It's (almost) that time of year again...

Yes. Get excited. My annual e-mail Christmas countdown will start on December 1st. You get a fun little e-mail with the days left until Christmas, some seasonal trivia, and cool links. So if you would like to get these little gems in your inbox for 26 days, comment with your e-mail address!

Drizzle, Fall and Cousins

As I explained in my last post, I went to New Jersey to visit my fantastic cousin who goes to Princeton Theological Seminary. It was a refreshing trip filled with talking, sleeping, walking in the rain, enjoying the leaves, eating and thinking. I'll give you some pictures to explain.

And that is why I had a simply lovely time :)

poetry

I'm sitting across the country from where I usually am, in fact I am in Small World Coffee in Princeton, NJ. Sigh. I love traveling.

My super fantastic cousin gave me a birthday card/present yesterday (he knows me well, even though it's months after my birthday I definitely appreciate a present). In the card he wrote part of the poem The Golden Journey to Smarkland.

Pause for a second - I have to tell you - I don't usually like poetry. I wish I loved poetry, but in all honesty, most of the time I just. don't. get. it. This is really frustrating for me. It's so beautiful and expressing such emotion and I just miss all of that because my brain is not wired to really understand the nuances of writing.

On that note I will now say, I love the poem he wrote in my card. It expresses a how I feel a lot of the time, particularly when I travel. So here it is:

THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

-James Elroy Flecker

Seriously, November?

For real. October flew by. I don't even know where it went. Yesterday I was still living the life, starting clinical at 8, thinking Halloween was weeks off. Halloween flew by, without candy for trick-or-treaters and now, Thanksgiving is weeks off and I'm buying Christmas stuff at Target.

I've been working on being present. I have a hard time only focusing on the future, or the past. Most of my thoughts revolve around what I need to do, what I did yesterday, what I should be doing. It's okay and even good for me to think about those things, but I'm also trying to focus on the here and now. So this is my way of doing all of that at 10 p.m. on a Thursday night:

A few things to look back on for October: I passed a really hard test, I dressed up by wearing my snuggie on Halloween, I went to U2 in concert, I visited my parents, and had clinical in the ICU and Emergency Department.

Things to look forward to in November: A psych test, going to Princeton, NJ to visit my cousin and sister, Thanksgiving, and the official start of the Christmas season.

For now, I'm going to embrace the warm weather, freshly cleaned sheets, my pineapple cilantro candle and the fact that I have a roof over my head and food in my belly.

And because I love adding random pictures, one of my roommates and I on Halloween.

The Right to be Ridiculous is One that I Hold Dear

Well, this past week I went to see U2 in concert. It was truly epic. The title of my blog is one of my favorite lines from Crazy Tonight, off their new CD No Line on The Horizon.

Besides playing incredible music and putting on a great show for 2 hours Bono did several other cool things, like recognize and sing for Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese President who has been under house arrest since her election in 1990. He also made a plug for One. I have a theory that one big reason he is still famous is becuase he does something with his fame. He believes he can make a difference and is trying to do so to positively impact our world. That is something I really respect and why I will continue to support U2 by paying for expensive concert tickets and cds.

Distractions

Here is what I do while I should be studying:

~ Blogstalk Kimberly Jarman
~ Find fun stuff on Etsy like this cute necklace, these acorn earrings, and this adorable card.
~ And Yoga poses with my roommates

It's back

By "it" I mean school. I know, you're thinking of course it's back, you've been in it for 5 weeks. But, for the first time this week nursing school has again reared it's ugly head. 2 papers, 2 tests, 2 weeks + reading & quizzes and the normal stuff. C'est la vie.

On the positive side of this I'm learning about balance. I realized at certain points in life it's okay to not have a perfectly balanced life. Different aspects of your life will have more priority for specific periods of time. Right now, obviously, school is priority. I spent a significant amount of my time reading about psych disorders and studying EKG rhythms rather than volunteering or making dinner with friends. This is definitely not how I'd like my life to be but it's what is necessary for life right now. So essentially the unbalance is balance. Eventually, my life will change and so will the balance, but for now I'm working on accepting it.