Feeling: hopeful. crazy? hopeful.
Listening to: Relient K - Softer to Me
Reading/Watching: I've moved on to want-ads, now...

I'll go ahead and make this an Ampersand Project. The topic is open-ended.

That's actually what scares me most about this upcoming summer: the fact that anything could happen. It's completely open ended, and there are no definites except perhaps my turning 21.

I don't know if I will be working (although I got my first interview today). I don't know if I will somehow be dragged kicking and screaming to *Hometown by my parents, despite my loud protests about it being more adult to stick by my plans instead of bailing on them like some capricious teenager and leaving Nimsay without half the rent. I don't know if I will ever have a couch or a proper bed. I don't know if I will be flat broke or actually be able to put something away for the foggy dream of France.

It's just... out there. Indefinite. It scares me. I can comfort myself with promises of "I've always managed before," but the truth is, I've never risked this much before.

I could wind up with enough money to visit London this fall with Miller, stay in the dorms with the St. Moo students who are there for the semester abroad, finally see the world beyond the borders of this country.

I could be scraping by, living month to month doing odd jobs, gritting my teeth and turning off the much-needed AC in August because I just can't handle a $90 bill, pawning my watch because the bottoms are falling off my shoes and I need new ones.

I could spend the summer keeping by my resolve to avoid exhausting romantic entanglements, just hold everyone at arm's length and focus on the much-neglected other aspects of my life. I could live an arid, sensible three months where I never spend a night with my head in my hands, wondering why I put myself through this crap over and over. Come September, I could be congratulating myself on keeping sane, not letting a cute smile turn my head, not letting a moment of one-sided, would-be-clairvoyance convince me that maybe this one is different from the rest.

I could also stumble over my own heart yet again and be the messy tearstained lump into which I always seem to crumble.

I just. don't. know. And while part of me quails and wants to hide from it, pray it all just goes away so that I can be still and quiet, another part of me is thrilling to it. I have this insane urge to rise to the challenge, charge in blindly like there's no danger of failure, ever, and just grab all opportunities and thread them through my fingers so I can make each one a reality (although the romance one is pretty iron-clad. I'm shutting down for the summer. All the drama, the wishing and disappointment, I don't want it. Definitely won't seek it).

Here's to suicidal leaps. Hope someone else has the foresight to keep my safety net while I'm gone.

(P.S.- Wish me luck for the interview on Thursday?)

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