Dear everybody that I've ever really known:

Oh, hi there. I went away for a little bit. I fell into a cut on my hand and traveled through my veins. Turns out I had much straightening up to do. I found strength in my ear, dreams in my chest, ideas in my knee. It took me a while to sort it all out, but eventually I found the reason I keep moving.

That forest thrived in the space between the tips of my toes and the scratchy spot on the back of my heel. Those ickle feet, above all else, forced me to walk, to dance, to live. No matter how much my brain didn’t want to get up, my feet made it get up and out the door. Those ickles took me to Orem, Utah (which is way boringer that Taiwan, but whatever) where I made scarves while watching Firefly.

And visited Rexburg more than once.

And said goodbye till August 2014 to my best friend

And ate ice cream with my brother.

And learned patience.

And worked at Sizzler. 

But despite all the excitement of a new place and regardless of my longings to explore the world and be a free twenty-one year old, I learned that independence scares the heeby jeebies out of me. I learned that those relationships that kept my feet from taking me to Taiwan or Europe or California shouldn't cause fear. It’s normal, good, actually, to be tied to a person or a place. 

It's also totally normal to freak out occasionally about the directionlessness of my life.

Whatever.

Not freaking out right now, only because I'm not afraid anymore.

Taiwan definitely would've been an adventure. But I had other adventures. Sorta.

Those adventures took me into the sky in a tiny airplane.

On cold night, they took me to hot springs where my daddy used to scuba dive.

They took me to the city with Cecilia where we ate ice cream and drank tea and explored a warehouse full of antiques.

They took me to Las Vegas to say goodbye until the next life to my aunt.

They took me to California where I walked the adorable monster, Shadow, prepared to say bye bye to my friends and siblings, Schmezzy and Danimal, and decided (with a little help from a super cute friendthat'saboy) that Utah isn't my favorite place in the world, and as much as I hatehatehate to admit it, I made a sort of home in Idaho. Vomit. Yuck. I hate saying that. Alas, I couldn't stay away. Not necessarily from the place itself, but from a person in whom I found a makeshift home. In his little soul, I found a way to keep out of the rain. But the rain fell harder the longer I stayed in Utah.

So days later, I scanned Craigslist (a champion place to search for housing) and found an adorable little house where I could have a room all to myself. Oh yeah, an entire floor all to myself.

I shoved half my crap into little baby Lennie, drove to Rexburg, and dumped the junk onto the floor. Happy Easter. Sadly, Sizzler insisted I finish working. Five days and I would come right back to my new house/old home. A necessary five days of adventure in which I ate at Beehive Tea Room and visited Treeny Weeny at Temple Square again with less crying this time (I'm a crying little baby these days) and finished packing my junk until my car nearly popped.

Then began a new adventure.

I associate living in Rexburg with schoolschoolschool. School no more. Job time. What job am I prepared for? None. None at all. Oh yeah, being a server. Cheers to me and my ultra fulfilling college diploma. Whatever. Not facing any sort of existential angst. Don’t mind me FREAKING OUT over here. I’ll just eat a cookie and get over it.

Or hug my huggy buddy. He squeezes the angst right out of me and puts it in a jar and buries it in the yard. He’s careful not to break the jar. If he did, the anxiety juice would seep into the aquifer and find its way into my water bottle, and I’d drink it all up and he’d have to start over. He’s really careful. But sometimes he doesn’t even know he’s burying my fear of the future. Sometimes he just talks to me about candy and calms the hidden alligator that chomps on my belly. Because I don’t even mind being just a server or just a sales associate or just a whatever when he’s around. He reminds me that I’m the only one stopping myself from becoming a writer or a baker or a teacher or a whatever. He hands me a cookie and makes it all better.

Speaking of cookies, I still miss my brother, so I went to Provo to visit. We got donuts.

Speaking of donuts, I’m a baker. Officially. When I clock in, I click the button that says “Baker” and I go downstairs to the dungeon and throw things in mixers and ovens and pie crusts. I make pies. I make cookies. I make corn bread. I make biscuits. I make stuff. I bake stuff. I’m a motha flippin baker, dude.

That means that in a year-ish when I get out of this place, I can open up a little bakery in downtown San Diego or Seattle and serve cupcakes and pies and cheesecake and cookies and donuts and bread. And I’ll have a full breakfast menu of eggs. “Eggsistential,” a build-your-own-omlette, and “Eggscited,” a breakfast burrito with one scrambled egg and one egg over easy with lots of salsa and sour cream, and “Eggswife,” an ultra-spicy Mexican spin on scrambled eggs, and “Eggspert,” a quiche shaped like Bert from Sesame Street. Then I’ll have all sorts of different menus for different days. People can special order stuff, like apple lasagna, but they’ll have to wait a couple hours so I can make it. Unless I just happened to decide on making lasagna that morning. Who knows? It’ll be sporadic and lovely. It’ll be in a cute hole-in-the-wall place so rent will be cheap. I’ll live in a GMC van parked in free parking on the beach and never really pay for anything except baking supplies. And an occasional tattoo or piercing. Or baby. Maybe I’ll have babies who live with me on the beach. And my super hot boyfriend, too, of course. He’ll be a graphic designer or something. And he’ll design using the free wifi at coffee shops. We’ll be adorable.

Or we’ll be normal and live in a house and it won’t matter that my bakery barely makes a profit because he’ll make enough to support my hippie lifestyle. And he'll love me anyways. And sometimes, when the bakery doesn't get enough business on rainy days, he'll squeeze out my nerves and throw them into the ocean.

Oh yeah.

That’s not real.

Maybe the bakery part, yes. We’ll see.

For now, I bake every morning. I run every afternoon. I sleep every evening. I sammich other things in between those. 

I live a wonderful life. I’m surrounded by wonderful people all the wonderful time.

Scarfy.

Ready to crash an airplane.

Growwwwwl.

Bye bye, Treen Bean.

Dinner partee.

Upsidedown smile.

Shadow puppet and Bradley bear.

I don't even care what's happening as long as it's happening in California.

Rawr.

Bye bye, Lovelies.

Words, letters, pages. Stuff.

I only cried a wee ickle amount. 

Huggy buddy.

Our bikes are friends.

Playing on a mirror.

Donuts nonuts.

My adorable new car. Let's call him Nox.

It's Skypy Skype time.