oh! the places i'm going.

with only 2 weeks (+ 1 day) of school left, we are in crunch time.  these last 11 days of school are jam packed with normal lessons, extra assemblies and shows, major end-of-the-year exams, field trips, and, oh yeah, 5th grade graduation.

with my graduation ceremony experience limited to those during which i was receiving a diploma, things have been a bit overwhelming.  especially since there are no traditions established at the school for the graduation festivities, L and i are in over our heads.  

this evening, i was doing a bit of casual research to get some ideas for every little component of what we might include in our graduation ceremony.  i mean, how long should it be, what should i wear, what should i SAY!? oh man, with the realization that i'd need to say something, i became stressed.  

then, i stumbled upon dr. seuss's "oh! the places you'll go!" and fondly remembered that it was my favorite graduation present -- just a fun reminder that life happens and things will go well if you use your head.  when i graduated high school and read the book so thoughtfully gifted to me, i never thought that i would be where i am right now... who knows where i'll be in 6 more years! oh! the places i'll go.  

"you have brains in your head. you have feet in your shoes.  you can steer yourself any direction you choose.  you're on your own.  and you know what you do.  and YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go."  

"everything is going to be great"

i just finished a surprisingly charming book recommended to me by the lovely loco, everything's going to be great by rachel shukert.

the memoir begins in a very negative, i've-made-terrible-decisions-that-are-now-funny-stories-let-me-tell-them-to-you sort of way during rachel's european quest to "find herself."  however, the book continued and i began to like her more as she did seem to begin to "find herself" or some parts of it during her journey.

the end of the book was surprisingly inspirational and there were a few quotes that i quite liked about travel and life. and how the places you go and the people you meet really do shape you and thus, help you to find out who you really are.

"a backyard is nothing but a little patch of dirt and rocks and sky.  and the world is a vast, terrifying, and wonderful place, filled with things we don't know yet we need.  nothing comes to us until we leave our little patch of dirt and go find them."


"...we travel to search for our souls. everywhere we go, every experience we have, we find another little piece that leads us to the next, like a clue in a treasure hunt.  each little piece of soul we find gets layered on top of the last one.  layers of sediment, forming a mountain.  can a mountain ever be finished? can a soul? i guess it's finished when we are..."


so there you go.

xx