"I believe there is another world waiting for us, Sixsmith. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there."

This movie haunts me before I have even seen it. I watch this trailer at least twice a day. The music makes my eyes water. Even if this fails in the box office, this is one of the best movie trailers I've ever seen.

Yep. Cannot wait.

Well, here's something worth announcing. I was talking to my counselor about different places I've been researching to possibly move to for graduate school. About four options were on the table. After several exchanges, my counselor said offhandedly, "Well when it comes down to it, I hope you choose where you go most of all because of the program itself."

And that's when I realized I've had my priorities a little shaky. Like the iPhone apps get when you delete or move them. ;)

I've been focusing on where I want to settle down, using grad school as a reason to move there. Well there are pros and cons to every city, and the thing that will get me through the cons of where I live will have to be the reason I moved there in the first place: my grad program. I need to love that, then move from there.

So I started revisiting my options without any regard to where they were located. Within an hour, we had a winner. And the winner is an ironic one, since it is the first choice I had four years ago when I started thinking about grad school at all:

Whose Graduate Program Center resides in...

So that's the goal, the plan, and the pursuit. This will be super embarrassing if I don't get in, haha. All the more reason to make it happen! I may apply to more than one for a safety net, mind you.

Sometimes I feel like my mind, without my permission, does routine maintenance down memory lane. It's as if it makes sure it still has as much information stored as possible for a particular setting. I'll walk into a room I've walked into thousands of times and distinctly remember something that happened in it years ago as if it happened yesterday. I walked into the Starbucks by my house yesterday and immediately remembered the night I was fourteen and met my youth pastor and a guy friend there to talk about something I can't remember. That was the first night that particular friend drove me home, the first of many to come and the beginning of our more-than-friendship days. I've had so many memories there since that night nine years ago, more intense and meaningful memories at that, and yet it replayed in my head as if it were only one memory of a dozen to choose from. I was sitting in my living room one afternoon after work and remembered my first time walking into this house four years ago with Missy to meet Cathy, wishing so badly I could live in a house like this one day with roommates. My counselor's office is in the same complex as Mike and Rhonda's used to be, and I remembered getting breakfast there with my youth group after our 30-hour famine weekend. French toast never tasted so good.

It feels like my life is lazily flashing before my eyes, grounding me in this moment on the spectrum of time, reminding me this is not the only moment that has ever existed in this place and it will not be the last. Not all of the memories I've recently experienced have been pleasant ones. That same Starbucks where my more-than-friendship started was the same Starbucks where that more-than-friendship ended three years later, and I remember that just as clearly as the previous one. My living room where I dreamed it would be mine is also the living room I've cried my eyes out in for one reason or another. Life happens. Soak up the joys and breathe through the sorrows. Even at the unripe old age of 23, I can confidently say that I have lived a good life on this Earth. My fondest and most painful memories both remind me, in the same ways, that I have lived.

...and I plan on doing a bit more living, so let's not be so conclusive about my life yet, haha.

Bed time.