steady my heart.

this song is kind of changing my life right now.

Mat Kearney - Never Be Ready

We got our feet on the wire
Talking 'bout flying
Maybe we're diving in over our heads
Scared of what I'm feeling
Staring at the ceiling
Here tonight

Come on and lay down these arms
All our best defenses
We're taking our chances here on the run
The fear is an anchor
Time is a stranger
Love isn't borrowed
We aren't promised tomorrow

We'll never be ready if we keep waiting
For the perfect time to come
Hold me steady, we'll never be ready
When we don't know, though we can't see
Just walk on down this road with me
Hold me steady, we'll never be ready

You're OK here with me
Here in the silence
With all of the violence crashing around
Saying we can't go
Saying we don't know
This road that is narrow is the one we should follow

We'll never be ready if we keep waiting
For the perfect time to come
Hold me steady, we'll never be ready
When we don't know, though we can't see
Just walk on down this road with me
Hold me steady, we'll never be ready

Steady my hands this one could turn around
Steady my heart, it's beating faster
Steady my hands this one could turn around
Steady my heart, it's beating faster
Beating faster now

We'll never be ready if we keep waiting
For the perfect time to come
Hold me steady, we'll never be ready
When we don't know, though we can't see
Just walk on down this road with me
Hold me steady, never be ready

Hold me steady, we'll never be ready
Hold me steady, we'll never be ready
Hold me steady, we'll never be ready 

fear.

I realized today that I'm not getting less scared, I'm getting more scared. Every day. Of so many things. Of being in love, and of not being loved anymore. Of not making any friends, and of losing friends that I already have. Of being happy, and of being sad. Of succeeding, and of failing. Of not having enough faith, and of not having enough realism. Of not having enough love, and of having way too much.

I just wish I had a sign to tell me that I've made the right decisions.

Reinventing.

It's funny how soon things can start to feel normal, or at least the alternatives to feel weird. I like routine - sometimes I wish I didn't, at least not so much - but I can't really get away from it. It's been good to finally have one after these last few months of non-spontaneous unpredictability (if that even makes any sense). It's so good to wake up and go to work, knowing that I'll see Kevin in a few hours for lunch at the Union, and that at right about 5 he'll call me once he's off work and come over. The evenings - well - I just let them take care of themselves. There's no rush to do anything because we have all year to do it, which is such a different feeling than this whole last year where I felt like it had to be so go-go-go in order to accomplish everything we wanted to within the designated monthly weekend.

It's kind of neat, to be falling in love all over again with the same person, but in a different way. In the "I-can't-wait-to-wake-up-next-to-you-again-tomorrow" kind of way, rather than the "I'm-going-to-miss-you-so-much-when-we're-not-together" kind of way.

Being long-distance for so long has taught me how to not take anything for granted. Having lunch together on a random weekday doesn't seem like a big deal until I realize we never got to do it before. I just feel so blessed to be able to do all the little things together. It's beautiful, really.

1.25 years later and I still feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

Eurekas.

I've had a lot of moments lately where I stop and think about a part of my life and say to myself, "It's too good to be true." The awful reality of it is, we all have so many things in our lives that have happened and hardened us so that once a good thing finally does happen, we're almost forced by some weird law of nautre to question it.

Needless to say, I hate this reality. I wish I could be one of those people that just appreciates things for how they are in the moment, doesn't overanalyze, and deals with the [potential] consequences of that later. But I'm just not that girl. And so, when good things happen to me, I'll wonder why. Overall, I consider myself to be incredibly blessed, but I never have that kind of immediate reaction where I think, "Gosh I'm lucky." Naturally, when bad things happen to other people, I start questioning all the existing good parts of my life, wondering when they, too, will crumble before my very eyes.

But maybe it doesn't have to be like that. Maybe a more accurate way to say it is that I'm learning that it truly doesn't have to be like that. I've never been one of those intrinsically happy kinds of people - I guess introspection and overanalyzing have their downfalls - but I'm trying and learning how to take happiness at face value.

A small part of me has always succumed to all the stigmas out there about getting married young - that you can't possibly know what you want yet, that you aren't established enough in your career to settle down, that you're too immature, and the list goes on forever. Maybe I've only bought into them because it's easier than admitting I'm scared. But really, fear is just part of the whole formula, because when I think about all the times in my life I've been really, genuinely happy, I was always afraid of [fill in the blank] leading up to that happiness.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, maybe believing in your "happily ever after" doesn't also have to mean that you're naive. Maybe it can mean just that - that life brought you something so good that you can't help but celebrate in it forever.

Home.

Everytime I come back to California, it feels less and less like "home." There are fewer and fewer of my old things lying about the house, and fewer and fewer people I know that still live here, too. Fewer connections, to things and people alike.
For as comfortable as I eventually did get with Omaha, it never really did felt like home. In fact, nothing really ever has. But I've always had this sense that once I'm in the right place, I'll just know, and it'll feel like home.

Driving into Tucson on I-1o last week on Ashly and I's cross-country road trip, I didn't know what to expect, and so, like I do so often, I set myself free from having any expectations at all. I find that when I do this, I'm oftentimes pleasantly surprised by the result. Amazingly enough (or maybe not so much), this time was no different, and I couldn't help but tear up as I began to turn the corners that displayed the beautiful mountains just outside of Tucson that Kevin took me to for the first time last fall. It was one of those times where, even just for a few moments, everything seems exactly how it is supposed to be. Usually I have these moments with people, but to have this kind of experience with a place - a tangible and physical location - was liberating and yet calming all at once. I can't wait to move "home."