She's Made Up Of

in

she's made up of:

denim. yarn. sail cloth. leather journals with misc mashed together let’s-save-this-too pieces of paper and important memories. blue. gold bangles and poorly made toe rings. booksbooksbooks. donuts. that butterfly-in-your-stomach-feeling. drift wood. that song that comes on the radio. rosemary. sun faded globes. back issues of vintage magazines. clipboards with torn this-inspires-me-right-now pages. words said in late night parking lots. green doored apartments. dormant type writers. unsnapped photos. that now-or-never sentiment.

With A Knife

in

she stirred her coffee with a knife.
not because it was altogether more efficient than another pre-assigned utensil, but because there were always extras of them. 
knives, filling up and out weighing the utensil tray.
taking up more than their fair share of space.
not-used-as-much.
not-as-needed.
and so she put them to use.
she made them needed.
she stirred her coffee with a knife.

Friday Girl

in

i was never one for those all-smushed-in-the-middle days of the week.
i was a friday girl.
a sunday-then-monday girl. but never a tuesday girl.

tuesday through thursday generally go unnoticed and overlooked in my mind and by my attentions. and saturday, well it’s smushed between friday and sunday so i don’t have too much attention for it either. 

if i had to choose one though, it would be friday. 
you have the whole weekend to look forward to, and the whole week to look back on.

A Study In Color | Ireland

in

A girl named Siorsia

Being serendaded by Irish men singing John Denver's Take Me Home Country Road

A homeland for so many that I could see myself calling home

Oh Molly Malone

Everything's savage

Green

 Via Instagram

Those People

in

sometimes people come into your life at very specific and necessary times. 
to teach you something. 
so you’ll teach them something. 
to lead you somewhere you wouldn’t have otherwise gone. 
to help you through something you needed help through. 
to say something you needed to hear.

but those people don’t always stick around. 
sometimes they’re friends. 
sometimes they’re acquaintances. 
sometimes they’re significant others. 
sometimes too they’re family, and their not sticking around is often the hardest to cope with. 
and sometimes those people won't not be around but instead they'll be in and out of your life, for different times, different seasons. 

but sometimes, they’re meant to just be there for a time, and then after that time has come to an end you have to learn to move on. you can’t keep hanging onto the what-ifs and the might-maybe-mays. because you’ll never give yourself the opportunities you deserve to grow and move and be into the person you’re meant to grow and move and be into. 

those people don’t know how you like your coffee. 
those people don’t know what to say when you’ve had a bad day.
those people don’t know whether you’re going to break out in song and dance when that song comes on the radio, or change the station.
those people don’t know that dancing is your way of unwinding, letting go, being free.
those people don’t know that you never really liked _____and you were just pretending to for their sake.
those people don’t know about that big scary-all-the-way-through thing that happened to you.
those people don’t know about that extremely-wonderful-over-the-moon-amazing thing that happened to you.
those people don’t know about these people.
those people don’t know about the book you read that made you feel that way that made you do this.
those people don’t know about that place that you went and what you did when you were there.
those people don’t know that you’re stronger than you’ve ever been in your whole life in so many ways and you love the person you are and are becoming as a result.

and those are altogether not necessarily the most important things in the world… but think about the people who do know the answer to those things about you and how those people no longer know.

and that maybe there’s a reason they don’t.

Watered Down

in

“I see this beautiful, gorgeous, girl who has these big and amazing dreams and she won't tell people what she wants. I think you use filters when telling me what you want. And so you feel alone, because I don't often hear you fully, because what you're saying has been filtered and watered down so much”
////

These are words someone said to me once. 

I’d written them down in an attempts to remember them.
In hopes that they would sink in, in the way you want good advice to sink in, and that I would come to some resolve afterwards to take action against their subject, however conscious or subconscious. 

The subject being, to not filter what I want. 

When I came across these words recently I realized, that it's been quite some time since I heard them but also, more importantly: I am not that person anymore. 

Or, at least, I haven’t been for the past year or so. I’ve slowly but surely built up that assurance in myself (whether it was conscious or subconscious is unknown) and my desires and convictions to state, really-truly-all-the-way-out-loud what it is I want. 

With the exception of lately. 

Lately there’s been a certain area in my life where I haven’t been all the way clear about those things. I've been watering things down. It’s mostly business related, but, without going into detail, I've been noticing that it’s leaked into other areas of my life as well.
However, I have no desire to revert back to that person that I once-upon-a-time was.

And so this is a reminder to myself today.

Don’t water down your dreams.
Your ambitions.
Your wants.
Whether they are larger than life desires, or in the moment small needs. Because you’re a person with value and substance. Your wants matter. Don’t be shy about them. Be bold and speak out. 
No one's going to know what you want unless you tell them. It's not a guessing game. Don't treat your dreams so lightly. Give them the voice they deserve.

Don’t leave them watered down.