Last Minute Plans

My mom and I are going to DC tomorrow for a quick weekend trip! I'm really excited, but I hope that my knees will be good and the weather will stay clear. I'll get to see a friend who's going to law school at Georgetown, so I'm really excited for that too.

Family, Part 3

Tonight my aunt threw a huge going away party for me and invited all of her friends that I've gotten to know over the years as well as a couple relatives that I don't see often. It was great to see everyone but it was hard saying goodbye to a lot of them. Some I've seen on an almost weekly basis for the past couple years and it's surprisingly hard to comprehend that this period of my life is over and I won't be seeing these people except occasionally when I visit or check my social media.

I keep coming across the following phrase, "Blood of the covenant is thicker than water of the womb," which is often misinterpreted to say that, "Blood is thicker than water." In modern society the saying goes that family bonds are stronger than bonds between friends. But traditionally the line meant that bonds of friendship are stronger than the bonds of family. It's an interesting saying and it always reminds me that friends are a family that you choose. 

Maybe it's due to my imminent departure, but I've gotten a chance to see over the past couple weeks the bonds that I have with friends and people around me and how important those bonds are. When I left school, I felt a breaking of many bonds with people--friends who weren't that close, people with whom I had little in common besides the same major, classes, or dormitory. Everyone dispersed around the world and we were left with only those bonds that we cared enough to maintain, which (I am sorry to say) was fewer bonds than I expected to have. People grow apart and it's the natural order of things. It's to be expected, and I suppose that it can be relished, especially for those of us who sometimes have friends who are emotionally draining, unsupportive, or abusive. But it's just change, plain and simple, and it can be hard to accept.

It's going to hit me at the end of this week when I say goodbye to my aunt and her kids. I've spent three years close to them, and it'll be hard to go from seeing them a couple times a week to once a year. I'm grateful for the internet and smartphones, as it'll be easy for me to email videos and pictures on a regular basis, and I can email or call my aunt as often as I need to. But it's not the same as living out here. I'll be going back to counting down the days until I get to see them again, just like I did when I was a child and I counted down for my aunt to visit in NC.

Everyone wished me luck on my trip and my next "adventure". They know I'm flying blind, that I'm totally lost and unsure of where I'll end up. I really am ending a chapter in my life and embarking on a new one, one that I'll have to write as I go. 

And I'm so used to using outlines.

Bliss

I've been baking for a couple years now, not really seriously, but enough that I've invested in a ton of equipment: dedicated pans, a cookie dough scoop, two flour sifters, several ramekins, a massive bag of active dry yeast. I bake often enough and have such a small sweet tooth that I find fault in every recipe that I make. Cookies are always too dry, too crumbly, too soft, too hard, too floury, too sweet. Cakes taste off, frosting gets overly sweet, icing doesn't set....the list goes on. I'm my own harshest critic, and I rarely stumble upon recipes that seem worthy enough to add to my personal recipe box.

But today I came across a fudgy brownie recipe that baked up so wonderful that I have to reconsider my life. I always thought I preferred cakey brownies, so the recipes I would make usually ended up having three or four eggs, lots of flour, and a small amount of butter or oil. But I gambled and this recipe paid off.

This isn't a baking blog, so I won't get in depth about the experience, but producing such an excellent product is invigorating, and I feel suddenly supremely confident about my baking abilities (my last batch of cookies had a bad brown-granulated sugar ratio and turned out too dry and crumbly). If one recipe can turn out this good, think of what else is out there just waiting to be made!

Now if only I can replicate this kind of success in my writing...

Weekend Countdown: 2

I've only got today and one more weekend left before I go--things are getting very real. As weird as it might sound, I already have a long list of things I want to do when I get to NC, but my list of things to finish up here is fairly short. Just Olvera Street and a couple restaurants downtown, then there are friends I need to see, lunches I need to go to, and work I need to finish up.

While I was writing last night I sat with one of my brother's pet rats, Selina. She's a hyper one, but for a minute or two she sat on my lap cleaning her face and whiskers while I typed. It was incredibly adorable. I'm going to miss these guys.

A New Chapter Begins

My life is changing and I couldn't be more excited. In early October I'll be moving out of Los Angeles and back home to North Carolina. I could technically call this running away since I have nothing lined up and no concrete plans once I get out there, but it doesn't bother me at all.

I've realized in the past few days that there's nothing I fear most than complacency, which is exactly where I've been. Lost after graduating, I took a job that I needed but didn't particularly want and for three years I watched myself grow older while my dreams grew farther and farther away. Eventually I began to crave change but by that point change seemed so difficult, so complicated, and the easy thing to do would have been to plug away, searching for the fleeting happiness that a good weekend or a fun trip would bring while tolerating the drudgery that the week would bring.

What I fear most is living in continual anticipation of the weekend and dread of the workweek. There's more to life than that and it's what I need to find right now.

In less than a month I'll be on the road headed to a place without a plan. Maybe I'll find something soon and settle in North Carolina, or maybe I'll itch to leave again and continue to pursue something I can't quite place. In either case, I intend to enjoy the journey.