What's In An Accent?

http://www.noisejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Speaking-with-an-Accent.jpg

A story

A journey

A struggle

A triumph

Ambition

Perserverence

Discipline

Bravery

Hard work

Relentlessness

Desire

Commitment

Allure

Fascination

Intrigue

Curiosity

Patience

Frustration

Questions

Acceptance

Hard Rs

Soft Hs

Impossible vowels

Inconceivable combinations

An accent is not a failure to speak another language

It is a deeper understanding of your own

A resilient effort to reconfigure your speech pattern

And realign the world view you've always known

It takes guts and courage

And you'll still mess it up

But damn it you're trying

And that's more than enough

Language is understanding

Rules of grammar don't apply

Communication is universal

Just do your best to get by

Every voice comes from

Somewhere else on the map

Every person has a story

From somewhere besides where they're at

Reactions to accents

Beauty or fear

The choices we have

When one lands on our ear

We all speak different

And that's just a plain fact

But our hearts beat the same

No division in that

I Got Accepted by the Peace Corps and I Changed My Mind

Wow, much has happened since my last blog entry. After the beginning of May, finals week came and passed, I graduated, I returned to France, and when I came back to America, I got right to work at my new big girl job. So sorry for the long absence! I am back behind my keyboard today, though, and that is what is important. This blog may not be a long one, but it's something I want to write in order to feel better after it's out of my head and off of my chest. So, without further ado, let's get to it.

A good place to start is with all that hullabaloo I mentioned taking place in the month of May and during the first part of June. If I ever thought my life was busy during college, I had no idea what was waiting for me in the first few weeks following college. Not that I should complain too much, since it was an entirely voluntary and independently organized trip that I'd planned for myself, anyway. But that didn't mean it wasn't hectic flying halfway around the world a few days after graduating.

The point is, so much happened in my life during the period of time from the beginning of May to the beginning of June, and I was actually growing quite a bit during that month, even though the thought actually just fully occurred to me now.

At the beginning of May, with graduation on the 14th, I had no jobs lined up post-college. Not one. And not for lack of trying, mind you. I had applied to numerous positions, and scoured the internet for what I thought would be a good start to "the rest of my life," but I'd done a lot of it in vain. I was making broad strokes and casting a wide net, all of those picturesque metaphors which ultimately meant I was applying to anything I thought I was qualified for and wouldn't hate doing -- the two bare minimum requirements for many people during a job search when you need to pay the bills, unfortunately. So, I decided I was going to go something I'd been thinking about for a while -- I was going to apply for the Peace Corps.

What an excellent opportunity! It would teach me so much, my French would expand, I would go days without internet, I'd touch the lives of many, it'd look great on my resume when I came back to the States...There were so many reasons to try. I just had to give it a shot. Do my best -- that's what my mom always told me. So I applied. I got references to vouch for me and I answered their questions and I pressed submit, crossed my fingers, and hoped for the best. I submitted my application sometime in late April, and shortly thereafter, I received the most exciting email I think I've ever received, saying I was chosen for an interview via Skype and I needed to choose a time frame to complete it. Holy crap.

I chose a date -- May 11, because I already had another interview scheduled for that day, an in-person one for a job at a law office in Wichita. I figured if I did them both on the same day, that as nerve-wracking as it'd be, I'd only have to dress nicely once and I could take off only one day of work to accomplish it. After choosing a date, I began the long wait for the day to arrive.

When the day came, I was in an excellent mood and I really felt like I could take on the world. I had just finished my last day of college the day before, I would be graduating in three more days, and three days following that, I was going to be hopping on a plane and returning to the country I love. I was beyond ecstatic -- my skin was practically buzzing with a mixture of excitement and exhaustion that whole week.

I went to my in-person interview in the morning, and I walked out of there feeling alright about it, like I probably got the job, but I wasn't really sure. (Oh, I should also mention at this point that I did have one other job in my back pocket if I wanted it -- although it would pay me exactly half of what this law office job would.) So I knew I had a few options open to me at this point, three days before graduation.

But after I finished my hour-long Skype interview later that day, I knew I'd nailed it. I knew I had this one in the bag, I just felt it. I had gone to Subway to grab some lunch, gone home and eaten it, put sticky notes outside all my doors saying to please be quiet and not knock for the next hour, fixed my hair, and sat down in front of my webcam. Let's do this.

The guy who interviewed me was beyond nice, and he was a returning Senegal volunteer as well. He was calling from DC at the Peace Corps Headquarters and he was stationed in a small cubicle with a Peace Corps backdrop behind him. As I spoke my answers slowly to him, he typed on his computer to take notes. I felt I was well-prepared for whatever they asked me, because I had read through not only all of the information the Peace Corps had sent me, but I'd Google researched a lot of things, too. There was not a question he asked me that I didn't have a good answer for. I was acing this interview, and I knew it. After an hour of Q&A and luckily no unanticipated technical difficulties, it was over. I informed him I'd be out of the country for a couple weeks soon and that if he wished to contact me, the best way to do so would be by email. I thanked him once again and that was that. I'd done the best I could, and now I would wait.

But between May 11 and July 5, a lot of stuff happened.

For instance, on May 13, the day before graduation, I was offered -- and I accepted -- the position at the law office. Therefore, I respectfully declined the position at the other job that would pay me half. Then I got on a plane and traveled 34 hours to the other side of the world. Then I spent two of the best weeks of my life in France and sobbed when I had to leave. Then I came home and had to move all of my belongings the next day. Then I had to find an apartment to move into one month later. Then I had to find new belongings to furnish this apartment with. Then I started my new job and had to go to work and focus on nothing else for eight hours per day. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera... And if you don't think all of these things happening within the first month after graduating from college were enough to make my heart, mind, body, and soul stretch and grow and change and morph into newer, better, stronger versions of themselves... Then you have clearly never experienced something quite like my ungraceful stumble toward responsibility.

So. This was adulthood. I was beginning to settle in nicely to the idea, although the idea of "settling" into anything somewhat gives me hives (but that's another blog entirely). I had begun thinking of the future a bit, and what I wanted to do with myself in the time that would soon follow the present moment. I didn't feel like I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted that moment to look like, than when I had still been a student a month and a half ago. Walking across that stage hadn't suddenly imparted as much wisdom into me as I had hoped it would.

I had a few ideas though, of where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. Nothing too concrete, because as I said earlier, settling scares the living daylights out of me, and I don't want to get ahead of myself here. At the time, I had considered applying for the TAPIF to teach English in France for seven months. That seems like an absolute no-brainer to me. I also seriously contemplated applying with INTERPOL and working in their Headquarters in Lyon. Again, a serious no-brainer for the International Business graduate and Francophile. And everyday, I still very much feel compelled to get on a plane to Boston and never come back. All of these right brain ideas were out there swirling around in my head, and yet, in reality, my left brain knew I had to keep my butt right here in Wichita and earn a living first, if I ever wanted to have a chance to make any of those dreams a reality. Meanwhile, I was still waiting to hear back from the Peace Corps, which still had until September 1st (Hogwarts Express day) to tell me a definitive answer about my fate.

And then the day came. And past. And I had no idea because the email went into my stupid junk folder.

Last Tuesday, on the day after the Fourth of July, I was lying in my bed right before I fell asleep around ten o'clock, and for whatever reason, the mood struck me that I should check my junk folder. Don't ask me why. I opened it and I was thumbing through it, when I saw the name of my interviewer towards the top. He had sent me an email that very day! My heart started racing. I mentally prepared myself. And I opened it.

But it didn't make any sense. He was talking about traveling and how he wondered if  I was still abroad, and he said he was prepared to extend my response time if necessary. What? I was confused. So I went back to my junk folder and that's when it all made sense. He had sent me an official invitation to Senegal one week earlier. And the rule with the Peace Corps, as he had told me in my interview, was that I had three days to respond. Crap. Crap. Crap!!!

I reread his second email. Now it made sense. But I had to respond to him ASAP because I didn't want to keep him waiting. In order to respond, I first had to figure out what I was going to say, and then how I was going to say it. I pressed reply, and I took my time.






The truth is, I already knew long before this moment that I wasn't going to go to Senegal. If I'm really being honest with myself, I knew my heart had fallen out of love with the idea while I was in France. I can't really explain why, much beyond the fact that I simply remembered exactly how much I loved France while I was there. I think, looking back, I may have just wanted to go. Anywhere. I've always felt compelled to go elsewhere and help people. In fact, those were my two main motivations and objectives in my job search to begin with. If I can speak French while doing these two things that my heart so wants to do, then I will enjoy the journey all that much more.

So, I can see why joining the Peace Corps and helping female entrepreneurs in Senegal was so appealing to me. On paper, it makes perfect sense. But when real life happens between the moment when my interest is piqued and when the plane leaves the tarmac, there is more than enough room for a change of heart to occur. Especially when you've got such a fickle heart as mine, which so easily falls in and out of love.

In my response, I told my interviewer that I simply did not feel like this was the right thing for me to do anymore. I explained how things had changed since May, and I told him I felt that it would be extremely unfair to myself, the Peace Corps, and the people of Senegal whose lives I would touch, if I followed through with a twenty-seven month commitment to a cause which I now only felt lukewarm about at best. I would not have been able to sleep at night knowing there might well have been other volunteer candidates whose hearts would've been much more invested in their work than mine.

I'm not gonna lie, it was heartbreaking to write that response. I laid in my bed, in the dark, and typed it out on my phone, and cried because I felt bad. But then I took a deep breath and I pressed send. I just couldn't imagine myself getting on a plane out of Wichita to Senegal this February. Two months ago, that seemed like the right thing to do. I had fewer people and less meaningful things to leave behind. But we don't get to control the path life jerks us down sometimes, and in moments like these, I think it's nice to believe we do have somewhat of a choice. Sure, I didn't choose my heart remembering all of the things it treasures about France when I went back. To be honest, I didn't really plan a lot of things that happened during that trip, but I'm glad they did. I didn't plan to have so few career aspects after graduation either, but here I am, still in Wichita, and at least I'm well-paid. So feeling like I got to decide of my own free will that I would not be going to Senegal alone for more than two years -- while that seemed perfect for the headstrong, independent, strong-willed Alyssa two months ago -- really mattered to me now, and moreover, choosing not to go just felt right.

Every decision we make has its reasons, and a lot of the time, we have very personal justifications for our actions. Nobody owes an explanation to anyone else in this world, but I do think it is very important that we can at least look in the mirror and honestly answer to the one person who matters most in our lives: ourselves. If I had accepted the Peace Corps invitation, I'd be headed for great things. But I'd feel like I made the wrong choice. And that matters much more, because it's not something I'm willing to live with.

The Pleasure and Pain of Travel: Always Holding On, Always Letting Go

I know I am young - a few weeks shy of twenty-two - and I have not experienced nearly enough of the world. I've only ever been to three countries and I haven't even graduated college yet. But I still have my fair share of valuable experiences to offer me guidance and to help me continue to grow.

Something I have learned during my short time on this planet is that life is a balance of holding on and letting go. This lesson became especially close to my heart after I experienced a little bit of traveling and learned what the world looked like from the other side. Of course I had experienced the joy of cherishing a moment before, as well as the anguish of letting go. But it really wasn't until I took myself so far away from my comfort zone, acclimated myself and got comfortable, then had to leave again, that I had a deeper grasp on understanding how these feelings work - or how natural and common they actually are in so many parts of life.

Falling in love is so easy. I can fall in love with anything, really. People, places, food, television shows, boy bands, clothes, foreign languages... There is a doe-eyed, hopeless romantic hidden away deep inside of my heart, and she loves to love. Over time, as is the case with many people, the romantic inside of me has learned some tough lessons from her own experiences with pain. But despite being immersed in agony at times, she remains eager to explore the world and all it has to offer, greeting everyone and everything she encounters with an open mind, an open heart, and a ravenous curiosity.

A few years ago, I fell in love with traveling. I had no idea what I was in for, but I know now that when it comes to not being heartbroken, I never stood a chance. I went to France for a summer to study abroad as a sophomore in college, and my life - and my heart - was changed forever. I fell in love with the abstract idea of traveling itself, as well as the country of France, the culture, the architecture, the food, and most importantly, the people. I had no idea how difficult it would be to let all of these things go when I had to come back home.

Last year, I went to Boston for half a week by myself. Nearly everyone I talked to thought it was such a terrifying idea, a single woman flying across the country alone. But I had to go. I had to know what it was like in the city where I'd never been before, but that was calling me steadily towards it. I needed to experience it for myself. My heart needed to feel what it was like. Four days came and went, and before I knew it, I was on a plane heading out of Logan Airport, just like that. Once again, I felt that familiar twinge of sorrow as I watched the tops of tall Bostonian buildings fade from view as we rose higher into the clouds.

All of these experiences and memories - all of the things I think of fondly when they cross my mind - make me so happy because I hold onto them; I do not let them go. I keep these wonderful tidbits of my life safely tucked away in my heart, filed between other sweet memories like childhood birthday parties and perfect first kisses.

I remember how it felt when that plane landed in Paris at 9:30 in the morning local time after almost 24 hours of traveling. I remember the warmth I felt when I hugged my two adorable and ornery little host sisters for the first time. I remember the fun I had together with an American friend as we drank and flirted with French boys on a Saturday night.

I remember boarding my connecting flight in Atlanta and hearing Boston accents in the rows near me, as we prepared to head northeast. I remember slurping oysters and drinking beer in the oldest restaurant in America after a morning of solo kayaking on the Charles River. I remember the blisters on my feet after a long day wandering around the big city in a sundress and taking photos of skyscrapers.

I would never willingly let any of those memories go. I cherish them. They're beautiful pieces of my life and together they help add up to me, so I clutch them tightly, very near my heart. But I have learned, after some time, that there are things in all of this mess of life that I do have to learn to let go.

Each semester, there is inevitably a new crop of international students who arrive on campus and who create unforgettable ripple effects in my life, if only for a moment. Each semester, after finals are over and celebrations have begun, the time comes when I have to say farewell to a friend I've known for four months. After seeing this person on a daily basis for so long, I have to accept that we will only be communicating over Facebook for the foreseeable future. I have to hug them and tell them to have a safe flight and try not to be sad about someone else leaving. And each semester, it never gets any easier.

These feelings wash over me when my new friends leave for other continents, mainly because of the fun we've experienced and the relationships we've shared across international borders, language barriers, and cultures. But I think these moments remind me of something else, on a deeper level; something that shaped me during such a pivotal moment in my development as a traveler: the morning I had to leave my host family in France.

It was early enough that the sun hadn't yet risen, and in France during summer, it seems rare that the sun is ever down for long. This was such a gloomy morning in comparison to the sun I had known for four weeks. I put my last few belongings away and zipped up my suitcase, carried it down the stairs, and prepared to tell two precious pieces of my heart good-bye. I remember trying in vain not to cry, and hugging my host mother tightly like the American women we are. I remember a sleepy seven-year-old, in the backseat of the car as her family prepared to leave for vacation, wagging her finger at me and very seriously telling me to "continue à apprendre le français" because my French sucked. I remember closing the door, and walking away toward the tram stop, rolling my suitcase behind me, and bawling like a baby.

I remember feeling as if some kind of monster had reached down through my throat and ripped my heart from my chest. My heart, which had just previously been smothered with love, compassion, curiosity, and wanderlust. My heart, which I thought I was keeping safely inside my rib cage, but which had somehow found its way out onto my sleeve. I had built such strong, beautiful, meaningful bonds with so many people in such a short amount of time, and now I was being forced to tell them all good-bye. It didn't seem fair. To subject a human being with such a vast emotional capacity as myself - who feels things before she thinks things - to such an emotional roller coaster ride, is simply cruel. Unless... These feelings exist for a reason, and they are there to teach me something about myself.

Historically, I've never been particularly good at letting go of things once I have become emotionally attached to them. And why would I be? I don't think it's something which is necessarily natural-feeling or innate to human beings. Moreover, it was certainly not something I was explicitly taught to do growing up in Western culture. So I knew how to hold on, how to fall in love with something or someone. But I had no idea how to get over it and let it go once this wonderful thing was gone. I didn't know how to handle the time after it was over, or what the grieving and recovery process should look like.

Boyfriends, sure. I'd loved them and lost them, and strangely enough, gone on to be better than fine without them. Best friends, yeah. I'd lost them too, and I knew I would be just as well without them. Family members and pets, I'd lost before, and I knew how to grieve then. But this was different. This was more than a person or an animal leaving me.

The notion of traveling as an abstract idea is fascinating to me, because it is so malleable and able to be customized to fit any individual's experience. No two people travel the same way, either literally through the rugged countryside or metaphorically throughout life. It is deeply personal and the traveler oftentimes learns more about themselves during their journey, than they originally set out to do. So how can something so beautiful that offers such wonderful experiences, also be the cause of such heartbreak and pain when it's over? Well, that's true with anything we love, isn't it?

Life is a balance of holding on and letting go, but you've got to not only know how to do both, but you've also got to learn when to do both. Perhaps most importantly, you've got to learn that both are equal and necessary counterparts to life and have faith in yourself that things will work out as they are meant to be. You've got to learn that letting go of the experiences and people you love is a part of life, and although it causes you pain, that is only because it first brought you so much pleasure.

The catch about being so alive and feeling so much pleasure, is that the parts of your brain and heart which feel that pleasure, can feel exactly that same amount of pain. All that your nerve receptors do is receive the message you send to them, and transmit it back with the same intensity, regardless of what the feeling is. And if so much love and euphoria can send your heart flying into the sky, that means that anything which hurts it can just as easily bring it crashing back down to the ground. It can be scary. The fact that something like intersecting lives and connecting souls around the world can affect you in such a way, and that it can influence and shape who you are as a person, means that we are vulnerable to being molded and changed at any time. But isn't that beautiful?

The first reaction to pain by many people, is to run from it. To ignore it and avoid it. To try to tough it out in hopes that it will go away. But that approach seldom works for the person experiencing it, and that's how problems go unresolved for quite some time. What if instead of running away from our pain, we ran towards it instead? What if we reach out and touch it, embrace it, hold it close and let it crack apart all the beautiful pieces of our heart and then use the fragmented voids to fill it up with a new kind of love? Get downright vulnerable with our pain. Let it wash over us and consume us, because if we do, it will heal us.

At first pain demands that we feel it - and we do. Then it sucks for a while. But eventually, if we run toward it rather than away from it, we will run so far into it that we meet ourselves. And when we come out from the other side of whatever this painful experience is, we will have changed. We will have been transformed into a different version of ourselves, and there will be no going back to the people we were before. Feeling so deeply can seem like a curse sometimes. But at other times, it provides you with a euphoria so much higher than everybody else. And that makes it all worth the pain.

I've grown so much and learned a lot about holding on and letting go during the last few years of my life. I have fallen in love with people and places and then a short time later, had to leave, every bit as in love as when I arrived. I've driven friends to the airport and hugged them good-bye, and told myself I'll see them again someday. My life has been touched by so many people, places, and experiences, and there's no doubt it is all the richer for it. But that's exactly why it's so hard to let go.

As a traveler, nobody prepared me for the moment when I'd have to say good-bye and return home. As a person, nobody prepared me for how to handle loving so many people in so many places at once. I don't have a solution as to how to let go, because I'm honestly just not very good at it yet. But I know life requires balance, so that must mean that I have to let go in the same capacity and intensity with which I try to hold on.

The people I love will still be there the next time plane tickets go on sale. The places I long to explore are not going anywhere, either. Maybe in the future, I can go visit my international classmates on their soil, rather than waiting for them to return to America. There are so many options for letting go.

Once your heart has made a connection to traveling, once you understand how liberating and beautiful it is, then you begin to understand why it's necessary to let go. By its very nature, traveling is a transient act. You move. You go. You leave. And while that certainly means something incredible is waiting to be seen ahead, it also means you're leaving something else behind. The beauty is found in the act of leaving, of letting go and letting be.

Travelers who master this art have simply opened their hearts so wide, that it has shattered time and again from the pain of leaving love behind. But they understand that anything which is beautiful is also oftentimes shrouded in pain. They open their hearts to feel all of the wonderful things about exploring new lands and new people. But in so doing, they make themselves vulnerable to feeling all the torture and anguish that comes with it, too. And in turn, that shapes and molds the person they are, just as any experience with love does. That's how we know we're alive. One of the most beautiful things about the human experience is that we can feel a full range of emotions from touching the lives of others, and having them touch ours; whether that happens when we are holding on, or when we have to let go.

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 13 (Your Commute To and From Work/School)

Day 13: Your commute to and from work/school

I live and work on campus, so I don't have much of a commute to either location. However, since the addition of the shuttle buses last year, I will say the commute has become much easier for me than it used to be (when the buses are running as they're supposed to).

On Mondays and Wednesdays, I catch the 9:15 bus to campus and ride it three stops to go to class in Clinton at 9:30. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I catch the 7:45 bus and ride it the same distance for class in Clinton at 8:00. On both days, I leave class and walk less than five minutes from the building my class is in to the building where I work.

My commute home is even simpler. I walk across campus about ten minutes to the last bus stop before the one at the dorms where I live and ride the shuttle for about five minutes to get across the busy intersection. The time at which I return home differs from day to day. I don't have class or work on Fridays, so I usually don't make any commute to campus.

I recognize how convenient this commute is for me, even in comparison to the commute I had when I worked a summer job a few months ago. Even living in a city the size of Wichita, I still had to drive 20-30 minutes each way. I know bigger cities require a much longer commute, and that both excites and inconveniences me. (What a privileged problem that is to have.)

While I was in Boston for less than a week this summer, my commute from the city's center to my Airbnb house was about an hour, requiring I change trains twice and then ride the bus to one of the last stops before walking another two blocks to get home. I liked it and disliked it at the same time, but regardless, I've certainly improved at navigating public transportation.

I remember my French host dad telling me that when my host family lived in Paris, he used to have to ride the métro an hour to and from work every day. The métro terrified me the handful of times I used it, and it was always overflowing with sweaty strangers, packed in tightly like a few hundred French sardines.

For now, I've got a commute which is extremely easy, and I'm careful not to take it for granted. But at the same time, I welcome new and exciting changes with open arms.

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 5 (A Place You Would Live, But Have Never Visited)

Day 5: A place you would live, but have never visited

Before August of this year, this would've been Boston, no questions asked. I want to live there so badly. But since I flew out for a visit to scope out my dream city a few months ago, I can no longer attribute this title to it. I'd also live in Paris, given the chance. (Actually most likely a Parisian suburb.) But again, I only know this because I have been there. So... It's got to be London.

Not a doubt about it. I remember in sixth or seventh grade, falling strangely in love with London and all things British pop culture. I know my undying love for Daniel Radcliffe had a lot to do with it. I've never been to London, though I was about € 200 short of going, about a year ago. And though I can't tell the future, there are a few things on my bucket list which I will make darn sure will happen. Going to London is one of them.

British boys. Accents. Style. Funny slang. Driving on the opposite side of the road. Adding a superfluous "u" in words like "colour" and "favourite". Pubs. The Tube. Telephone booths. Big Ben. Parliament. The Scotland Yard. History. Yep, I'm sold.

I'd walk around just giggling to myself with joy and elation at being in such an historical place surrounded by such beautiful people and culture... The way that I remember feeling in France and Boston, alike. I remember the way I chuckled to myself when a native spoke to me with an accent, both French and Bostonian, and then thought to myself, "wait, I'm the one with the accent here." I especially recall that independent feeling of, "wow, look what I've accomplished all by myself... look where I've gotten myself... this place is a dream come true..." I remember how I reveled in the feeling of pure ecstasy and inexplicable inner peace that accompanies actually wanting to be where you are, rather than feeling like the universe just dumped you into some place when you were born, so that's where you've remained.

There has always been something illusive to me about the idea of wandering around somewhere until you feel at home; not physically, but emotionally. I love that feeling, and like any travel junkie jonesing for another high, I would pack my bags in a heartbeat just to feel it again. I think I would feel that way in London.

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 4 (10 Interesting Facts About Yourself)

Day 4: Ten interesting facts about yourself

I don't really know what is to be considered "interesting," as it is a relative term. But I'll do my best.

1. My birthday is on Valentine's Day. But barely. My mom pushed me out just in time at 11:38 PM.
2. I was the youngest child for 15 1/2 years. Then my bratty little brother came along. I love him now. I didn't so much at the time.
3. Je parle français. I took my first French class in seventh grade and studied abroad in France in 2014. I had never realistically considered studying abroad until about six months before it happened.
4. I love Harry Potter. To an obsessive degree. More than Snape loved Lily.
5. I won first place in the city spelling bee in eighth grade. My winning word was "mayonnaise". I got a blue ribbon and everything.
6. I'm a feminist. I've been aware of it since the day I bought Full Frontal Feminism at Barnes & Noble in 2012. But I was one without knowing it for much longer.
7. I don't want to have kids. Seriously. They're messy, expensive, and dependent. I have a little brother and three nephews. My mother and my older sister have done all the child-bearing and child-rearing for me. Now I just get to teach them cool stuff and buy them loud toys.
8. I won a scholarship to go to college my senior year of high school. I'm a first-generation college student (and soon-to-be graduate). I still would've gone, regardless. But the money has certainly helped.
9. My parents divorced when I was 11. That is a large part of the reason why I am very hesitant to get married.
10. I want to travel the world so badly. It's gonna happen some day sooner than I think.

College Friendships & International Exposure

I think back to August of 2012 when I made that first drive to Wichita all by myself, with my belongings all packed up and ready to move to college with me. I was only relocating an hour north, but at 18 years old, I was simultaneously thrilled and terrified. I can remember feeling excited to finally live on my own and be able to go anywhere and do anything, at any time of the day or night without having to answer to my mother. I remember thinking what a huge, vast place Wichita was and how I was probably never going to learn how to get around or remember where anything was located. I also remember feeling like my heart had been ripped straight out of my chest when I drove out of my mom's driveway after kissing my three-year-old baby brother good-bye. I remember feeling so guilty because I just knew he was going to forget all about me and things were never going to be the same again (he didn't, and they were).

I was so sad and scared for many reasons which I was leaving behind, but it quickly occurred to me that I was also scared for a few reasons looking forward. I didn't have a job secured yet and I was unsure of just how long the money I'd made at my summer job would sustain my new college lifestyle. I was moving to a place with a higher crime rate and I couldn't help but imagine being mugged in the bad neighborhoods of the city I would now call home. But perhaps most daunting of all, now that I look back at that moment in my life, is a fear which is far less tangible and  much more realistic: I did not know a single person in Wichita. I was the only one from my graduating class to be going to WSU as a freshman, and while I was very excited about getting away from the people I'd long ago outgrown, it also momentarily paralyzed me with panic.

I had no one. The realization really hit me that first night when I went to bed in my dark new dorm room, all by myself, without my Mommy, my baby brother, my best friend, or my boyfriend. I only had myself. My roommate hadn't arrived yet and there was no guarantee I'd like her when she did (I didn't). I was just going to have to make friends in my classes and cross my fingers that I'd eventually find some people who would understand me.

It took some time at first, but eventually I did find my own little tribe of various misfits and weirdos.

Freshman year was rough, and I really only still speak to one person who I knew at that time. I like to think of that first year as the awkward freshman year that a lot of people experience, where you try your hand at a lot of different things just to find out what you like and see what sticks. My roommate and I didn't have much in common and we lived in an unhealthy silence for the entire year. This greatly shaped my outlook on making new friends. My suitemate and I, however, banded together for a while, but towards the end of the year that began to disintegrate as our paths went in separate directions. I'd made a few other friends through work (I actually ended up getting a job before August was even over, and I stayed there for a year) and various other activities. At the end of the year, though, I left Wichita to go home for the summer still feeling pretty alone.

The following year was really the turning point in my college career. You always hear stories where people say "we met in college" or they talk about how they went to college with their best friends/bridesmaids/groomsmen. This is the really profound part of my journey where I first encountered those kinds of characters in my life's story. I moved into a different residence hall, partially by choice, and partially because the university's administration kicked returning students out of where I'd previously lived. It doesn't really matter now how my path led me there, because I ended up exactly where I was meant to be. I was at Brennan.

I cannot count on both my hands all of the countries represented in Brennan. There are a lot. Within the first week of living there, I had made new friends from all over the world; from places I'd never known anyone from before; and certainly from places I could not identify on a map. Brennan was a hodge-podge of so many different ethnicities and nationalities, due in part to its close location to the International Education office, and also because it had the cheapest housing rates available. Throwing so many international students and domestic students together in two buildings certainly had its quirks.

Although we came from many different cultures individually, the combined culture of Brennan was one rich in brutal honesty, immense sexual innuendo, racist jokes, and mild sexism. We all spent entirely too much time together, frequently invaded one another's personal space, knew terrible truths about each other, and at some point everyone had been pissed off at someone else. Despite all of our various differences, what kept us together were the things we had in common. We were one giant, usually loving, always misbehaving, slightly dysfunctional, multi-colored family.

I have this big world map on my wall right above my bed this year, where I put little adhesive tags with the names of my loved ones on it. I am a visual learner and seeing my friends spread out geographically like that really puts it into context for me. There are some tabs on the map which represent people who I did not meet through Brennan, and I cherish those international friendships just as dearly. I know by my age, plenty of people have accomplished much more. But I'm quite proud of being twenty-one-and-a-half years old and having friends from six out of seven continents. (Does anyone really live in Antarctica anyway?)

The Brennan residence hall has since been shut down by the administration, and we dispersed in different directions. We all feel collectively pretty sad and even a little bitter about it, but I remember what a friend told me last year: "Brennan's not a building. It's a community." A group of us moved together into another residence hall after it closed, and we still hang out regularly. It's not quite the same as it was before, but just like anything else in life, it has evolved as time has gone on. A few of the members of my Brennan family have since returned back to their home countries, and while I always hate it when the international students leave, Facebook does help keep us close. And I doubt if they know this, but I assume that I have a place to stay in any of their home countries if ever I should need it.

I look at this map on my wall, and I think back to my freshman year in Wichita. I spent that first lonely night in my empty dorm room, just a few doors down in the very hall where I sleep now. I didn't know a single person when I moved to (what I thought was) a big city three years ago. Wichita seemed cold and lonely and truly terrifying to even the most headstrong of eighteen-year-old girls.

Apart from my time spent cultivating international relationships at Brennan, I did travel abroad for the first time in college, which inspired me to take a solo trip to check out an even bigger city later. When I look at my map of friends and see how far away the places I've been are located from the tag that says "Mom & Zane", I realize that the one hour drive from home to Wichita in 2012 was not so far, afterall.

I have grown an incredible amount in such a short span of time during my college years. I know I'm responsible for most of it myself, but I don't pretend that at least part of that growth has been due to them; those little adhesive tags littered all over my map, which represent living, breathing people, with whom I've lived, slept, ate, argued, and known on a very real level. Without even one of those people in my life, I would not be the very person I am today. Nobody can do everything in this world on their own, least of all grow.

Three years ago when I made that interminable drive to Wichita with all my belongings, the thought never once crossed my mind that I was driving toward such meaningful friendships and such varied cultural exposure. I felt so alone in a city of 380,000. I knew no one. Now, a short time later, I feel so at home all over the world; and it all changed within the same city limits.

Now I feel I'm outgrowing Wichita, just as I felt when I outgrew Ark City. I made a big girl leap into a bigger city 50 miles away, even though I was scared. It took some time and adjustment, but I now know I survived. Having that knowledge and experience under my belt, I am now much more fearless to do it again, on a larger scale.

It's strange to think that so much has changed in such a short amount of time. But meeting so many people from so many places (along with my own traveling experience) has taught me that I can indeed go anywhere and do anything, because I now know I can make a home and find friends anywhere at all in this world, no matter how scared and alone I might feel when I first arrive. I've just got to look around to find my own little tribe of misfits and weirdos, wherever I may be. They look different and they come from different places, but no matter where I may go, they're there: friendships waiting to be made.

"Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open." - Albus Dumbledore

You Will Actually Have To Work Hard To Get There

"I don't want to move all the way there, have no job, and have to live in my car!"

"I did."

"But it's so far away -- halfway across the country -- and it scares me sometimes."

"Excuse me? Do you know who you're talking to? And when I moved here, there was no Internet!"

Arguing with Kate has never proven itself to be a very successful, worthwhile activity to me. Especially not when I know that she's right (which accounts for about nine out of every ten of our arguments). Kate and I have both come to know that eventually, a few weeks after she suggests something to me, I will usually decide she was right and do whatever it was she told me to do.

I usually call Kate "my academic advisor" when people ask me who she is, but my rightful academic advisor is really some person who sits in an office in the basement of the business school and tells freshmen what classes they need to take. I honestly couldn't even tell you which advisor is assigned to my student ID number. That's because over the course of the last three years, every time I've had a question pertaining to the university, my major, or any future career options I may have, I've always just sent Kate a Facebook message immediately after the question occurs to me. (Usually there is an abundance of follow-up questions included, and the questions always seem to come to me frantically sometime after midnight.)

In reality, when I met Kate, she was the Assistant Dean of the business school. She has a long list of esteemed credentials and titles to her name, but most importantly to me, Kate is the woman who saw some flicker of potential in me as a sassy, seventeen-year-old high school senior when I entered a scholarship competition all the way back in 2011; and she is one of the people responsible for choosing me as the recipient of an extremely helpful sum of scholarship money to finance my college education. In essence, one could reasonably say Kate is the reason why I am at WSU.

As I mentioned, Kate has known me since I was seventeen. I am now closing in on twenty-two. I cannot emphasize enough how much a person changes over the span of those five years. I will also say, that for better or for worse, Kate is at least partially responsible for some of those changes. As I have grown and changed since the day we met in November 2011, so too, has our relationship.

The one constant that I secretly hope will never change, however, is that Kate doesn't put up with any of my shit. She has heard all of my excuses about how I am afraid of being a real adult, how I despise math and hated all of those required business calculus and statistics classes, how I love my on-campus job and don't want to push myself to find an internship which will pay better. And she has tolerated absolutely zero of all of it. There have been times when I have been highly irritated with her pushing me to do something I was simply too lazy or unwilling to do, just as I know there have been times when she has rolled her eyes at my lazy unwillingness and known, to herself, that at some point in the future when I finally decided to agree with her, I would do it. She is one of the only people I've ever met, besides perhaps my own mother, whose stubbornness contends with my own.

The particular conversation we were having on this day was one we have had many times, in many forms: what am I going to do after I graduate? I can tell you what I want to do after I graduate. And Kate has told me endless times that she knows I can do what I want to do after I graduate. The only remaining piece of the puzzle is connecting point A to point B, crossing my fingers, and hoping it all works out.

I want to move to Boston. I want to work for a publication -- no particular one, but one that fits my views, naturally, be it writing about feminism, travel, international peace and humanitarianism, or be it researching consumer behavior and target markets in the publication production industry. Beyond those two goals, I really just want to be able to afford an apartment (probably with a roommate), buy cute clothes at Target, and maybe visit my family in Kansas on Christmas. They are certainly not uncommon or grandiose goals, but from the perspective of a recent college graduate moving alone 1,625 miles away from her birthplace with relatively little money saved and impending student loan payments due in six months, every day these goals feel daunting. The goals are simple: Move to Boston. Work for a publication. Simple, although not easy.

You know how earlier I said Kate is sort of like my academic advisor? Well, she's also sort of like my free therapist. For the umpteenth time, I was whining and crying to her about how I was terrified of being poor and alone with no job prospects in my dream city, and she ruthlessly shut me down. You see, one thing I also forgot to mention earlier about Kate is that she was born in Taiwan. In addition to naturally possessing a high amount of tough love, she further feels no pity for me moving a few states away to Massachusetts because she moved halfway across the world to another country and learned another language, while working multiple jobs and putting herself through college to eventually become a professional businesswoman -- all by herself. So I guess it really comes as no surprise that she wants to smack me sometimes. I would have done it by now, if I were her.

So, this discussion we were having about me moving to Boston was going in about the same circles as usual:

"I want to move to Boston."

"Then move!"

"But I'm scared."

"Scared of what?"

"Being poor."

"Then get a big girl job now and save your money."

"But I love my job."

"Then get another."

"But I don't have time for one!"

"Well, I don't know what to tell you."

"Ugghhh but Kate!"

*silently purses lips and gives me motherly side-eye*

And this is how it goes. See? I told you I would've smacked me by now.

That conversation is actually what sparked me writing this very blog. When I told her I was afraid of having no money and having to live in my car, she told me that she had done that very thing before, as if it were just an expected part of the struggle I was knowingly signing myself up for by falling in love with a big city. Then, when I started complaining about being so far away from my family and friends, she was rightfully appalled, because she also did that very thing back in 1990 (pre-Internet, as she reminded me). Then she said, "Write about that! Talk about your struggle, because I promise you, there are a lot of other college students standing in your shoes right now. They will relate!"

We had this conversation two weeks ago. And here I am now, delayed long enough to make the decision on my own, typing away because Kate told me to. Just like clockwork. (Although, the blog intended to be about the college struggle has actually materialized as a blog about Kate, instead.)

When I think about the situation from Kate's perspective, I shake my head at myself because I realize just how privileged and lazy I am. Kate worked much harder to get where she is today than I am working to get to Boston by this time next year. I think that's just it though: I didn't realize that I am going to have to actually work hard for it. Of course it's going to be hard. If it were easy, it wouldn't mean as much. If it were comfortable, it wouldn't make me grow.

Kate chose me as a finalist so many years ago because I demonstrated something to her that made her feel I was a good investment. I have never asked her what that was, and I don't plan on doing so. I prefer it remain a mystery for my own imagination. But I can tell you this: whatever it was that I had, I'm sure glad I had it. I am so grateful that Kate liked what she saw and that she extended her hand to me, on the behalf of some very generous scholarship donors, to pull me up and help me through college, thus making possible all the experiences that come with it.

Now I don't know this for sure, and I don't want to put words into anyone's mouth, but I'm betting that Kate didn't have a Kate when she was in college. Most people are not lucky enough to have a Kate in college, someone whose tough love and persistence supports and pushes them throughout the entire process. I would wager to guess that she was not the recipient of such a benevolent gesture as I was when I was awarded that scholarship package. I don't think she has ever had anything handed to her. That's not to imply that I have had things handed to me, or to say that I haven't known my own fair share of struggles, either. But it certainly puts things into perspective for me and makes me think hard about how badly I want to move to Boston and what I will have to do to get there.

There comes a point in time when a flower outgrows its limited environment, and it needs to be transplanted from its small pot into a bigger garden so its roots can continue to expand, stretching out like cramped legs to gather nutrients to provide the plant with life, otherwise it faces a slow and painful death. If I don't take advantage of my opportunity to grow and develop in a bigger environment, staying where I am will stifle my desire to leave and eventually it will permanently stunt my growth. My roots are smothered and crowded and itching to break free of the pot into which I have been crammed for so long. I need to find nutrients in a bigger garden in order to sustain my life.

I want to move to Boston. I have to move to Boston. I need to get out of Kansas. I know that I am capable of feeling more fulfilled than I do here. I know that people are capable of better understanding me than they do here. I want to reach the high of euphoria again that being in a place I love so much brings with it, and which is impossible for me to ascertain here. I have to go explore what is out there waiting for me, otherwise I will never know.

I have always been one to do what I want. The more I want it, the more likely I am to do it -- and more quickly. I will do anything I have to in order to get what I want. Both of my parents can attest that I have been this way since I was a child. It is intrinsic to who I am.

Even with my vast vocabulary, I cannot adequately explain how badly I want to move to Boston. So, if working hard is what it takes to get me what I want, then I am going to do it, quick and with a passion. Especially when I stop and think about how much harder Kate worked when she was in similar shoes.

I remember during one of the presentations at that scholarship competition in 2011, somebody told us, "Kate is here to help you. But she doesn't come to you. If you need help, you go to Kate." Well, I've gone to Kate for help more times than I can count. And she has endlessly given me her help when I've asked for it. She has shared her knowledge and experience with me for years, trying to guide a stubborn girl in the right direction.

And now, eight months from graduation, I guess it would be a pretty good time for me to think about doing what she tells me. After all, I wasn't selected as a finalist because she thought I wouldn't listen or work hard for what I want. She knows what she's talking about when it comes to all of this, because not too long ago, she worked hard to make it on her own very similar journey. Thankfully, I will still have a Facebook connection for when I run into late night identity crises and career catastrophes in Boston.

Why I'm Absolutely Unafraid To Travel Alone

I like to do things alone. I like to be alone. I always have to some extent, and I probably always will. Don't get me wrong, I do not dislike people and I have no fear of interacting with others -- quite the opposite, really. I love fiercely and I am not known to shy away from extensive conversation. I just enjoy the quiet and space to be myself -- to be with myself -- that being alone brings with it. I have learned that it is easiest for me to listen to myself when I have few outside distractions. And boy, is listening to myself ever important.

Like being alone, I am also contented to travel. Anywhere, anytime, by any means. I relish discovering new things, and I revel in the sphere of possibility that comes with moving about unexplored places in this world. To me, the allure of travel is simple: I can explore anywhere my heart desires and I can have any adventure I decide. Traveling is simultaneously a way to exercise control over your life, as well as a way to lose total control.

Travel allows you to control your life because of the small bit of planning it necessitates. Booking a plane ticket, saving up money, and packing your bags are all things that require long-term awareness and self-discipline. On the other hand, delayed flights, lost wallets, language barriers, and unfamiliar public transportation systems all demand patience and composure as things that are totally out of your control directly affect you. I have experienced both some of the most peaceful and most stressful moments of my life while traveling. That's the beauty of it. You really never know ahead of time what is going to happen and what lessons you are going to learn. The only guarantee is that something will happen and you will learn a lesson. The latitude to decide exactly what that may be is between yourself and the universe.

So I guess it shouldn't really come as a surprise that someone who enjoys her alone time, and who has learned the importance of listening to her heart and tuning into her own consciousness, finds traveling alone to be one of the greatest joys life has to offer.

When I'm alone, I can decide where I want to go, what I want to eat, and what I am going to do next. Perhaps this is a selfish aspiration, but I am entitled to take care of my own well-being, and for me, solitude offers a nurturing quality that allows me to do just that. In my experience, you become most yourself when you are traveling, because your comfort zone is transient and you don't exactly have time to create the superfluous projections of yourself that the cushion of everyday life affords you. So, being most myself when I travel, I like to be alone.

Please don't misunderstand; I enjoy being around others and I know that socializing with locals is one of the best ways to really get to know a new place for the short while you're there. I love making friends when I go someplace new. In fact, traveling has taught me to appreciate friendships more quickly, because the bonds you build while traveling often have an expiration date. At home, a person does not have the opportunity to make friends out of strangers in the same capacity as while traveling. Often, our lives are very different from those of strangers, and sharing our experiences teaches everyone lessons. There is beauty, not only in learning how you are different, but also in uncovering what you have in common.

But there is a qualitative difference between temporarily befriending someone you encounter on your path, and being surrounded by others for the entire journey of your path. So I guess my preference for traveling alone really comes down to this:

1. I make my own schedule.
This is the part that sounds a little harsh and selfish. But I will not apologize for it. Life is short, and the time you are allotted in any given place while traveling is even shorter. I am a selectively patient person and I don't like to feel like I'm wasting my time. I can sit and enjoy the silence all day long, completely at ease, as long as it was my idea. But drag me through a crowded tourist attraction when my feet hurt and I have no desire to be there, and I just might resent you forever.

Traveling together creates a certain bond of intimacy between people. You are likely to share beds, food, money, and quite a bit of personal space. When it works, it's marvelous. But when it doesn't work, I can guarantee you will never want to see that person again after you return home.

Let's just say I am being noble in caring too much about my friendships to sacrifice any of them by traveling together.

2. I learn so much more about myself.
I spend a lot of time in my head. I have learned to (usually) think before I speak, and as a result, some thoughts never make it out of the space between my ears. Other times, I am simply observing and retaining information for myself. Just sitting and watching your surroundings can teach a traveler so much; there's no need -- and certainly no possible way -- to comment on it all. Watching the behavior of the locals is sometimes the best way to teach yourself what to do.

Going far away from others who know you allows you the freedom to be anyone you want to be. You miraculously no longer feel the pressure to conform before the opinions of your peers, and being surrounded by perfect strangers gives you the opportunity to behave completely differently, if you so wish.

It's true that we are most ourselves when we are alone. We learn to form opinions for ourselves, because the judgment of strangers matters far less than the judgment of friends. We are honest with ourselves and we face what's inside of us because we have no distractions in which to hide. We learn how self-sufficient we are capable of being, and realize that we've been this way all along.

In all my traveling experience, I hold one frustratingly glorious truth above the rest: getting lost helps. I have never intended to get lost; I don't think anybody really does. But inevitably, at least once, I somehow end up far away from my desired destination, without any idea where I took the wrong turn. There have been times when I was a little panicked and thought surely this was where I was going to die. There have been times when I have asked directions, pretended I knew what they were talking about, and walked away just as lost as before. There have been times when I was so lost that I straight up abandoned my original plan and just found something else to do instead.

But every time I have gotten lost in some giant, unfamiliar place, I have ultimately relied entirely upon my own resourceful skillset and listened to my own primal instincts. I have always adapted to my surroundings and, somehow or another, I have always found my way back into the familiar again, and I've survived far enough to be here typing this now. My point is, things going wrong can teach you so much more than if everything goes according to plan. Your reaction is more important when your cell phone dies, you lose your map, and it's getting dark, than when conditions are normal. You learn quickly what you're made of when that's all you've got to rely on.

3. We are all alone already anyway.
My first real experience of travel came into my life at a time of great personal transformation. From the beginning of that first journey, I saw it as an opportunity to prove to myself that I could do big, wonderful things all by myself. More importantly, I could do these big, wonderful things all for myself. I guess that tone of sovereignty hasn't really left.

In the past, when I have told people I am planning a trip alone, their reactions have been varied. However, the reaction that sticks out the most to me is, "You're going alone? But aren't you scared? I could never do that!"

The truth is, we can all do just about anything if we are motivated enough. At face value, the question "aren't you scared?" would appear to be concerned for my safety as a lone wolf traveling in a dangerous world. At least, that's what I thought at first. But then I asked myself, what if the thing I am supposed to be scared of is being alone? What if these people who say they "could never do that" are more afraid of sitting alone with themselves than they are of being mugged?

That's when I realized it: I am so capable of being alone, of facing myself and my feelings, of looking myself in the eyes and loving myself, that I am not afraid. Traveling alone does not scare me because I know so well who I am and what I am capable of, that my internal confidence is greater than anything I could possibly encounter in the external world.

Maybe I'm a narcissist, or maybe I am just fiercely independent to a fault, but I like being alone. It is my time to sit with myself and reflect on my own life, thoughts, and feelings. I can dream all my big dreams and think deeply about the world around me. I enjoy it. It brings me peace and healing. I'm certainly not afraid of it.

Being alone means being with nobody but yourself. Being afraid means something scares you. Therefore, being afraid of being alone means being with nobody but yourself scares you. I'm not afraid of being by myself. There is nothing inside of me that I am afraid to face, because it is only a manifestation of myself, after all. I am the only one who controls it. I do not occupy myself with others in order to avoid facing who I am. To the contrary, I want to know who I am.

The fact of the matter is, we're all alone in this life anyway. Some of us just like to maintain the illusion that we aren't because it makes the world seem like a little less scary of a place to live. But others of us know that this is just a pleasant façade generated by our minds to act as a buffer against fear and isolation. My mind has always operated in a very blunt, matter-of-fact manner, so I consider myself lucky that I don't struggle with this. It simply is what it is.

So, I suppose I could be afraid of being mugged or assaulted in an unfamiliar place. But I have a taser and a pretty strong right hook for a situation like that. That doesn't make me afraid to travel alone. I could be mugged right here at home. Money and belongings can be replaced. Memories and opportunities cannot.

I am absolutely unafraid to travel alone because the good things that come from it are far more valuable to me and my journey than any of the potential bad things that could happen. It's all experience in the end, really.  If I can face myself and like what I see, then I can surely go out and face the rest of this big, old world and like what I see there, too.

"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we are not alone." - Orson Welles

Welcome To New York (Boston).

I was driving to work last week, weaving through busy rush hour traffic on Rock Road. Taylor Swift's 1989 CD was absentmindedly playing as background noise in my stereo, as it has been since the album dropped last October. I was preparing to spend the next several hours begrudgingly earning $7.50 an hour around co-workers whom I didn't like, and customers whom I liked even less. I wasn't exactly in the brightest of moods. Then, through the haze of my own bad attitude, I heard good ol' T-Swift crooning to me the words I needed to hear, like she's done hundreds of times before.

You see, I have a dream. Many dreams, in fact. But the dream currently responsible for the high in my life is one about travel, one about adventure and freedom and finding myself. Like many young people before me, I yearn to leave my safe, familiar comfort zone and get wonderfully lost in a new, giant, mesmerizing place, eventually making it my own.

And since the day I bought it three months ago, I have been all too aware of that plane ticket to Boston with my name on it.

I'll be heading east on a grand, new exploit of my own, in as little as twenty-seven days from now. That's the dream that's been fueling my passion through the mundane activities of two summer jobs and three summer classes since the middle of May. What has filled my sails with wind as the days dwindle away is anticipating the joy I will experience during my short four-day caper in the city that will hopefully soon be my home.

So last week when I heard Taylor Swift's lyrics in the song she wrote about her love for New York City, even after hearing them and mindlessly humming along to them time and time again for months on end, I paused. I thought about the gravity of her words.

"Like any great love, it keeps you guessing

Like any real love, it's ever-changing

Like any true love, it drives you crazy

But you know you wouldn't change anything, anything, anything"

I have been a dedicated T-Swift fan since "Teardrops on My Guitar". I was there for Taylor when she was just a sixteen-year-old girl who lived in Nashville and wore cowboy boots and sundresses to the Academy of Country Music Awards. I remember when she said that Nashville was her home, furthermore, that country music was her home; and that she'd never dream of cutting her hair or moving to a big city like NYC or LA. Well, well... how things change.

"Welcome To New York" is Taylor's declaration about how she fearlessly fell in love with a city, with its people, and with the experience itself. And, like any Taylor Swift song, she is vividly painting a picture of it as one huge, beautiful love affair. Taylor Swift is in love with a city. And why not? A city is just as full of human emotion as the people who inhabit it.

These lyrics are the ones that spoke out to me last week on my drive to work. They were casual and commonplace, yet they were gently reminding me to keep pushing myself toward whatever it is that draws me in, to whatever feels right to me.

You see, love comes in many forms in this lifetime. And heaven knows I'm a sucker for falling in love with new places. It's been barely over a year since the Travel Bug bit me, and the virus has only been incubating and growing stronger within me this long; it has not been dormant or forgotten.

Travel will surely keep you guessing, much like life itself. How am I to know what lies around the corner for me? How am I supposed to find out, if I'm never brave enough to take the steps necessary to arrive at the corner in the first place?

Travel is certainly ever-changing, most obviously by the number of possible destinations one could choose to explore and make their own.

And travel is definitely enough to drive a person crazy, especially those of us who so quickly get emotionally attached to people and places, with little foresight for the consequences we will inevitably face when the time comes to leave.

But I wouldn't change anything. Not one single part of the delightful, possessive, magical beauty that is creating my own home in a place faraway from anywhere I've been before.

In the few seconds it took for my copy of 1989 to play those lines, my brain and my heart merged into the same wavelength. For one fleeting moment, my mind and soul were alive with the wondrously dangerous combination of adrenaline and oxytocin that only comes from love. To people who have ever traveled before to some other place and who have instantly fallen in love with the new scenery and the new perspective of life, no explanation of Taylor Swift's love affair with New York is needed. We already understand, because the feeling is pumping through our veins with every beat of our lustful, wandering hearts.