i feel like this is really, really, really what im supposed to do.

like its not supposed to be just some little thing like, 'this is saras life. sara works at target. sara went to amsterdam for a little bit. sara works at target again.'
oh sweet betsy if i end up back at target or anywhere like it i will die.
I feel like this isnt just a teeny escape from my regular life, but rather the beginning of a whole new way of life. i won't be in that awkward waiting stage, saving money at a job you're good at (probably along with anyone else who doesnt suffer from physical handicaps) but settled for and has nothing to do with any of your desires, wondering what i am going to do with my life, if this is ever going to go anywhere, if i am ever going to take the steps to live the sort of life that i was made for.
THIS IS IT. this is my ideal life. living all over, meeting all sorts of people, building relationships, and helping people. not even close to conventional, but since when am i conventional?

money doesnt matter to me. i highly value education and appreciate it and love learning and want to extend my knowledge as much as possible (with or without schooling) but when im 80 and i look back on my life, even if i do end up going back to school, and who knows, maybe even get my masters if im bored/inspired enough, my "accomplishments," the things that were really important to me and impacted my life will probably have little to do with completing a system of courses that society uses to determine your worth or intelligence.
  The most important things to me are God, relationships, living in a way that  is right and benefits others, and doing everything i feel i should do.
cuzzz for realz why the heck should i settle for living like everyone else? everyone else does not want to do exactly what i want to do! everyone else is not interested in what i am interested in! so why live a certain way just because that seems to be what is socially accepted of me??
SCREW EVERYONE I AM DOING WHATEVER FLOATS MY BOAT!
Obviously i dont mean this literally, i will always take into consideration how it effects those I care about and those around me and im not gunna go bust a cap in a homie just cuz i feel like it, i just mean i am not going to worry about the judgement i get (<--so im not in school. seriously?? is that like universal code for throwing your life away or something?)/will get when my lifestyle gets even more Sara-y and less typical 20 year old.

Movies and magazines and filled with crappy quotes about reaching for the stars or whatever, following your dream, but its always in this generic 'start your own business,' or 'even though your from the ghetto become a successful rap musician,' sort of thing.
Well thats not my dream.
 I dont care about finding success, I care about love and happiness.
I dont want just one thing, I want to do everything!
I want to paint and create and be a musician and dancer and start a business or a something (a coffee shop, a bookstore, an orphanage, making and selling my own products, something theres a million of but is completely unique to its kind), and work with nuns even though im not catholic, and go all over the world - but not to visit, to live (but never for too long, until i finally fall so completely in love with some place that i cant bare to leave it), and take pictures of everything, and become a mother, and help spread AIDs awareness in Africa, and be in love with a boy for my entire life and have him love me back, meet the sort of people who change your life,  be the sort of person who changes other peoples lives, and be homeless for awhile just for kicks, and read in the park everyday, and (((james just called me?? what??? i wish he had left a message, that punk!))) become a film and music critic and go to shows allll the freakin time and say stuff like 'oh, yeah, bjork was pretty good the first 9 times i saw her...', (((oh!! he did leave a msg! it was just like 3 minutes long. hurrrrah! ...oh.. no, its a few people and i have no idea what they're saying, or if they even know they hadnt hung up.shucks.))), become a visual anthropologist, volunteer random places for the rest of my life, build houses in mexico, do ywam, plant gardens all over the world!, become a graffiti master, and meet ALL sorts of people from all different nationalities and backgrounds, and have a job that is silly and pays very little but i love and is exactly perfect for me, and bake my own bread and share it with the little widow who lives next door who at first seemed atrocious but im discovering is actually quite adorable and endearing, and be the best sort of friend possible to anyone who needs one, and to find beauty in everything, and to... theres just so much that i want to do! my dreams can't be contained by one career or a generic american lifestyle!

Basically, this has been the really long way of saying that even though Amsterdam would be fairly temporary, I feel like it is exactly what I am supposed to do and is the perfect initiation into living by passion and what compels and captivates me and challenges and encourages and breaks and beautify's me. It's so weird, I get kooky ideas like this all of the time but i usually have so many reservations about them that stop me, even if it was only a week before i was supposed to leave (i.e. summer 06). I have almost no doubts in my mind that this is what I need to do. I just hope the application process agrees with me.

50 - sea wolf - leaves in the river

I met a girl on Halloween
When she was lost, and I was drunk
And it was dark and cold out when we left

And as we walked the rain started
The leaves softened with every step
And all around us people slept alone with their dreams

The wind came down from up the planes
And blew the leaves all through the streets
I wondered how far leaves could really fly

Would they rest in suburb yards
Or make it to the city
Or would they end up in the river just to float away

She pointed to a small brick house
And said it was where she grew up
The lights were out, she aked if we could stop for awhile

Her hair was still just getting wet
The water running down her neck
Collecting in the handprint in cement beneath her feet

Apparently there'd been a death
Someone close and nothing left
Because she hadn't left him in the end

I saw her blush when I asked
If she always talked like that
She said it only happened when she drank

And later on I felt her hand
Slipping into my cold fist
She promised me a kiss as soon as we got home

Her costume had begun to tear
She ran ahead and turned to me
Her laughter echoed through the empty streets

- - - - -You, beneath the bed, I know all your tricks
I've seen you watching
I've seen you drifting away
I've seen you floating along
I've seen you disappear

Now, there ain't a cloud in sight
And through the snow and the branches
I can count all your teeth
Yeah I can count all your teeth
Now the bed's on fire and the ceiling's gone
And your mom and dad still sing the same old song
Don't scare me off now, I'm your only friend
Don't scare me off now, I'm your only friend

But now you're drifting away
Now you're floating along
And soon you'll disappear

I closed my eyes and saw my father's sins
They covered me like a second skin
I peeled them off, and sure I bled a bit
But now I'm free to sink my own damn ship
I cut my branch down from my family tree
To start a fire in the living room
Now the house is just ash, this time it's sink or swim

Let the river in
If blood is thicker than water
Then let the river in
We might drift a ways, but we've got thick skin

Let the river in
If blood is thicker than water
Then let the river in
We might drift a ways, but we'll find our way again

03 let the river in

At 8 you walked in with your eyes still half closed and a blanket wrapped around yours shoulders. You threw a shoe at my head. You smiled sleepily and pleasantly at me. 
Your smile gave me mixed emotions on how I felt about being hit in the head with a shoe, like maybe because you looked so happy afterwards you thought it was a good and beneficial thing to throw at my head and i would like it, so i should have an equally pleasant response. and i wasnt sure if you just did something mean and rude or cute and endearing.

so it's 2008 and I'm 20
and i feel like that is very, very wrong.
like somehow something must have gotten confused in the calendar,
my body has grown too much, my mind is still so small for someone of 20 years!

I don't want to keep growing, i dont want to keep aging, i just want to BE, forever who i am. of course i'd like who i am to improve, but what if it doesn't? what if its all downhill from here? what if my biggest accomplishment in life is that i can beat that foghat song on the hard setting of guitar hero,  but thats it, i cant beat anymore of them and i dont have anything else going for me,  and i become one of those cynical hermits and i am always doing something crazy and funny,  but no one ever knows because i'm all alone, except for the exclusive company of my schizophrenic pet alpaca,  Forensic, who is also kind of lonely and crazy and too wrapped up in the tragedy of the fact that he would prefer a field to my kitchen to really want to spend anytime with me... 
plus his schizophrenia makes him think i am a tiger-dinosaur hybrid who only eats alpaca meat,
which is an awful way to think of your only friend, but i dont hold it against Forensic as i am probably just as terrible as that, only in different, less conspicuous ways.

(and really i havent even beat that foghat song on hard mode yet, so i dont even have that going for me)

currently undecided.

Asian girls needed or girls with pretty feet needed!!!

Reply: click here

i was walking through the aisles at work and i was thinking about how it all seems so meaningless. florescent lights beaming down on endless rows of red and white, middle aged men squinting at their potential next buy of heater filters, another employee pushing a tub of already overstuffed light displays past, sending a polite and hollow smile in my direction. its just... what difference does it make that i am there? minus unfortunate bouts of talkativity, im a good worker, so i guess i help the my supervisors and managers have a lighter work load/less to complain about, in turn helping the corporation as a whole. whoop-de-doo. i help a multi-million dollar corporation make more money while i get just over minimum wage to stock mens underwear. awesome.

at least with penneys, my priority was customer service rather than being more task oriented, so i could take the time to make little old ladies days better with my ability to find an attractive and affordable outfit for their grandchild that fit there style and wallet and having an upbeat attitude and just... being interested in the fact that that same grandchild was born with a leg deformity and really likes cats. caring makes peoples lives better. one woman cried one day because i spent so much time talking and helping her, it was small but it really made a difference for her. at least i had that.

i could be content with that, i like making little little differences. but i know that i am capable of much more and thats where the problem lies. so are a lot of my co-workers, for that matter, but in an unrealized potential sort of way. when you know something, you have the responsibility to act.

yesterday i found a video of 2ndfree where the kids were playing a game where you try to pop everyone elses balloon without getting yours popped. the room is swarming with kids gleefully running from one side of the room to the other, a burst of multi colored balloons scattered between them. and then in the corner you see a little boy holding his ears and crying, soon to be in my arms while i comfort him. when i saw that i could almost feel the weight of leslie against me. leslie is 8 and in essence, too old to be scared by balloon popping games. he's got a few mental handicaps, and is loud and crazy and sensitive and happy and scared and it seems as if all of his emotions go a notch further than anyone elses. the other kids tease him, his grandma and young father pay little attention to him (hence why i got to spend so much time with him over the past two summers), and other adults are either two worn down by him to care anymore, or just have other things to focus on.
  but i love leslie, this proposed unloved kid, and i find meaning in showing him that he is loved and he is worth at least one persons time. and i know it made a difference to him. he is almost incapable of remembering certain things, he doesnt learn or remember easily. so when i came back a year later and everyone who had worked with him mentioned that he had asked about me everyday, it was sweet, but i figured he probably remembered the idea of me more than the my actual self, and wasnt sure he would even recognize me. so when i finally saw him and he ran to me, wrapped his arms around me, and proclaimed "SARA!! I LOVE you!" and looked up to me with teary, sincere eyes and said "I missed you yesterday," it was almost enough to break my heart to know that i had to leave him again.

but thinking about that really made me question what im doing with my life at this moment. i really do think that that truly loving people who might not get it elsewhere is where i find fulfillment. everywhere ive gone where ive invested in the lives of others, for the next year or so (well beyond that, but i usually do something every summer and so its mainly whatever was the most recent) my mind wanders back to them and how they're doing and how i wish i could go back.
eaglelodge, wisla, riverwoods, sagrada, new york ahhh all those experiences mean so much to me.
those were mostly short term, a week to a month, but even the stuff that was longer. i worked with sunshine for two years solidly, and 5 years sporodically, and i hellaz miss my 4th grade class from last year.
if i could be a camp counselor for the rest of my life, ....well i dont know if i could, its so emotionally draining (you can only be so unaffected by 'my brother was murdered last year' and 'my parents beat me and i want to commit suicide' tearful confessions every week). but.. if i could spend the majority of my life befriending the friendless and just being a shoulder to lean on, i would. that is what i want to do, that has importance and meaning to me. florescent lights do not.

"I know your secret, i know that you're a vampire."

we are strong friends

leslie wu is my friend!

i wish it were summer again.

the start of a new season