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itsachen:

Visited the NBC store today.

#sixseasonsandamovie

I want this mug more than anything. ANYTHING.

The opportunity to live and work in the most beautiful, wild place I could imagine is something I am grateful every day, even when I am overworked, under-slept, and sunburnt. I like to be outside in just about any place, but there is something about bogs and fens that just gets me. Maybe it’s looking down and realizing that the ground beneath my feet is alive with plants carrying out ecosystem processes that are, when you stop to think about it, nothing short of incredible. I cannot help but marvel at the sheer genius of nature every day. My business major friends often make fun of me for my love of science; I cannot understand how anyone can live in such an incredible world and not want to hold it in their hands, explore it, understand it.

Although I like all of our research sites, I particularly love the fen at our Mariana Lake site, which is coincidentally where I’m running my very own research this summer. I’m a little nervous about owning a project from start to finish, but mostly I am excited. I’m starting to feel like a real live scientist, which is both invigorating and terrifying.

I’m trying hard to hold on to how it feels to live like this: all science, all the time, immersed in nature, and trying to be one with my project (as my advisor says). This is what makes me feel whole and I do not want to forget that. I tend to worry about graduate school and future employment, and not being successful enough or making enough money is a constant concern. There isn’t a real reason any of that should matter. I am happy and fulfilled by my work, and that should be my primary concern. Scientists do not make much money, and they never have, but that’s no reason for me to shy away from what makes me happy and excited to work every morning.

summer air summer air summer air.

• restless and need to get away from the east coast. longing for open spaces and dirt roads. i miss my bogs.
• spring semester always seems to go on for too long
• excited to wear floral sundresses and sit outside and drink iced tea
• feeling very independent recently, don’t know if it’s a good thing. all i know is that i’ve spent a long time doing what other people want to do instead of what i want to do and i’m no longer waiting around 
• and yes, that does mean doing some things on my own (which isn’t something i’ve done for two years, basically), but it makes me feel bold and strong and brave and my own person, finally
• and it’s interesting to me how love once made me timid and scared to change my patterns, but this time around i feel big and real and limitless and i wonder if that is a coincidence

I must stop listening to Bon Iver. It’s making me oh so sad when I have no reason to be.

"Where rain, sunlight, and darkness are condemned, I cannot sleep. I do not trust anything that has been fabricated to replace the climate of woods or prairies."

Thomas Merton

"There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun."

Thomas Merton

The air is beginning to smell like summer and it makes me want to kick of my shoes, have an adventure or two, and stir up some trouble with Villanova’s finest. Maybe that’s a premature thought, considering we haven’t gotten to spring yet. Whenever the air gets warm, it reminds me that I need northern air to breathe and open spaces to run in. Summer air makes the world a bigger place, and I am no longer content to stay put. 

one year ago.

(Source: spoonfulofcookiedough)

"It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil."

Anthony Burgess