Lemonade

Life hands you lemons. You're friend leaves for college. You can't find a job. Summer is ending. You have no plans. You stare at those lemons in you're hand wondering why life is being so mean to you.

Then from out of the shadows, life jumps in front of you with a swirl of confetti and glitter holding a sign that says, "Just kidding!" and it starts raining lemonade. You dance around, which is way cooler than dancing in the rain because the rain is cold and dark but lemonade rain is bright and sunny and warm (but not like pee. I thought I'd clarify...). Everything is good and while you are slightly annoyed by the joke, it can't ruin the fun you're having.

After all life isn't perfect. It makes mistakes and like the terrible friend that it is, sometimes it forgets to check up on you. It can leave you feeling pretty stressed and angry, but it pays you back with pure awesome. And by pure awesome, I mean senior out!

Senior out is the most popular class on the schedule of my classmates, but in reality it isn't a class at all. Senior out is the absence of a class. No teacher, no learning, no school. My fellow seniors and I get to go home an hour and a half earlier than the underclassmen. And what do we do with this lovely time?

Whatever the hell we want!!!!!

Go to the mall, or to see a movie when the theater is practically deserted. Take a nap, read a book, go to a job interview. The possibilities seem endless in that hour and a half. It's when the world is ours and we take advantage of it.

Even without senior out I'd have to say that life is good. Friends are easy to keep in touch with when you have technology, the more jobs you apply for the more likely one of them will hire you (which they did), summer ended but the sun's still here, and plans never go they way you plan anyways.

No More Pressure

In a few days I will be experiencing my last first day of high school. As far as I can tell, every high school senior spends their senior year differently. Some use every second of every day trying to improve their grades enough to get into the college of their choice. Some use every second of every day to have fun in preparation to the fun that they will have at the party school of their choice. Some settle for what they are already good enough to do and decide to do that for the rest of their life. Some spend hours and hours trying to figure out what they want to do, where they want to go, who they want to be. I'm a misfit.

I don't study very often. I don't party. I don't settle for whatever is good enough. I've tried spending hours searching for what I would like to do with my future. The truth is none of those options have worked for me- ever! I'm a hopeless case! I'm every school counselor's worst nightmare! The year's worth of research on colleges and careers is in the trash or crammed into the back of a messy desk drawer.

It makes you wonder.... Could it be that, I, planner extraordinaire, am not ready to think about the future at all? Could it be that for once I just want to think about the present?

If so, what an inconvenient time!!!

I mean, what am I supposed to tell the mobs of adults constantly asking that question that high school students love or dread so much? Do I really need to say it? The oh so complicated question- "Where are you going to college?" Do I tell them that I've given up? That I just want to enjoy my last year of high school and when I want to I'll think about the future?

Maybe it's not such a good idea. Maybe it will take too long for me to figure it all out. At the end of the year when all my friends are getting their acceptance letters maybe I'll just begin looking at what I want to do. But anything else wouldn't be such a good idea either. How could it be a good idea to make a decision that will greatly affect the rest of my life just because I don't have enough time. It's not the kind of thing you can put a time limit on.

So senior year is FINALLY here!!! I've got awesome friends, great classes and a whole year to have fun! No pressure to be just a little bit better than my best. No pressure to plan my whole life in a week. No more pressure at all.

Adventure

Last night I went to a Cobra Starship concert with my friend and my mom. Of course the concert was fun- great music, cool venue, making fun of the couple in front of us who seriously needed to get a room- but it was after the concert that the real fun began.

There was no way we couldn't have been tempted to stand by the buses like loyal fans. Our car was parked right next to them. We HAD to go. And we went and got some things signed by a few of the members from the band. Someone was missing though. Where was Gabe?!

How could we leave without getting his signature. We waited and waited as the small crowd thinned out and quickly became almost no crowd at all. Some guy on the bus noticed us and a few other people hanging around and told us that Gabe had gone out. We told him that eventually he'd be back to the bus so we'd wait. To which he replied it could be sometime after 2:00 when all the bars closed. Well, that's when we decided to make the adventure real. I'd already told my friend, Jenna that we shouldn't leave until we saw Gabe and now was our chance to actually do that. We agreed. We would see Gabe that night.

Well even with our vow to see Gabe, sitting around on a sidewalk for two hours isn't our idea of fun. Plus there was this whole issue of us being hungry and needing a restroom. We decided to go to IHOP. Well of course we got lost on the way there and on the way back. But as we pulled in to the now deserted parking lot we were pleased to see that the buses were still there. No sign of Gabe but he had to be near. We saw a group of roadies packing up nearby and asked them if they knew where he was. They didn't. So we moved on to our other plan. Well we didn't have another plan so instead we wrote a note on the back of a receipt and used the seal from our CD cases to stick it to the side of the bus.

Finally we went home. After all our night started at 6:00 and it was 2:00 by then. But we were happy. It was never about meeting Gabe. If we met him then sure we got to brag about it but it wouldn't have added that much to our night. We had fun. It was an adventure. When we got home Jenna and I vowed that it wouldn't be our last adventure either.

Sure adventures like this wont help me get into college or figure out what I want to do with my life. But adventures like this are exactly what I want to fill my senior year of high school with. So here is my request- Give me a challenge and I'll go on an adventure. It can pretty much be anything but in the end I'll decide what I'll actually do. I might not even accomplish the challenge (After all I didn't meet Gabe.) but it will be fun nonetheless.

Email: coleyeverafter@yahoo.com

A Challenge

Senior year of high school. I should be thinking about colleges, making money with my part time job, finding the perfect guy to take to prom and spending tons of time with my friends. And I will do all of that soon. Right now though I want to add a little bit of a challenge to my last year of high school.

Jace mentioned the idea of writing a blog every week to me and I loved it. It was something that I kinda wanted to do anyways but the idea of making it a rule that every week I would post something to this blog made it even more interesting. Then I thought that I could do the same thing for my videos. Sure, I might occasionally post more than one blog or video a week, but the weekly things will be the challenge.

So here are my rules that I've made up.

1. A post to my blog must be at least one paragraph in length.
2. A video posted to YouTube must be at least one minute in length.
3. I must post one blog and one video weekly.
4. I will give myself four free passes- two for blogs and two for videos- since I know there is at least one week that I might not have access to a computer and one week where I'll be very busy. After the free passes are used there are no exceptions.
5. If I fail to post to a blog or video then I will be punished by posting a blog and video every day for a week following in addition to the blog and video that I would have already posted resulting in a day or days where two blogs and two videos will be posted.

Those are the rules and I plan to follow them. I think I'll start this challenge now, but I wont officially start it until school begins August 24th. The challenge will end on the last day of school.

I don't know what will happen or if I'll love or hate this challenge but I hope it will be fun. Let the games begin!!!