i have things i want and things i dream of doing and places i dream of seeing.

right now, where i am in life is entirely perfect for me. i'm sitting on an antique sofa badly in need of new upholstry looking around my beautiful apartment that's pretty much empty save for a desk, bookcase and a linen chest that's supposed to go at the end of the bed i don't have yet. i'm okay with that. i'm at a transition point. i'm in between where my apartment was full of my roommates' stuff and where my apartment actually becomes my apartment.

i remember a poem my mom had framed. it was something about being firstborn and getting the family through the 'hamburger years'. i almost think i'll miss this when i get past this stage. my walls are bare and there's very little furniture but there is a sense of potential. life could go anywhere right now. i've learned to be happy with what i have and that if i'm not willing to work for something i must not want it that badly.

someday i hope to be someone's slightly crazy great aunt with the awesome summer house and amazing library and house full of curiosities. someday i hope to be the old bat telling stories that seem far fetched but are actually quite true. someday i hope kids go exploring my home and wonder about the stories of all of the odd things i will have collected over a lifetime.

someday i hope to be a thoughtful as my grandfather (he always thinks about what he says before he says it) and as caring and graceous as my grandmother (i should've taken the etiquette classes like she suggested...) and to truly be myself. i think i'm on the right track.

this adventure hopefully has another 80 years or so. i wonder what people will say at my funeral. i wonder what i will become in the future. if someone had asked me even a few years ago where i thought i'd be now, i certainly would not have given any thought to the field i work in now. i would never have guessed that i'd be the girl who has two dogs and had her heart broken three different times. i would never have guessed that i'd be chasing a second degree with the end goal of attaining a doctorate in something which sounds more impressive than it actually is.

and perhaps most important, i may not have guessed i'd be happy with where my life has gone.

so far...