The Migration Path

Well it’s been a while since I have written, and I’m not exactly sure why… so much has been going on and to tell you the truth I’m not exactly sure where to begin. I don’t know if I could explain it, but whatever happens to come out in the blog post, I promise you could be emotional, hilarious, or absolutely ridiculous. I honestly didn’t know one individual could feel so many emotions… I mean I don’t even think I can define everything that I have been feeling over the past month in just a couple of words. What I’ve decided right now, I have this path, with no direction. I don’t mean like I’m stuck at a dead end with literally no place to go. Instead, I'm traveling along this path, and I have no idea where it leads. I can’t see the temporary road closed signs, or the four way stops or whatever. I really wasn’t planning on writing using a path analogy, they are so cliché. But before I get into what I really want to say I have to ask: When a bird migrates, do they know their exact path? Do they always go the same place? Where do they want to go? Do they plan their trips OR are they as “free spirited” as they come across? Hmmm….

I’m just going to tell you, I have never been so confused in my entire life. I’m stuck in this dark spot, and not a spot that I’m sad all the time or I hide in my room and cry myself to sleep at night. A blurry spot is probably a better description. It’s like there is this feeling hanging over my head, everything that I’ve done is slowly flooding back into my most recent memories. There are many good memories that make me smile: family, old friends, new friends, cute boys, and sporting events. However, with good memories come bad ones, losing friends, ruining relationships and just trying to figure out who I am. Now I’m in this place where I want what’s best for me, because how often do I get to think about myself? I mean really… College is the only time someone can really truly focus on themselves and who they want to be. But recently I can’t see past the step in front of me, and sometimes I’m terrified to even take that step. Now that I sound completely paranoid I would like to say, I’m not afraid to leave my room and do normal things, but I feel like everything I do in my life at this moment should have a purpose. It may not be the best purpose, but there is an action and it produces an outcome. I mean, I go to the grocery store to buy food to eat, I go to the gym to look nice, I dress nice to make myself feel better and people think I’m pretty… and on and on and on….  

What am I saying? THERE IS A METHOD BEHIND THIS MADNESS CALLED LIFE. Unfortunately, if you are looking for an exact answer, this blog post won’t have it. I feel like finding a purpose to my life is an ongoing thing. But what I’m struggling with right now is: I have garbage covering my path (yep, back to the path analogy). But I’m not sure if it’s garbage I can move, or if I just need to change directions because it smells soooo bad. This blur can’t clear up until I figure out what has caused it and either embrace that, get over it, or get rid of it. My garbage could be a number of things: the apartment complex I live in, my friends, my organizations, Tampa, USF, the classes I’m taking. Most of those things have made an impression in my life and I’m not really ready to part with, except the apartment. However, I have these stains in my path that are a little harder to get up: regrets, things I haven’t done, things I want to do, and milestone events in my life, those rite of passage moments (Were they right? Did they go as planned?). Right now I’m at this point where I have to back track and figure out what has brought me to this blurred spot and take the necessary steps to get a clear confident view of my life.

Those of you who are STILL reading this, I don’t know how you managed to make it through, it’s kind of confusing. But this is just a small fraction of what I’ve been thinking about, and what has been circling through my brain. Clearly I have lots of questions that need answers and a path that needs cleaning. I’m just glad I have some people I can talk to; it’s nice to realize I’m the only one who isn’t exactly sure what’s going on in their life. I guess I don’t know the answer to my migration questions, but I hope birds never get as confused and somewhat lost as I have been (I do wonder if they panic when they get lost, or if the male birds avoid asking for directions). Either way, I’m going to try to live my life more freely, come up with some answers, but maybe try not to worry so much. To most of my readers who probably don’t have everything figured out: Find someone to talk to about it, the only reason I am actually able to write at this moment is because of Steph Galvin. Oh! Listen to some music, and when you have time, sit down and try to answer some of your own questions. But don’t talk to yourself out loud; you’ll get put away for that. 

Thanks for reading!

Sarah Ann Weaver

Fearless

This afternoon I went to the most amazing place in the entire world, St. Pete Beach. I got to visit with my seagull friends, lay in the sand, and listen to the soothing sounds of the waves. I definitely haven’t had the time to relax recently. I mean, I’m a sandwich artist at Subway, I have 5 classes to worry about, I’m in a sorority, and an athletic organization on campus. Anyways, I’m a busy bee and today I took a couple hours to enjoy some “me time,” well “Steph Galvin and Me” time. I’ve realized so many things over the course of about a week and a half. I can definitely say this is the most difficult part of my life, so far anyways. It’s not in a bad way, it’s just one of those mountains I have to climb over, but recently I’ve kind of felt like an ostrich trying to fly over a 30 foot fence… For those of you who don’t know, ostrich don’t fly, so impossible is pretty much what I’m trying to get at. Anyways, over the past couple of days I have realized what some of the most important things in life are; family, friends, and happiness. I’m not really going to get into those exactly, but I want to get into how I realized that those items are important.

I worry a lot, I’ve been a worry wart my entire life.  In elementary school I refused to faint into someone’s arms during a play for fear I’d look stupid and he’d drop me; middle school, I threw up on test days; and today, I just worry about school work, friends, family and my future. Here is what I have realized; my biggest fault is worrying about the future. I’ve been so worried about what is going to happen down the road, and not just next week but like weeks, months, even years in the future.

So today is my declaration, I’m telling everyone I’m not going to worry about my future, because where I’m at right now is perfect. Yea, there are some bad days and there are some awesome days, but I’m not going to worry about anything. Today when I was on the beach, with my seagulls, I didn’t have a care in the world; I was content, but not just content, happy. Recently I’ve had two people tell me I need to focus on the present, and you know what, they are exactly right. So I my two wonderful friends that keep me the sane person I am today - you know who you are – thank you. And to all my readers, if you worry like me, try not to. It will be hard, but as I watched the seagulls roam the beach and rest in the sand, they seemed so carefree and their flight seemed effortless and that feeling would totally be worth it. Every once in a while a huge gust of wind would come a long and I would watch them fight against it. But as college students, as humans, we all have those huge wind gusts that may knock us down. But we have to be fearless, like the seagulls, and get right back up again; go on with life and try not to worry about what could happen, and let ourselves be engulfed by the sunlight, let our wings be caught by the breeze and just go with it.

Hope this helps some of you who may be going through some rough times right now. Also, the picturesI added are just 2 of the 101 photos i took at the beach today, 95 of them are of seagulls. Anyways, thanks for reading! 

Sarah Ann Weaver 

The Bird Nest..

This past weekend, I sat outside the house I’ve had all my childhood memories in… I laid down on the concert and looked up at the sky. My mom was sitting in a folding chair, my brother on a stepping stool and my dad on the concrete next to me. My sweet little kitty, Boo, was chasing leaves; Lucy, princess kitty, was walking around aimlessly, and Luke, my dog, was tied around the garage door track. As I looked up at the sky I noticed the trees, the overcast sky, and finally a bird’s nest in the tree looming above me. I thought of home, and how much home means to me. When most people think of a home, they may think of a structure, a house, with a front yard, a doorbell, and mailbox. However, I don’t just think of the physical “home.” My warm bed, the blankets that lay across the couch, and the shoes in the middle of the floor always come to mind, but there is so much more to my home than that. To me my home is my perfect vacation spot… That stress free location where everyone knows my name, where I don’t have to worry about what I look like and just visit with those people I haven’t seen in a while (in my case recently “a while” is at the most 2 weeks). People make my home what it really is to me; going home and feeling loved by friends and family is an irreplaceable feeling.  

Now I’m not saying that you can’t have more than one home… but there is just always that one place that we all feel secure. We can be who we really are, and do the things we want to do. Sometimes I feel like people forget how important it is to be who they really are. As college students, we always have an image that we have put on for everyone we have met, hopefully, we have each been true to ourselves and our image is who we really are… but regardless, when we go home to visit mom and dad, we wear sweat pants, flip flops, and possibly no bra, depending how lazy we really are… guy readers, no bra hopefully… My point? Recently back home, has been my only safe haven. Am I homesick? The simplest answer would be yes. The complicated answer would be so confusing, very few people would understand.

Well as I was looking up at the bird nest that afternoon, I wondered how often baby birds visit home, if they do at all… How much they remember, if they visit their brothers and sisters… Now as my readers you guys are all laughing at me, but this is a very serious thought. I mean, if I were a bird, I’d fly home probably every weekend to get a decent meal and a hang out in a nest, visit my childhood birdy friends. Okay, even though I sound ridiculous, all I’m trying to say is the worst thing you can do is take advantage of being home; because one day you’ll realize it’s the only place you want to be, it’ll be the only people you want to see.    

Keep reading, 

Sarah Ann Weaver

Bad News: A Seagull Story

Yesterday my best friend, Steph Galvin, came home from class to inform me of probably the saddest news I've been hit with in a long time. First she asked me if I had driven down a certain road going to school, I said “nah” and her response was “good, thank god.”

So my mind starts running for 10 seconds before I blurted, “uhm, why?” She shifted in her seat and got the awkward, I need to tell you something, but I don’t’ want you to be upset look on her face. She paused for a second and then said, “There was a dead Seagull in the parking lot”

Gasp! Soooo depressing… She felt awful and continued with, “I was freaking out and I’m just glad you are okay.” I stood frozen, feeling like a little bit of me had died inside. The next few moments Steph continued to explain how she wished I could read her thoughts so I could understand what she was thinking when she saw the poor lifeless seagull. For the next couple of hours she would text me to make sure I was still alive, and warning me to be extra cautious today. Steph jumped to the conclusion that something bad was going to happen to me, and that this dead seagull was an omen. I laugh at the thought of it, but she does have a valid point.

There were a couple things that went through my head after Steph shared this terrible news with me. The first was poor seagull, the second how did this innocent creature die, and the third was actually provoked by a later comment that I will get to momentarily. My first thought is clearly self-explanatory, we all feel bad for creatures that have died unexpectedly, even expectedly. I happen to be a softy when it comes to animals, then again who isn’t? For instance, when my beta fish Apollo died, I was sobbing as I flushed him down the toilet. I mean, I practically killed him myself, which is the sad part. Yup, there is a certain temperature beta fish like their water at, and needless to say, I didn’t have the water at the correct temperature, and the next morning he was floating along the bottom of his little home, completely lifeless. I’m also the kind of person that will convince myself that a dead cat in the road is, in fact, a raccoon or an opossum, when undoubtedly, it’s a cat. My point is you should feel bad for animals when they die.

My second thought still seems to bother me, how do you kill a seagull? They fly. No one should be hunting them, I mean, yea they are annoying to everyone else in the world, but come on. So if it was taking a break from flying and taking a stroll in the middle of the parking lot, shouldn’t you as the driver stop? I mean, people slam on their breaks for squirrels; my dad practically throws my family through the windshield if there is a squirrel in the road. Drivers should be just as cautious about birds. Granted, birds should be in the middle of the road, but give them a break, they fly most of the time. Birds need to relax too. So yea, whoever hit that poor seagull should be paying a little bit more attention.

After Steph had given me the bad news I had to go to my discussion class for accounting, I sat down next to one of my new friends and told him about the dead seagull, his comment afterward – with the intention of making me feel better – was “well I saw a flock of seagulls this morning on the way to class so you should be safe, and there are still plenty more around.” My first thought, but what if those seagulls were that poor dead seagull’s family? Do they know? Are they sad? Depressing I know. My response to him was “but now someone in their family is missing” with one last effort to make me feel better, he smiles and says “it was a rogue seagull.” I laughed, his little comment had worked.

Anyways, I guess it’s just funny the way people look at certain things, obviously to a couple of my close friends it’s a known fact that seagulls are close to my heart (read previous blog to see why). Steph jumps to the conclusion that a part of me is dying, and that I should watch my back. My classmate, the optimist, reassures me that there are plenty more seagulls and that particular seagull was a rogue. And me, well I just don’t like for anything to die, birds, people, cats. Why can’t we just live forever? I always think about how everyone else is effected, who will miss that pet or family member or friend. I just feel like this incident is a great interpretation of how something so inevitable and common as death can be viewed in so many different ways. It triggers different emotions in all of us, mainly sadness in all of us, but we explain it, or cope with it, break it down in different ways to help us or those around us feel better.

These are just my random thoughts on a Saturday afternoon. I’m going to try to post more often, but we will see how that works.

Keep reading J

Thanks!

Sarah Ann Weaver

The Bird I Would Be...

Well I don’t know if I have expressed what my favorite bird is… but here it goes. I love seagulls… Yes, the rats of the sky, of the sea, and of your picnic basket. Why? Good question. To the average hater, seagulls:

• ·        are annoying
• ·        eat your food
• ·        fly around in your sunlight while you’re trying to tan
• ·        make the horrific squawking noise
• ·        blah, blah, enter complaint here

Anyways, Seagulls live and congregate around the beach. I love the beach, and as a college student if there is one place I’d rather be than class it’s at the beach, particularly St. Pete Beach. Earlier this afternoon, my roommate, Steph Galvin, told me I needed to describe and explain my love for seagulls, I told her that was practically impossible because they are such indescribable creatures. But I’m going to try to explain to you – my readers – why they are so important to me. Even though you may hate them, you see them everywhere. I don’t know if you have noticed or not, but their wingspan is broken; sort of bent in half. Please observe picture below:

Purposefully broken, and not to get all godly on some people, but they were made that way… For some reason that broken-ness, that imperfect wingspan, draws me to them. I feel like I have a connection with them, and I personally think all people should. I’m not perfect, we aren’t perfect, and no one is perfect. But seagulls face hurricane strength winds, they get rolled around in the waves, and even still, there are always plenty to occupy the beach.  Seagulls aren’t mysterious and wise like owls, or endangered and honored like eagles. However, to me seagulls show strength and persistence. They are a symbol of life; life with its ups and downs, its beautiful days, and its ugly days.

One of my favorite pictures I have ever taken is of a seagull flying into the sunset. Being able to capture a seagull with a sunset leaves one impression on my mind… a promise for tomorrow… not exactly sure how I get to that conclusion, but when the sun sets, I think of it rising again the next morning. I think of how seagulls will go on with a new day; continuing to live and annoy the crap out of everyone, except me. I don’t expect you to love seagulls now, but give them a chance. The imperfection in their wings could remind us all that we aren’t perfect, but it’s our imperfections that make each and every one of us unique and lovable. 

Love Birds

Well I would have thought this would have been a happier blog post, but it’s not going to be so readers, prepare yourself…

So I’m going to start off with something very very cliché but “What is love?”

I mean it can’t possibly be something that you can put a real label on. I mean, I love my family, I love my dog, my cats, I love birds&trees, my best friends, even a lot of my good friends I love. I’ll have to admit I seem to use the term very loosely, I love music, I love baseball, and I love ice cream… For some reason I seem to have realized that I jump into everything to quickly, I’m head over heels for something, whether that’s music or food or a TV show, then one day I turn it off because I’m so tired of it. All of its wonderfulness and humor and (I have paused her because my roommate, the infamous Steph Galvin, has just posted a blog post that made me very sad, but back to the story) ability to make me happy, just disappeared.

What I’m really talking about? I broke up with my boyfriend about 20 minutes ago (and ex-boyfriend if you are reading this now, it’d probably be a good idea to stop, if you don’t, well, it’s nothing you haven’t heard). To give you a brief run down, we started dating 2 months ago, in that time, I got a ring for my birthday, roses for various occasions, took professional pictures with his family… and if that’s not enough, he thought I was “the one” and needless to say I got caught up in it all, and at one point I thought he was too. Why? Because my past relationships were the complete opposite, no hovering, no excessive texting or phone calls, no flowers, no talking about our feelings for each other. So yea, being the center of attention and feeling wanted all the time was definitely something I thought I could get used to. My friends were happy for me and everything was hunky-dory… I thought I knew what the word love meant and I was going to be happy with the rest of my life.

Obviously, this cute little love story takes a turn for the worst… I wish I could say that it was a slow realization but it wasn’t… there were many things that I realized all at one time, and it was a huge “slap in the face” to myself. I had realized how caught up I was in something that was impulsive and so immature. I had lost myself completely, I doubted everything, and stopped desiring things I had always wanted. Example: For any of you that don’t already know, I have always wanted a tattoo. When I told my boyfriend I wanted to get one he said no, or told me I could only get it in one spot, right at my bikini line… ugh. Anyways, so for some reason I stopped wanting a tattoo because he said no. It was like I had become blind to all the things that I had wanted, and if that’s what that kind of love was going to be, I didn’t want any part of it.

I really hope that two love birds don’t experience that. The thought of feeling inferior to someone and not wanting to share my thoughts and feelings is terrifying. I mean, I am sorry that I broke his heart, but I can’t be part of something where I don’t have control over how I think or feel. It’s not his fault that I get caught up in things, it’s mine, but that is something I will take full responsibility for. I hope it’s something I can work on in the future. I’m sure finding love is different for everyone, and I’m not asking for any reader to feel sorry for me, or think I’m some girl longing for love. I also hope no one reading this gets completely scared off by my impulsive notions…

What I’ve learned, love isn’t impulsive, or random, it isn’t a ring, or eating the same kinds of foods. Love is accepting someone for who they are, being who you are, and growing together. I hope everyone even birds find that kind of love…

Ex-boyfriend: If you are reading this, here is that poem you always wanted, lucky you, you got an entire blog post.

Keep reading J

Birds&trees forever!

Sarah Ann Weaver

Just a little bird...

Needless to say… this past week has been hectic.… However, my best friend and I have come up with a master plan to conquer the world and continue to attempt find the meaning of life. Chipotle seems to provide the right stoner music and delicious food to discuss philosophical topics, for example: what one wants to do with the rest of their life.

Now for a moment, I’m going to be selfish, I’m not going to say what someone should say they want out of life. Family, friends, health, & happiness, are all wonderful, but as I was sitting in Chipotle with my best friend, I realized there is one thing I do want. Fame and Fortune. I’m not really sure the fame that I’m talking about is the kind of fame that figures like Lady Gaga or Bradley Cooper have. I want the kind of fame that makes things happen, the one that produces fame for others, and basks in the glory of their accomplishment to make someone else famous. When I think about it, I’m not sure if that actually is selfish at all… But I’ve decided to be honest with myself and everyone else, I want to be so good at something that I make a tremendous difference in one person’s life, but they make and even larger impact on a whole population.

Like a bird I want to be the one in the sky, flying around, overseeing everything. By most I will go unnamed, possibly completely ignored. But for those who notice the good I do, the beautiful songs I can make, they will write about me, take pictures of me, and talk about me in an unnatural manor. They will point out my wingspan and the colors of my feathers, and cherish me for the qualities I bring to the world. They will recognize that my ability to fly is not only away to escape from places where I could be harmed, but also a sign of hope. To be an example of persistence and courage to keep doing something that you feel as though God made you to do, just as wings were meant for flight. So yea, similar to a bird, my purpose in life will be to hopefully bring happiness and hope to those who feel like they have a certain purpose and want to fulfill their meaning in life.  I want to be the one that is in the background, so quite that I am almost forgotten except by those who truly know the fame and fortune that I have brought to their life. I want to be their little bit of hope and their encouragement to follow what they truly want from their life. Just a little bird whispering you can do it.