Maybe it's the fact that I watched Once last night, or maybe it's the fact that I'm feeling inspired, or maybe I'm just bored. But I realized this afternoon how much I miss making music.

In high school I studied and practiced piano and music theory. I was in every choral group our school offered, and I went to NC honors chorus. Music was the thing that drove me, it was a source of energy and peace. It was magical and beautiful.

My last year of college I took voice lessons. It was freeing and difficult and caused me to come out of my shell and let my voice resonate through a concert hall. It felt incredible. And then I graduated and stopped really singing.

Now I just absentmindedly sing in my car. I have accumulated a library of songs on my ipod that makes me feel good, and I can select an album that fits my mood, and that is that.

I used to sit at the piano and hammer away at difficult lines of classical songs. I would plunk out right-hand, left-hand, and finally the slow-and-painful combination of the two until my muscle memory became so fluent that I could breathe deeply, even close my eyes for a moment, and let the music envelop me.

Now I sit at a piano and feel like I never knew how to play at all.

So I guess this is my way of saying I'm going to try to play and make music again.

With love and song,
Megan
If you want to see a little of what I love to do:


with love and our project winning CPOY silver (woo!),
Megan
today.

i poured my heart out to God, crying in my car, in the rain.

i laughed with my fantastic co-workers about random things.

i met with a lovely friend who is going to do so many beautiful things with her life.

i learned how freeing it is to move on. i will get there fully.

i got upset that i don't have a boy who cares about me that way.

i sang.

i sang some more.

i got a milkshake.

and i am going to get a full night's sleep.

days like this make me feel really alive.

with love and listening to ingrid michaelson (always wonderful and optimistic),
Megan
I just woke up from a three-hour nap I did not intend to take.

So this evening will be filled with laundry, reading, hot tea, sermon-listening and restless sleep till I wake up at 6 tomorrow. woohoo!

The fact that I'm moving away is starting to freak me out. Maybe it's the fact that I have two months left at home. Or maybe it's just that I'm really happy with life right now. I love the people in it, and I'm getting to know new friends better, and I'm realizing how much I really need my best and oldest friends.

It's hard to find a balance between loving people without reservation, but also allowing myself to be flexible, mobile, somewhat detached. I've always hated the idea of holding back love in the name of self-preservation. But it's going to hurt so much to rip myself away from everything I know.

And that makes me think of this quote that I need to have cross-stitched on a pillow or tattooed on my arm or something:

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-- safe, dark, motionless, airless-- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable." -C.S. Lewis

That would be a really long tattoo. Cross-stitching, it is.

With love and not getting anything productive done today (yet!),
Megan
Greensboro always makes me think about what I want to do with my life.

On the list of things to ponder:
Do I want to settle in the U.S.?
Do I want to live in an ever-bustling, trendy and exciting city or out in the country where I can own land and run around in the woods and build a treehouse for my kids?
Do I want to adopt? (I think the answer will be yes.)

On the list of things to do in the next two months:
Read up on American history
Read up on Czech history
Start learning Czech
Learn how to do my makeup

On the list of things to do in the next few years:
Live in CZ
Live in Sweden?
Find a dateable boy
Make my life count for something big.

with love and lists,
Megan
I went to campus tomorrow and went to the music building practice rooms and just sang and played piano?

I don't want to be one of those graduates that just friggin' can't let go of being a student and therefore stalks around campus being all creepy and old.

But for reals. I miss Chapel Hill/Carrboro.

I google imaged "creepy old student" and THIS came up. Really?!?!

On the list of things to accomplish tomorrow:
FIX MY BUDGET. Holy crap. I haven't kept track of it at all for the past, oh, two weeks.
Go to the dentist. Hope I don't have any crazy problems. It's been about two years... eek!
Read a bunch while visiting Cafe Driade for what I'm expecting to be a pretty fantastic latte.
Wear fun clothes that I can't normally wear to work under a bright florescent 'avert your eyes' orange t-shirt.

With love and weird ominous swollen lymph nodes,
Megan