My Universe in the World: Just Live, Laugh, & Love

   Where am I? That three-fold question that has been picking at my brain for weeks now. How can I answer that question 100% truthfully when only the places from my past that came to mean something to me are the ones I can remember completely or the places I will be are based on my hopes and dreams, successes and failures. I'm not a psychic; there's no way I can see or predict the future, where I'm going to go, what my life is going to be like. Thankfully, the second question, where am I now, is simple enough to answer. There's no time like the present, right? To begin with, my definition of the word "home" is different than everyone else's. We've all heard the Dorothy clicking her ruby slippers three times and saying, "There's no place like home," or if you've read Avalon High by Meg Cabot (my favorite author, if you didn't catch that in my first blog post), you might remember reading Elaine "Ellie" Harrison saying, "Home? What do you know about home? The people make up the home, not the place." Simply concurring with these statements is probably an understatement. To me, the people are more important than the actual place. Everywhere I go where the people are important to me is considered in some form to be a part of my home. If things go the way I want them to, I will own the "deeds" to dozens of homes and meet hundreds of people around the world before I die.
   In comparison to my friends and acquaintances at the school, I haven't really been anywhere. Money limits my life, commands my actions and responsibilities. That be as it may, equality of life is still in my life to reference one of the five laws of nature that I learned in Washington D.C. D.C. is my vacation of a lifetime. Going there, seeing all that history, meeting the hundreds of people I met, and having a super-loaded recess of fun and learning. For two weeks this past summer, I took a break from working and my in-order-to-make-money isolation from my friends and family and just lived. Not worrying about the past or the future was pure bliss on my life and my personal "Energizer battery." And though I may have my sites on hundreds of homes and families, I already have one of each that I love. We may be on our third home in Phillips, and my family might be nutz to its core, but I can't imagine being anywhere else in my life. School may not be a fun place all of the time, but the humor, the teachers, and the lessons can make school a blast. The backroom for Mr. Vrana, a.k.a the Journalism room, and my number one hang out, the bomb shelter, are some of the best places at the school in my opinion. Though I used to regret living in Nebraska with the horizon of corn and lack of the new and exciting, I can accept my background. I have a sense of pride after my D.C. trip. Being a part of that amazing program, being chosen as one of the 112 juniors from all of the United States, makes me proud to be a Nebraskan. My community, both the one of Phillips and the one of Aurora, is a great one. Those traditions, new or old, are held close to our hearts as are our neighbors. Whether writing names and words on the graffiti wall outside Phillips or getting coffee or ice cream from Espressions after school, they get upheld. All of the people are close, knowing what goes on in each others lives.
   Over the past week, the stress of college and my future have my brain in constant overload. Should I go to UNO or UNL or UChicago? Should I really get a degree in creative writing so I can write novels? Should I even try to write at all? How am I going to pay for anything and everything? Only the thought of college and cost makes my head hurt. With my future being questioned by everyone, I feel frozen, scared about making the wrong decision and my life won't turn out to be my own happily ever after. Though I want to live in London, helping people and making up awesome stories, possibly marrying a British guy whose accent makes me smile, my brain battles my heart, reminding it of the very small possibility of that happening.  The future life I imagine for myself completely shatters like a glass mosaic shot with a buckshot. Still, my plans of traveling the world and meeting all of these different and amazing people will never change. They might divide in size, but I can't go through my life without seeing the world.
   As Mark Twain said, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." I'd rather go through life with knowledge and the joys of living than wishing I had done something differently with my life. I will go through my life loving the people and places I see and meet, not regretting where I've been, or worrying about where I will be. I'll just live, laugh, and love.