some good pictures of all of us. We had so much fun hunting down artsy walls and good lighting in downtown Baton Rouge! I hadn't gotten to use my camera in a while, and I realized how much I missed it.

Merry Christmas from ECA 911! Please enjoy these pics of my model roommates.