"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild a precious life?"

Lately I've been feeling just a teeny bit in the doldrums. Anyone who knows me well knows that I like to be busy. I thrive when I'm busy: I eat better, I plan better, I exercise more, I stash ideas away for what little free-time I do have and I make that free-time count. I like to be be busy.

However, now that I'm out of school, I'm finding myself with a lot more free time than I've been used to, and I'm also finding it not to my liking. I was going to use this post to elaborate on all the reasons I'm frustrated with my life post graduation (not enough hours at work, not enough money to frivolously spend on my many days off, too many auditions ending with the word "Thanks, we'll let you know"), but when I boil all that away I realize it just comes down to me being bored. And when I realized that, I couldn't stop the words of my mother - said so many times to me as a whining, restless child - from creeping into my head. "Only boring people are boring".

So instead of focusing on what's bumming me out, I'm going to focus on the things that are making me happy right now.

My walk through the park on my way to hot yoga...

... and window shopping on my way home.

Forever finding new cooking projects to do in my tiny kitchen with the single bright blue wall...

... especially when they show up  in the mail in my mysterious free subscription to Shape Magazine.

Finally having hair long enough to make a hair-stach...

... and swinging it around while I rock out to my Mumford & Sons Pandora station.

And finally this poem, the poem that makes me happy and giddy and reverent and grateful to be young right here, right now.

"The Summer Day"

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Thanks, Mary Oliver.