I should actually go on a journey.

So, I figure to start this, I'll need some context;

When I was 10, I moved to Kenya. My parents decided a few years previously that they would follow in my grandparents' footsteps and become missionaries at this American Christian boarding school on the edge of the Rift Valley about an hour outside of Nairobi. I spent 5th and 6th grade there before moving back to Canada, in the same city in the same house I'd lived in before.

I really miss it today. I'm not totally sure why, I mean I've spent all of one month there in the past six years. I guess you can get homesick for a place where you've never really belonged. I've come to the conclusion that mostly what I miss is the atmosphere of there, especially when faced with the stark contrasts of my life here.

Here, everyone is always rushing. They can barely focus on one thing because soon they'll be running to the next. Most people go about their day as if everything is a tedious obligation. Everyone can't look beyond themselves to see that there's bigger concerns. When people stop rushing, they don't know what to do with themselves; they immediately turn to boredom.

In Kenya, I found everything to fall in a comfortable routine; people did one thing at a time, at a pace that seemed comfortable, and without pressure. Everything could always pause for a cup of tea in the middle of the morning and again in the afternoon. People relaxed and let things be uncomplicated. There was always time to go to read a book or go to bed early. Everything felt a hell of a lot less complicated. Occasionally I find person that has a similar gist to their life here but they are few and far between.

I think that largely I found this because I'm romanticizing my memories a bit, or I was mislead by age, but even when I was twelve, I noticed how discontent people seem with their lives all the time here. People wouldn't let little things go and prepubescent Julianne asked why it mattered to people that their hair be perfectly in place when they go out or that their parents pick them up at exactly 3pm, as opposed to 3:03 or 3:05. Why do people get so hung up on things that don't matter?

Mind you, I'm a huge hypocrite in pointing these things out. I'm one of these people who is always rushing. I get bored after two hours of nothing to do. I bicker about how little money I have. I stress about stupid things.

Basically, my job is stressing me out, school is stressing me out, and I want it all to stop so I can find some nirvana and reach some sort enlightenment where I can feel mostly content about things again.

I think I need to go on an adventure somewhere this summer. Maybe I should quit my job in late July/ early August so I can go on an epic journey. Any (relatively thrifty) ideas of where I should go?
Hearts,
Julianne

Fool proof, almost summer plans:

• Get a custom painted van and solve mysteries.
• Become a chain smoking alcoholic barista for the irony/ as my final act to deal with serving coffee before I quit to go to university.
• Try to get a summer job at the library so I can work real people hours, get full time cash money swag, and not have the worst shifts bequeathed upon me because I'm the lowest seniority. Also, working with people who aren't unreasonably intense about their job at Starbucks to overcompensate for the lack of achievement in other areas of their life.
• Become that person who is always casually wandering around. 
• Party Thursdays/ recovery Fridays.
• Read books not for school.
• Go on road trips with cool people to beaches and stuff.

 I actually just don't know what I'm going to do after IB exams. I've dedicated so much time and effort to IB since tenth grade and I don't know how I'm going to fill the void that it'll leave. To me, ending IB is like ending a long term relationship (with less emotions) because this is the sad state my life has been reduced to.

Hopefully I'll fill the void with something less masochistic. Like friends. Or running a meth lab out of my garage.

First exam tomorrow: English Paper 1. It's the beginning of the end, the hinge of fate. Just kidding, it's still a mystery as to what these exams actually count toward.
Hearts,
Julianne

Reporting from a pre-exam stress coma:

• I haven't gone to my afternoon classes for two days. One was for choir in music festival, one just because I couldn't emotionally deal with more classes. I drank tea instead with a group of an assortment of people I accidentally collected. 
• I finally got an article in the school paper only to find out that people actually read it and the fame is going to my head.
• A country music video was filmed largely at and around my school. It feels weird, especially because my city is quite east of Ontario so nobody really cares about us in Canada, not to mention the rest of the world. Local country fans are losing their shit and everyone else thinks it's kind of cool that something moderately interesting happened here. I have swam in that pool and may or may not have been on that rooftop, bros.
• And that's pretty much all for now because I'm practically in a pre-exam stress coma.

Hearts,
Julianne

Whispers of summer

Tonight felt like summer. Not pure summer, but a whisper of it. Moriah and I drove to Rachel's with the windows down and listening to King Charles, a personal summer favourite of ours. We had a bonfire with a bunch of youth people and some of Rachel's friends that I don't know. It's refreshing to be outside, and having casual banter with a different group of people than usual. Everything lately has felt overwhelmingly stale but this was comfortably different.

The last few weeks I've been in a sort of slump. Not depression, but rather a gradual bout of boredom with my life and feeling little motivation to accomplish anything. But I think I'm getting out of it. I have exactly eleven days left until I'm done with IB and I'm preparing for a youth weekend coming up in late May.

Then comes actual summer, which I have a new enthusiasm for after tonight. My sweater smells like bonfire in a good way, reminding me of why I love it.
Hearts,
Julianne