Ndakasimba kana makasimbawo

Honest and Manuel, well you know, they're at school now
Given the chance that their father's never seen
To see whats beyond Section 17.
And in ten years, when you look back at your boys,
well you know they've grown way taller
than the tallest sugar cane in the field.

So I'm watching Dispatch Zimbabwe and it's taking me back to one hell of an awesome night. Brings me back to the emotions I felt that night and in the months surrounding it. That night I knew what I wanted. Among other things, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I thought.

But it turns out, I'm still trying to figure out... what is it that I want to do? It's not really that I don't know at all. It's that I don't know how to accomplish it, how to make a living (however meager) doing what I want to do. And how to do what I want to do, but still maintain my social support system? Is that impossible? So far... it seems yes.

More deeply than ever before, I find myself lost for answers to questions like "Who Am I?" and "What Do I Like?" and "What Do I Want To Do?" and "Where Do I Want To Be?" and "What Are My Priorities?" and "What Do I Believe In?" Some of them are questions that it makes sense to still be searching for answers for. Others seem like questions that should have obvious answers, but right now, nothing is obvious to me. I don't know who I am or what I'm doing or where I'm going. Ad says, "discover the beauty in losing yourself to be found." Bryn says "stop looking for answers and just be." But I can't shake the feeling of discomfort that I have as a result of suddenly knowing *nothing.*

I want to play with children all my life. I love my daycare and feel like I could be happy there forever. But at the same exact time, I feel like I'd be cheating myself out of all my goals and wishes to do development work. I want to go to Africa. But why do I want to go to Africa? Because I care... why do I care? Do I care because I jumped on a caring-about-Africa bandwagon? Do I care because some college guys made a good movie about Africa? Do I care because Elias makes me tap my feet and sing along? Do I care because I'm just a fantastic wonderful person who wants to make other people's lives better? Can't be that, or else I'd be in a tent in Africa just doing it, instead of wondering about making a living and maintaining my social support system. I want to take pictures for a living. I spend lots of time getting friends to model for me. Or trying to. Apparently the new trend is to hate pictures of oneself. But how can I want to take pictures for a living if working at Sears Portrait Studio as a photographer made me hurt so much? What was it about Sears that was so awful? I feel like so much of the time I was in the camera room taking pictures, I was happy and smiling, yet when I think of the place, I am consumed with this overarching dread. Why can't I define the source of the soul-eating that happens at Sears?

Why? Who? Where? What? How?

I know I'm only 22 and having a lot of questions still left to answer is normal. I'm not really asking for answers, either. I'm just hoping that taking the time to write this all down will help me work through it all. Meh.

Andrew made me.

I called Andrew out on a distinct lack of posts in his "I'm having fun in Spain!" journal, and his response was I haven't updated in a while either. This is true. So here's the superficial update:


I work and work and work. Most exciting things that have happened to me are I started at Gregg's again and Keith talked me into yet another bank account (that's 2 total, bringing me to a total of 4 bank accounts).


Three dear friends of mine have inspired me to finally start thinking again and stop just moving through life like a robot. Hopefully this time it sticks.

* CAUTION * INTROSPECTION IN PROCESS * CAUTION * INTROSPECTION IN PROCESS * CAUTION * INTROSPECTION IN PROCESS * CAUTION*