In real life.

Today I feel everything. I feel excited, optimistic, joyful, grateful, and loved ... nervous, anxious, lonely, cautious, melancholy, yearning.

I feel good about work. I regularly make home visits and meet with teachers and understand the alphabet soup that is Special Ed. lingo. I attend leadership meetings at alternative-to-suspension schools and write so many case notes and call moms and dads and make referrals and prepare for supervision. I enjoy my internship and am learning so much, but I don't think I'll have a career in school social work or in special education. Nothing against SSW or SWD (School Social Work or Students With Disabilities) whatsoever - I love them. This just isn't my calling. I like my Teach For America job/internship, but marketing, advertising, recruiting, data input and analysis, etc. aren't what really excites me, either. I can do this stuff just fine. Heck, I'm probably doing it decently well. But Emma Goldmen once said, "If I can't dance, it's not my revolution." Yeah, so I'm still waiting to hear the beat, I guess.

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It has been so hard to write in weeks past. Life is flying by. When I sit down to write, I don't know where to begin because so much has happened - so many experiences and thoughts every single day. And it's the little things I want to communicate to you, to the few who happen upon this blog from time to time. How do I choose which little things to write? It is the little things that are important in life. I'll remember the little things. It's just like Robin Williams says in Good Will Hunting when he's talking to Matt Damon about learning to trust in his new relationship, even if it means he could hurt in the end. For the first time in a year, I watched the movie while drinking coffee and relaxing after an 8 mile run. (Yesterday was a fabulous Sunday, btw.) During that scene in the movie, I remembered the last time I watched it and who I saw it with and I became overwhelmed with a sudden, unexpected sadness. No, I don't hurt anymore - I believe genuine healing started to really sink in around late May or early June. Most days, I love life and I love what lays ahead because I know it is so good, just like what was before. But yesterday I felt a distant and hard sadness for the indefinite loss of that great friendship. In another life, we'll all be perfect friends.

Anyways, Good Will Hunting is and always will be my all time favorite movie. Matt Damon is ... perfecto :o) Dear Future Husband, will you please be wicked smaht and haandsome like Matt Damon and say your 'r's' all funny? Ha, I'm a girl - I'm allowed to be superficial sometimes. So in my alter ego life, I'm a girl genius from Southy/Boston. In my alter ego life, I'm the rocker chic and punk that I dressed up as for Halloween. (I really liked wearing all black and heavy eye make up and a bandana!) In my alter ego life, I'm the amazing athletic tennis star who never got hurt and who played all four years at this Div. I school. In my alter ego life, I'm a prolific writer and budding theologian like Dorothy Day or CS Lewis. In my alter ego life, I sing opera and jam out on the guitar and master Beethoven and Chopin. In my alter ego life, I paint O'Keefe's. In my alter ego life, I'm a hip hop dancer, a prima ballerina, a master at the Charleston swing, and an actress on Broadway. In my alter ego life.

In real life, I meet with a couple of college girls each week and listen to them flesh out their walk with the Lord and offer two cents and a prayer now and again. In real life, I find peace when I run miles at dawn. In real life, I'm granted permission into the worlds of families in Athens as they trust me to help and serve them in times of strong need; I learn so much about schools and families and poverty and Education and loving neighbors. In real life, I learn about the utter perversion of humanity's sexual abuse and exploitation, find the wherewithall to pray about it, and am granted the courage to fight it through intercession and outreach. In real life, I can finally eat a piece of chocolate cake and not feel tremendously guilty. In real life, I have an absolutely beautiful and amazing family whom I love with all of me. In real life, I have a small handful of great friends. In real life, I laugh at myself singing along to the Phantom of the Opera, dancing in front of the mirror to Black Eyed Peas, and acting out random words in games of Catch-Phrase and Charades. In real life, I am known, and that matters. In real life.



In real life I smile and I am my Father's daughter.