5.12.2013

My Quest (The Best of Times)

There's a book by Sarah Dessen, called Along for the Ride. It's really good. Basically there's this girl named Auden who missed out on a lot of things from her childhood, and through her friendship with this guy named Eli learns how to regain certain parts of her childhood, and learns to be okay with changing. A lot lately I've been thinking about how I want this summer to be amazing. Even before I read this book for the second time. I decided to re-read it in part because of my desire for this summer to be epic.

Basically in the book she has this "quest," in which she has this sort of list of things to do in order to make up for lost time. This includes bowling, learning how to ride a bike, having food fights, and things she never got to do. Stuff like that. Her goal, basically, is to have "the best of times."

This summer, I'm going on a quest, like the one in the book. While I obviously had a good childhood, and didn't "miss out" on anything super huge, there are things that I didn't get to do, and things that I haven't done enough. So I've decided that this summer, I'm going to do them.

This sounds extremely cheesy. Basically, I want this summer to be the best of times. It's not like it's the summer before I go to college, it's just before my senior year, but I think it's coming at a really good time. Lately I've been struggling with complacency. There are a lot of things that I do wrong, and that I frequently fail at, but for some reason I put up with it, because I'm afraid of changing. I'm afraid of living without those things, because they've become like a crutch. I've become complacent with the fact that there are things I haven't done, and that there are things I need to do that I haven't been doing. I haven't cared enough, but I'm finally sick of it. I'm going to do something about it.

I live in the basement, meaning that my window has this little window well outside of it, but unlike the ugly metal ones I'm used to seeing, there are these like little wooden planter steps leading out of it. I've set up the space beside my window to sit and look out the window, and read, or look out at the stars, but I haven't been doing it, and I still haven't gone out of the window. So today I did. I pushed the screen out (don't worry Mom and Dad, if you're reading this, I didn't break it or hurt it) and just stepped out for a second. Again, going into cheese-ville, it felt like the start of something. You know? Like I was finally going out of my comfort zone, finally doing something I've wanted to do. I had stopped being complacent. So, in my pajamas, in the middle of the mess that was my room, I just had a sort of shouting match with myself, with lots of talking about how I wasn't going to be okay with simple adequacy, that I was going to demand more from myself.

Anyway. This summer I've got a quest. My quest involves some of the following:

--Eating an entire batch of cookie dough with someone in one sitting

--Pulling an all-nighter with friends

--Going to a drive-in

--Eating at Chick-fil-a (because it tastes good, and I haven't been in a while)

--Eating ice cream (not frozen yogurt, which is good, but I miss ice cream)

--Going to the movie theater

--Taking pictures of everything, and putting them in an album on Facebook called "The Best of Times."


This is my quest.

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