my wanderlust has taken hold.

maybe i'm simply not a writer.

when i see this blank window, most of my inspiration falls away. the only thing i can think to do here is vent, and that just isn't who i am. i wish i was in the proper head space to write the way i'd like to. i suppose it comes from having my high school friends slip between my fingers. i'm alone if lover is around. i hardly interact or speak with anyone outside of work besides lover and family. so my thoughts swim are left around in my head until they dissolve. my job dissipates any potential daydreaming. it starves it, and leaves no room aside from my objective of the day which washes away my entire being for 8 hours.

i'm waiting for the next chapter of my life to begin,
but i will have to wait until summer.
my wanderlust has taken hold of me, it watches each hour pass excitedly, knowing that the dull moment that just existed will be one less i will have to experience in this city.

21 will be my year. i can feel it. regardless of liquor, i have a feeling 21 might be the year this all starts to take shape.

it's not even christmas, and i already can't wait until june.

i think i've written about this before.

i've immersed myself in music again. i sat on my balcony with headphones in my ears for nearly two hours. i felt infinitely better. i've lost myself without my music, i think. my creativity and inspiration have always been fueled by the presence of it.

however, i think my music contains ghosts. i remember where i was, how i felt, and who i was with when i heard that song.

sometimes they are ghosts of me dancing in my bedroom with a smile on my face. others are of me sitting in the passenger seat with the window rolled down, singing out of someone elses window. the most difficult ghosts are the ghosts of others that return upon hitting play. you know they're there when you reach for the volume and turn it as loud as it can possibly go... or you turn it down completely. maybe this reasoning is why i struggle to take photographs of my life. images preserve nearly too well.

there are nearly no pictures of lover and i. i'll regret that, i know i will. in some ways though, i think the image i want to preserve of us isn't how we are now. i feel like i'm photographing unfulfilled dreams. this year we've survived so well but that's the extent of what we've done. we've managed to preserve our love and our lives but nothing more. if you ask me what i'm waiting for, i wouldn't be able to explain. i feel like we're on the verge of something big in our lives.


it's a feeling i can't describe.

i'm surprised i hadn't written sooner.

the prayers, the crossing of fingers, the well-wishes, all paid off. i stopped working overnight 3 weeks ago. now i'm working a normal schedule, and slowly readjusting to life as i knew it before all of this even began. it was all such a blur. it was the most terrifying time of my life so far. i've never been so afraid to fall asleep or wake in the morning until then.

the sunshine is so beautiful. i also love watching the moon appear, and it signaling nothing besides a time to open the doors to my balcony and let the night air in. now that i have my life back, what to do first? i still feel as though my life has not quite begun, and that this part of my life is just me being put on hold for a year, until life chooses to further itself.

soon i'll begin to reinvent myself back into what i was, or maybe something new entirely.

i regret not blogging. i'm missing out on documenting my life. there are no pictures to show where i've been, or hint at where i might be going. i'm thinking of starting a 365 project like others have, where you take at least one picture every day for 365 consecutive days. i want to look back on my life and smile at where i was. i've just fallen off the radar entirely. even my phone hasn't served as the best means of contacting me.

i don't know. i have no objective in writing tonight. i thought my writing would have picked up by now but it seems to just have dwindled further; lucky to see an update once a month even! i probably shouldn't have picked tonight to write though, as i'm upset and have been reading house of leaves which is making me unattractively edgy and slightly more afraid of the dark.

San Diego Pictures!

okay, so in honor of the bad news that i didn't get the new job position i interviewed for, i thought it would put such a smile on my face to finally share my san diego pictures with you! there aren't many, for fear of boring you, and also because of the fact that the camera was broken and some of the images didn't turn out at all. but please enjoy! i have to warn you that i loved putting the slideshow together so much that i've already started on a larger one. would you like to see another?

i want to reintroduce myself.
i'm tangerine. i'm 20 years old, and although it might not seem so, i am a lovable happy girl who loves to travel. and here are some pictures:

from here on out, i will no longer blog about working overnight. (unless it is a celebration post that my shift has ended!)

8:12 a.m.

sad news about my san diego trip: we took our Nikon EM, and i purchased 4 rolls of film and we shot pictures of our trip. after we had them developed, we realized the a piece inside the camera was cracked, and that some of our pictures came out over-exposed, ruining most of them! i was so excited to post some pictures of lover and i but the only ones that came out were a few of the view from the rooftop, which do the rest of the trip almost no justice.

once i get out of this silly fog i've been in, i hope my posts will hold much more color. i'm going to try and find a new look and template for my blog. i'd like to add more pictures to my blogs. i feel like i'll look back at my 20 year old self and really find nothing at all. no images of what life was. but then again, i'm not really sure if my life is really much of anything to document at all since i started working overnight.

i've been feeling much better, and much worse.

i've been trying to excercise before i fall asleep at night. as much as it helps my body feel better, it really doesn't keep the nightmares away. i've been having recurring dreams, violent dreams. i wake up afraid. the dreams stay with me far after i wake. i see places i've never been, and faces i've never met. i don't know how i dream of such frightening things. i'm surprised at my imagination.

tylenol pm became the only way i could fall asleep, and as soon as i realized that i stopped taking it all-together. i average 3-5 hours of sleep every night.

i also made an appointment to see a doctor next week about all the little bits and pieces that have been falling apart since i was a child. gymnastics injuries, childhood injuries, life in general. i don't like going to the doctor. i'm sure he'll be kind though, but the rooms feel so sterile and so dirty at the same time!

i live for weekends now. during the weekdays its almost as if i've died ages ago, and someone is perverse enough to attach my body to strings as if i was a puppet. i have no options. i have no choices. i can only surrender to my work. i'm just completely unsure of how i've managed to do my work so accurately when my mind is absent.

i would make a phenomenal zombie.

caged animals do make me sad, though.

last night i dreamt of flamingos and giraffes.

lover and i went to San Diego this weekend. his presence made me feel whole again. the St. James was a charming hotel. the elevator was adorned with a metal gate that you opened and closed yourself, (in haste i might add, unless you'd like to wait for the elevator to travel 10 floors again) and a second door that you pushed open to exit. the hotel room itself was immensely small but held such a high ceiling that instead of realizing you're cramped, you are instead romanced with the idea that while you're nearly forced to move so closely around the room together, it would be absolutely foolish not to share a kiss in every passing. red stairs and a hotel key led you to the rooftop which was a breathtaking, unobstructed 360 degree view of San Diego. everything seemed to be both small and large from there. the sounds from below echo, and you fall silent just to hear the city resound. i still can't seem to comprehend why the faint sounds of honking horns and sirens could sound so endearing, but in the midst of chaos, i think knowing so many others are around makes you feel less alone.

we arrived late to the hotel, we checked in at nearly 9 and wandered about with our GPS trying to find seafood. we wandered from one restaurant to another, becoming instantly turned away by the price at the end of each description. our last effort for seafood resulted in a 20 minute walk in the dark near the harbor, with only roaches walking along side us. naturally, the restaurant had closed just 13 minutes prior to our arrival. so we wandered back to where we belonged and sat ourselves in the 24 hour restaurant that sits inside the hotel (which we had greatly underestimated). the menu promises the best pancakes you've ever tried, or your money back... and we walked away paying the full bill, and a gracious tip. the food was amazing. i thought it was simply because we were so hungry from our long walk, but even upon waking up the next morning, it was the only place we wanted to eat in the entire city. if you can get me to eat a burger with peanut butter on it, you must have a talented menu. i ate more pancakes than i probably have within one excessive week at home! but moving backwards now, before breakfast the next morning...

we mostly walked aimlessly after dinner, and for once it was me that taught lover how to be an assertive city pedestrian. the streets became filled with only the drunk and homeless, so we knew it was time to head back to the hotel. i fell asleep wearing his shirt, with his arms wrapped around me.

we were unsure of what to do the following morning, but after lover shared his tragic story of a certain little boy getting the chicken pox on the day of his elementary school zoo trip, we headed off to the zoo. (for the second time actually, since the first time we left, i realized 20 minutes later that i left my cell phone in the hotel lobby, and it surprisingly sat quite patiently in the chair i left it in until my return.) it was nice to hold his hand and marvel at the animals that we've only seen on television or inside the pages of colorful books.

i was so proud to have navigated the city, and even more proud to have made it to San Diego in the first place seeing as i screamed in terror for the entire drive on Hwy 74. blind turn, incline, decline, blind turn, sharp turn, repeat. the drive was worth it; the hotel expense, the walking, the sore feet, the loss of sleep, the petty argument. love should always be worth every second.

it was our 2 year anniversary this weekend, and i couldn't be happier. my entire world has fallen in love with his. i've seen him 737 days in a row since he stepped off the airplane. i remain infatuated with his presence, his eyes, his intelligence, his patience, his uncanny ability to retain information others would forget in minutes.

i love who you are.
i just want you near me like you are now, for good.

this scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin.

i've been in a strange place. i can hardly believe it's been a month since i've written. on most days i find lying in bed with headphones on watching Mad Men. the show is sensual and melancholy, and it's perfect for me to lose myself in for an hour.

most other times my mind seems to be carrying on without me and i've been doing unconventional things to make me feel more alive. sometimes when i drive to work i scream in the car with the windows down. i wish i was kidding. the neighborhood probably goes awry hearing the mysterious screams come through their windows in my passing at two in the morning. on monday night i rolled down the windows and cried for my entire drive. the next day i sang with the windows up. some nights i merely drive in silence, which suffices. i feel much better than i had two weeks ago, and although some days i can hardly contain my sadness, on other days my emotions are at rest and i can dance about in my underwear and blissfully eat fruit snacks until lover comes home. i'm at peace with this idea, because when my emotions are at an unrest, i feel that it is happening for a perfectly good reason: when i become unsettled and unhappy, it usually means there is change coming about. frankly, if the only change was the seasons transitioning from summer to fall i would be perfectly content. sometimes i can hardly focus on work because i just want fresh air, and the sky.

i've felt so distraught because i think i can feel when a situation in my life is not permanent, but still i cannot seem to predict the end of it. i know this will not last forever, but there is no light at the end of the tunnel yet, only darkness. while traveling through a tunnel it starts out in the light, and with sadness you watch your surroundings blacken. you forget you're moving at all there in the dark, and get caught up in the idea that the only light that exists is only behind you now, and cannot understand that while travelling through the tunnel, looking behind you to find the light becomes the wrong direction... the light will only appear ahead. but the light behind me is all i've known.

i still dream of strangers, and a city i've never seen. i know my life will amount to something bigger, it just isn't the time now. and if years from now i was terribly mistaken, and my life has amounted to nothing... i simply will fly off the handle, sell everything i own in a yard sale, and move away.

if life chooses to leave me behind i will simply have to get ahead of it.