Actually...

I love a brand new journal.  I find the idea of filling its pages with tales of my adventures absolutely thrilling.  Several months ago I bought two beautiful journals at Barnes & Noble, mostly because I couldn't decide between the two, but I justified it by deciding I'd use one as my roadtrip planning journal and one as my actual roadtripping journal.  As much as I love a brand new journal, I hate writing in it for the first time. In fact, I often skip the first page and begin scribbling my thoughts onto the second.

I contradict myself constantly. I have the hardest time making up my mind, and I'm often guilty of following a proclamation about what I want with the word "actually." Also, sometimes I leave things (things I had full intentions of completing) only halfway done because I've suddenly lost interest.

I find the same pleasure in the quiet calmness of watching a sunrise over the water, picking blackberries from my Grama's garden, and reading alone in my room with Bon Iver playing on Pandora and a cup of coffee in my hands, as I do in the adrenaline rush of skydiving over the North Shore, jumping off the highest rocks into the water below, and leaning into the wind while standing on the edge of a cliff.

All of this I write simply to say:

• I hated writing that first blog entry. I wanted to skip the first one and move onto the second already.  However, seeing as a blog doesn't allow you that privilege, I decided to make that first post simple and to the point. I realize that may have been misleading considering my writing style (as this post is proving) may be a lot more clumsy and scatterbrained in my remaining posts. Bare with me; maybe you'll learn to actually enjoy it. 
• I suck at making decisions and change my mind way more often than I'd like to admit. Sometimes I even chose both options (usually when it comes to food or drinks) because I simply don't want to make a decision (and I'd really just like both the hot pumpkin spice latte and the iced peppermint mocha.) So if I decide on a specific plan and then realize I'd actually like to be in Massachusetts for Halloween, and I have to reconfigure my entire route to make it happen, cut me some slack. That's what this blog is about after all: planning and making decisions and changing my mind until its perfect. But know this, as much as I will change my mind, and chose both options so I don't have to make up my mind, or follow an idea with "actually," one thing is for certain: This road trip is happening.
• I seek both contentment and adventure.  I am just as excited about the chaos of Mardi Gras that I will be experiencing in February (2015) as I am about the beauty of the lakes I'll be camping beside and fishing from in Utah. So when I post about the thrills of drinking my favorite hot chocolate from that breakfast joint off the highway in Albuquerque, or white water rafting in Colorado with some of my best friends, know that both experiences are of equal importance to me.

Better explained by Carson McCullers in only two sentences:
"We are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known."