http://www.whitesharkprojects.co.za

For information on the volunteering itself, check out this page:

http://www.whitesharkprojects.co.za/voluntary.htm

Again.

And I’m laughing this time, because I’m realizing how common this little glitch is.

I’m sitting on the porch of paradise. Ambergris Caye, an island off the mainland of Belize with the perfect balance of the local, 3rd world culture, and the safety blanket of tourism, has quickly become my favorite vacation destination. I won’t get into too many details as to bore my readers with the narcissism of my own travels for sheer pleasure but it really is a place I’d recommend to almost anyone. The sky has just released one of its daily torrential downpours, one of those bitchy moves of Mother Nature that keeps the place so lush and green, and I’m on the second story balcony of our suite trying to bask in the blanketing and moist afterglow of the rain but the mosquitos have just decided to come and enjoy the newfound dryness of the night as well. This relationship may not work.

But as not to stray from the path of vanity I was already on, back to my existential crisis. These (I refer to them not as a crisis but rather as crises, as they are multiple events) are not at all uncommon to me, as I’m sure they are not to most people. From a young age I began experiencing the selfish confusion of finding the pieces to the puzzle that is life’s path. As far as I can tell now there has never been a tangible, direct reason behind this desire to find a way through these years other than possibly a need for control and instruction the way our teachers controlled and instructed through grade school as we grew up…

But I am 19.

I am nineteen.

Only nineteen.

I realized on this incredible vacation, sometime between scuba diving silently and at breathing the slowest I will ever breathe at peace and almost at one with the eagle rays that circled us slowly and deliberately in tropic waters and feeling so at ease that I nearly put myself into a trance on the edge of the dock that descends into crystal turquoise stillness that I am only nineteen. I do not know why I feel the need to reach some sort of enlightenment and epiphany that shocks me with the truth of my life’s purpose during this year off. I first thought that’s what I was embarking on, a journey to find my passions and to find my true calling. But that’s not at all what this is. As I have already mentioned, I feel like the luckiest girl in the entire world to have the financial and emotional support of my parents to take a year off college and find myself.

I mean, really. Only the privileged can afford to find themselves in the way that I am going. So my goal, I’ve decided, is not necessarily going to be to find myself. It is going to be simply to live. I do realize that I fit every stereotype known to popular culture about a confused and somewhat lost college girl looking for herself in the midst of angst and emotion, and I have and will continue to take every criticism and joke about this with a great sense of humor, if I do say so myself. If you don’t believe me, read THIS ARTICLE (that is capitalized for a reason) and then dare to tell me I don’t fit every single classification in this sarcastic yet poignant blog. And yes, I absolutely cracked up at this entry and showed it to my parents because it was just so utterly fitting.

I get it. I’m not special. Nobody has to throw me a freaking party. But I’m going to blog about my ideas and write about my time away from college as a somewhat independent, somewhat articulate, somewhat interesting (I can only dearly hope) 19-year-old female who understands both the significance and insignificance of an existential crisis at a young age. It means I’m perceptive, whoop de doo. But it doesn’t mean I’m special.

I’m using this time before I leave for South Africa to bulk up this blog with self-centered nonsense that most likely nobody reads but that helps me organize my thoughts in a way that I believe is appropriate for the internet and the general public viewers of this blog, even if they end up only being my parents.

But oh well. It’s better that I attempt and make sense on the internet, which we all know is never private, than allow myself to ramble in a secret journal whose contents will never be revealed to anyone but my own critical eyes…

It’s time to sleep, and the mosquitos have won again.

Lived in a house in Westchester, near LMU

Worked a full-time internship in downtown Santa Monica for ThisNext. Check out my profile!

Went to the Electric Daisy Carnival in LA

Decided to take a year off and planned my travels

Flew to Chicago to visit my best friend/roommate in a mud hut from a volunteer trip to Kenya in 2007 and attend all 3 days of Lollapalooza in Grant Park

And of course, met some amazing people. Overall, I couldn’t have asked for a better summer.

Now that I’m back, I’m not really back and am going to Belize tomorrow to scuba dive with my dad for a week. I really know nothing about Belize but am excited to dive in tropical waters for the first time, my only other dive experiences having been Monterey, Santa Catalina, and Australia. We’ll be staying in Ambergris Caye.

In other business, I’ve mapped out the first half of my year off, and it begins at the end of September when I’ll fly to Cape Town, South Africa. After staying for a few days in a youth hostel there, I’ll be taken to Gansbaai, South Africa, known as the Great White Shark capital of the world and home to Shark Alley, the infamously shark-infested waters showcased on Discovery Channel, Planet Earth, in National Geographic, and all throughout the media.
In Gansbaai, I’ll be working as a volunteer with the White Shark Project, a dive operator right in the village. Info about the volunteer project can be found here.

More coming soon!

-A

Just a little friend

Unconditionally

Mom

More posts will come soon, with actual text. For now I’m just becoming brave enough to let everyone know my blog exists. Welcome!

“For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It’s always our self we find in the sea.”

-E.E. Cummings

San Luis Obispo, California

Gansbaai, South Africa

“The cure for everything is salt water: sweat, tears, and the sea.”

-Isak Dinesen

Because. And anything I want. 

In all seriousness, I’m planning on using this blog as a place where my family, friends, family friends, those I’ll miss, and pretty much anyone who wants to know can check in and see what I’ve been up to during my time off. I vow to try and make it as interesting and amusing as possible, and to provide some exciting and interesting forms of media to update you all with. For example, leading up to and during the month of October, expect photos, videos, and information on Great White Sharks, as well as a look at the sleepy fishing town of Gansbaai, South Africa (more on that when I’m not so tired). 

For now, get excited, because I am.

The Walrus and the Carpenter

Some say that everything happens for a reason. It is usually said to those who have experienced the inexplicable, in an attempt to make some sense of it all. Tonight I realized why life has brought me to where it has. I’m not particularly religious, but I believe the mind and the soul work together to eventually bring us to where we need to be, regardless of whether we decide to put up a fight along the way. Although this is not the premise of this entry, it’s important to know that a little more than a month ago, I was broken up with after a not-so-long but still enjoyable relationship. The breakup itself was, obviously, not fun, but the way I reacted was the most tangible proof that I was simply not happy and something needed to change. I haven’t understood, until tonight, when it all fell together like the finishing pieces of a puzzle, what I’m standing before. I’m standing before the beginning of my life.

The breakup was like the straw that broke the camel’s back. After it happened, the floodgates opened, and everything I had been struggling with was released out into the open. After somewhat of a mental breakdown and uncontrollable emotional turmoil, I decided it was best to withdraw from school for at least a semester to regather myself and do some “full being therapy” if you will. It wasn’t the breakup that made me break down as I did, it was the feelings of worthlessness and anger that came along with it (I have a long history with depression and anxiety). I knew that all my previous gut feelings about my college not being a good or healthy environment for me were right all along. My reaction to a breakup only showed me I was not fit to handle the normal ups and downs of life. I knew I needed a break from the world I was in, but the world itself wouldn’t stop turning just because I wanted to get off and rest a while. 

To make a longer story shorter, both my parents and I have agreed that my time off needs to be productive and somehow contribute to my education. Of course I agreed. I harbor a great love for the outdoors and traveling, and knew immediately that I wanted to spend a great amount of my “life break” abroad and in adventurous settings. Being the kindest, most supportive parents one could ever ask for, they agreed to financially support me in anything that contributes to my education.

And that brings me here, where I sit, truly the most blessed girl in the world. My family wants me to do whatever it takes to be happy, and educate myself at the same time. They give me their support, emotionally and financially, to take on whatever I desire. I literally have the entire world in front of me, and that’s why I decided to start this blog. Already I have begun researching and know it will be hard to sleep tonight with the thoughts of researching Great White sharks in South Africa, becoming a Scuba Divemaster in Thailand, getting my ski instructor certification in the French Alps, spending time learning meditation in an ashram in India, or helping preserve the Great Barrier Reef in Australia in front of me (thank you, internet). 

And suddenly, it all made sense. During the breakup, when my friends and family saw me having such a hard time accepting myself, I was told over and over that it happened for a reason. That everything does. I hated that expression. It has never proved itself true, until now: If I hadn’t been broken up with, I would have continued on into the first semester of my Junior year of college. I would not have had the sort of breakdown I did have, resulting in the decision to take time off. I wouldn’t have had the time nor the opportunity to do anything I want in the entire world to work on my education and my happiness. I wouldn’t have been inspired to write about my coming travels (and entertain thoughts of writing a book), and I wouldn’t have pursued writing once again, which has always been my first and foremost passion. Being broken up with will potentially be the best thing that has ever happened to me, and as well as inspiring new adventures, it has brought me back to writing once again.

I don’t know what I believe. I do know that I have much to learn and that I will never be satisfied until I have something tangible to believe in. I want to do and feel and create in a way I cannot where my life currently stands. I will always be restless, but I know I can be happy.

I am now at the beginning of my life. 

Nice to meet you.

“The world is my oyster

Which I with sword will open.”

-The Merry Wives of Windsor, William Shakespeare