Connect-4

1. I just want to curl up and read books all day. I just read ¨Kindred¨and now I am reading ¨The Memory Keeper´s Daughter.¨ I love book exchanges.

2. I am still looking for a place to live. I mean, I found one but I am not sure how I feel about signing a long contract (actually, I am sure how I feel about it, which is unsure,) because . . .

3. I feel lost and lack direction, lately. I am sure there is a seed inside of me that knows, I just haven´t found it yet. I am not sure how long I will feel called to stay in Cusco, or even in Peru. I am definitely eager to finish school, and love that I can do that here in Cusco (through an independent contract through Evergreen learning languages and travel writing), and I can definitely find work in Cusco, but there is still the volunteer teaching possibility in Trujillo, or something else entirely. I can see myself teaching English to small children in an Asian country in the future, but the language barrier scares me. I have been consumed with realities, and hiding from them simultaneously, reading books and thinking between chapters (or paragraphs, depending on the day) about how I can ¨make it¨ in my life, economically, and about how I could be happy, stimulated, fulfilled with and within my life. I think about what I am doing and what is missing, about curriculum design and teaching jobs overseas, relationships and settling down, adventures and brave choices. I make lists in the vain hope of ¨figuring it out,¨whatever the it of the moment happens to be. Then I remind myself to breathe. To sit and listen. I tell myself that is okay to feel lost. Do you get tired of me talking about the same things? About apartments and financial woes and taxi drivers? About feeling lost and not hearing the guidance? I get tired of it too, this cassete tape that plays inside of my head. Some days I have trouble moving, even one baby inch, and I tell myself when I get a place and a job and a schedule it will be better, but we will see.

4. The hardest lesson in life might be listening, and then I think trusting is the runner-up.

5. That doesn´t mean all of the other lessons are easy.

6. This is part of my favorite song right now (I like Giants by Kimya Dawson), because it is full of so many truths:

When I go for a drive I look to pull of to the side
of the road, turn out the lights, go out and look up at the sky
and I do this to remind me that I´m really really tiny,
In the grand scheme of things and sometimes this terrifies me

It´s only really scary cause it makes me feel serene
In a way I´d never thought I´d be because I´d never been
So grounded, and so humbled, and so one with everything
I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything.

We all become important when we realize our goal
Should be to figure out our role within the context of the whole
And yeah, rock and roll is fun, but if you ever hear someone
Say you are huge, look at the moon, look at the stars, look at the sun
look at the oceans and the dessert and the mountains and the sky
say I am just a speck of dust inside a giant´s eye
I am just a speck of dust inside a giant´s eye.