This Crazy Life

One day I was in the clouds— literally and my mind was running wild with ideas about embracing this crazy life.

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You’d think I would be passed out right now. I’m nearly 35,000 feet above the ground, flying through the clouds, sitting next to a nice woman from Utah. Tired. Exhausted really from the past few weeks. Exhausted from life.

I worked four back to back doubles then got off work around 11PM on Friday night, drove home, showered, changed into my black and white striped dress for the next day, and drove three hours to Portland Maine at 2AM to board my flight home.

Heading home for Charissa’s mom’s celebration of life. Such a sad reason to be flying back to Nebraska in the middle of the season, but I wanted to be there for Charissa and soak up some time with my family. Life is short—spend it with the people you love.

I spent an amazing three days seeing everyone I could see. I ate at my favorite restaurants, I took shots with a friend for his birthday, had early breakfast with my grandparents, watched movies with my sister late into the night, and then one day later hugged everyone goodbye.

I had a delicious brunch this morning at this chic/hippie breakfast place in Omaha with the girls, then hopped back on a plane. Now here I am, with a messy mind, Noah Kahan playing on Spotify as I fly above the great lakes looking out the window imagining I am in the opening or closing scene of a romantic movie.

Here’s the thing, I have so much racing through my mind, and although I am tired, I felt like writing. But bear with me, because I am extremely tired, and confused, and I’ve been busy enough to keep these thoughts all bottled in my mind lately. If you can dissect them with me as you read line after line good for you, because I am still trying to understand the many thoughts running wild in my head myself.

It happens often throughout the day, that I have new thoughts that I think I should write about the next day. But the next day quickly becomes next week, and now the end of the season is near, and I haven’t done nearly as much writing as I had wanted. So here is my long-shot attempt at trying to get some of these feelings out finally.

Sometimes I can’t believe how crazy life is. Between the highs and the lows lately; it feels like I’ve been living in a blur—or maybe a dream mixed with a nightmare that I am never fully awake from.

Something about the past few months have felt very surreal and attempting to explain it feels impossible. From love, sadness, tiredness, happiness, its like I’m feeling everything so deeply I’m not feeling anything at all.

Life has been crazy. And I feel like I’m in this weird limbo just trying to take it all in and find the balance.There’s been so much going on, I am not sure if I have really processed it all just yet. Even worse, I feel like I have so much I want to share but I have no idea in what ways to share it.

Should I write a separate post for everything? One about the amazing guy I could be falling in love with, and how this entire summer has felt like a dream? Or maybe a post about what friendship really is; and how one of my very best friends just lost her mother to cancer?

I’m not sure. Maybe I should write a post about how grateful I am for the amazing things happening in my life—but every time I start typing the draft for that one, I instantly feel guilty. Hmm, maybe I should write one about how life is too short to feel guilty for your happiness even if those around you can’t feel the same happiness that you do.

Honestly, I don’t know guys. I am tired. I am stressed. But for reasons I’m not sure of. Maybe it’s because I’m keeping everything in right now. Maybe I’m keeping it all in because I don’t know how to get it out. Maybe because I’m living off four hours of sleep each night my racing mind keeping me up late into the night thinking about how I’m not doing anything meaningful with my life. Then I wake up on cloud nine because I feel like I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing with my life right now—all but sharing it with you.

Every now and then when I take a step back and slow down for a minute or two, I realize how amazing life really is, even as I’m all over the place I promise you I am thankful for the crazy. And I know that at the end of this season of uncertainty—this season of what’s next, this period of absolute chaos that I call my twenties, I know I will learn more than I could have ever imagined and it will shape me into the person I know I’m supposed to be. I’ll look back on these overwhelming feelings and giggle someday thinking about how I was stressing for absolutely nothing.

Until then I’m going to soak everything in. I’m going to embrace the crazy. I’m going to push through a few more all-nighters and reckless decisions made over too many vodka sodas. I’m going to reach out to friends and family when I can and spend too much money eating out here and there. I’m going to continue to work on finding the balance and enjoying the chaos while it happens. This life is supposed to be full of surprises. That’s the whole point right. Finding growth and embracing change and learning as you go.

I know sometimes I ramble, and honestly, I’m not sure if anything I write makes sense—but I hope you can relate to this weird feeling of being caught in the in between. Caught between wanting to have it all figured out and enjoying not having to figure it all out. Caught between wanting freedom but wanting to be loved and share a life with someone. Wanting to grow spiritually, mentally, physically, and wanting to just take a break and live in the moment. I hope you can relate to embracing the change and learning not to fear uncertainty but face it head on and ask life “what’s next”.

I wish you could see the sky right now. Its full of colors I can’t even begin to describe. Its beauty is so unreal right now, it feels like someone edited it. But it takes my breath away, nonetheless. It stops my mind in its tracks and makes me feel so little. Like all of my ‘problems’ and worries are smaller than the smallest tree I can hardly see from the window of this plane.

The colors in the sky, the fluffy clouds floating outside my window make me feel so grateful. Just to be alive. Even in the chaos, even in the hard times. Moments like this make me sit back and just relax for a second.

I’m not the best at describing these feelings yet. But right now, in this moment it’s like I am more alive than ever. The sun is setting behind this plane and it almost feels like I can leave all the hard behind me, leave the worry in the past and just fly into the night, fly into what’s next in life.

The love that is still coming, the adventure, the new cities I’ll live in, the new friends I’ll make in the next few years. Maybe it just took me being 35,000 miles in the sky to really see that everything is going to work out.

We are about to land in Portland so I’ll put my computer away now and chat with the sweet lady from Utah and get ready for the three-hour ride home and the next six doubles in a row. And with every chaotic day I face for the rest of the season—for the rest of the year, I’ll take it on with gratitude in my mind and love in my heart and trust the process; trust that everything is going to work out. And most importantly I’ll keep living. Living so hard that I lose some sleep and can’t wrap my mind around all the craziness happening.

Maybe this is what living life to the fullest feels like. Filling your days literally so full that you hardly have enough time to think. That’s what I’ll tell myself for now—until I continue to figure out just what this crazy life is all about.