{Unpacking.}

Time to confess: for roughly the first month home, I lived out of my suitcase.

Seriously, I wouldn't unpack.

Sounds ridiculous, but subconsciously, I denied the idea of staying home for any amount of time that required unpacking. I felt this momentum from college and had no intention of losing air. Little did I recognize that a series of "small" decisions amounted to a rough landing into the place I was determined not to go.

Nothing is actually wrong with home, I love home!
But the comfort of home is what worried me. I would call it fear of laziness.

And maybe, fear of acknowledging the past.

It felt like going backward because I am not the same person that moved out of this place 4 years ago.
But it is not like she has completely disappeared either.

When I finally gave in to emptying my luggage, I also began cleaning house. I sorted through old stuff that stuck around through the years: journal entries, pictures, e-mails, documents, awards, music, childhood jewelry, clothes, and notes passed around through high school.

It reminds me of years that were savored down to the last minute. Years where every day was lived fully. Awkward years. Years I would feel too embarrassed to share with anyone. Is it just me, or is it inevitable to look back and think, "I was SUCH a dork!"

But looking back, while bringing my "new" self home, has been the perfect mixture to preserving who I truly am at this point in time. Some significant parts of me were forgotten while I was away. I was free enough to show some of my cards, but never truly free to show them all. Now that I have had to marinate in home life, I am just praying that I will be free to show all my cards wherever I end up next.

Wherever I end up next...

That's where I feel a bit like an oddball. A lot of people have been asking if I plan to stay here. When I ask myself the same question, the answer is so obvious. To stay here is just not me. It would feel too much like living in the past. While I've watched most of my friends settle here all over again or keep their roots in college town, I am wondering which pond is next in line to hop.

At first I hoped to settle somewhere I already had roots in.
Have some sense of normalcy for a while. Prove that I can handle more responsibilities.
But this force I have had all my life has kept me from really following through with normal.
It has become especially unruly without a school system containing it.
"This force" is hard to describe. Deep down, there is this magnetic pull type feeling towards something extraordinary.

Don't get me wrong, there are extraordinary aspects of doing "normal" things.
Realistically, settling down somewhere isn't exactly the season I am in.
As comforting as that would be, trying to develop something outside its season would be unfruitful.

Vast land sits in front of me. Unbroken ground waiting to be traveled on.
Travel lightly. Leave everything behind. What really needs to be carried is everything inside.
Its lush green pastures invite me to come. walk. see what's beyond the hillside.

I think I will...

Just found this song today... fits right in: