Adventure – Page 3 – Chloe J Sayers

Cereal and Salads

Cereal. Salad. Salad. Cereal. Salad. Cereal. Cereal.

With an occasional injection of coffee, that nicely sums up my diet from the past few days. I’m not complaining though, I am honestly just very happy to know where food is located and when I can get it and where I’ll be sleeping tonight.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve slept in 7 different places. I have mastered the art of living out of a trunk of a car. Looking back, it really was an adventure. During my most dramatic moments, I felt homeless and rejected. It felt like an over-privileged extension of the poverty simulation.

Confused yet? I’ll clarify my references. This summer, I am interning with HOPE International, a Christian non-profit providing financial services to the poor across the world in a Gospel-centered way. When I first arrived in south central PA, I attended the HOPE International 2014 Leadership Summit. It was a great time of getting to know the staff, the other interns, learning about HOPE and God and life, and getting thrown into a simulation where I was feverishly making paper bags and giving out hugs in order to provide for my family (a group of 5 HOPE staff partners and staff). It was an intensely emotional 30 minutes and gave me a very small dose of what it feels like to be trapped in poverty.

Needless to say, my home hopping of the last two weeks comes no where close to the kind of entrapment and powerlessness that millions of people experience worldwide every day.

This is a post of gratitude. I am so thankful to be working with such a genuine and effective organization this summer. I am also blessed with the surprise of a very good part-time job that allows me to do things I love and get paid for it. I am living with some incredible young people that are constantly giving me examples of how I want to live and view life and I even have a closet all to myself now.

So long, suitcase living! Hello, breakfast munchies and leafy greens!

Until next time,
Chloe

Adventure, Time

Mesmerizing Mirages

The expanse of Lake Michigan fills my landscape. Yet my eyes are focused only on one golden spot where the setting sun has imprinted itself on the lake. It looks perfect and I have to resist the temptation to run down the 265 steps to the beach, hijack a kayak, and paddle to it.

Something more than the 265 steps deters me though. There is no way to reach the mesmerizing glimmers. By the time I get there, the sun will have set and the dancing lights will have disappeared. In the meantime, I will have missed the sunset.

It’s hard not to remember all the sunsets I’ve missed in my life, chasing after an elusive golden patch of light.

There are goals that I was never meant to reach, a person I was never supposed to be. So many mirages that I bet my life on being true only to find them not only unreachable, but non-existent. I’ve exhausted myself over and over again in this impossible pursuit.

So, for at least today, I will rest and watch the sunsets in life. It is impossible to capture it’s magnificence in words so here I will end and allow you to find your sunsets as well.

About Me, Adventure, Change, Life Lessons

The Uncertainty of Adventures

There is so much I’d like to say to myself. Things that I’ve known forever, thought about forever, and written down a thousand times. Repetition is my friend.

I have a tendancy to look at life like this:

Life is a constant exchange, a continous change of location and people but with one common theme of stress. There will always be a crisis to fixed and struggles to overcome. I will always be failing in some or every area of life and I will always be trying to pick myself up and come up with a new strategy on how to fail a little less next time. This semester has been wonderful in many ways but rather stressful in almost every way. The train of thought I was on would take me to the next stop of summer and see it as just a switch into more stressful circumstances. Just different relationships to balance and new situations where I’d be over my head and incapable of doing what was expected of me. All of a sudden, its next semester where I’m no longer a freshmen and I’m responsible for other people and need to grow up in 15 weeks and learn how to micro-manage my time and I wake up one morning to realize that I’m stuck in the adult world forever.

Today, I choose to look at life like this:

Life is a constant exchange, a continous change of footing and placement but I’m not being asked to jump to the top of the mountain. I’m asked to get through this weekend of finals. I’m asked to take a few more steps in becoming a better friend and student. This summer will make me a little less woefully unprepared for the next semester and each day, week, and month will prepare me a little more for the next one. All of a sudden, each little new stress is really a new opporutnity to grow and be a little more ready for the next challenge.

I could say that life is always full of stress and I just need to learn how to best deal with that reality and that would be true (and Fitwell would agree with me).

But I’d rather say that life is always full of opporutnities and adventures and new things and the small things I am doing now will mean that I will be able to better fully experience those opportunities in the future.
I could find something wrong with life if I wanted to, but I’d rather say that there is nothing wrong with being irrationally happy.

Adventure

Senior Year Bucket List

3df10m_bucket Planners, colored pens, thumbdrives, color-coded folders, notebooks, and binders. Nothing could make me happier. The organization and schedule of school was calling me and I was very excited for school to start….until five days ago. That was the day that I went to school for a NHS meeting and registration. After spending four hours in that building, my spirit yearned to be free once again. (Sidenote: While I’m really bored at school, I pretend that I can seperate my spirit from my body and while my body is slowly dying from boredom, I pretend that my spirit is having a grand ole time) So, in order to rejuvinate my excitement for senior year, my MJL and I decided to make a senior year bucket list. That is, a list of things we wish to do before senior year is over. While bucket list often signifies death, nothing could be farther from the truth. We plan on emerging victorious from senior year, with not only diplomas in our hands and caps on our heads, but also the deed to the entire territory of Canada (the 51st state). Overthrowing the Candaian governement is one of the items on our bucket list. Others include: thai food outings, lunch box exchange days, and making a music mash-up. If you have other brilliant ideas as to what we should do this year, please leave a comment. If it is within the laws of physics and Canada, we will attempt to do it and I will report back on its success. I hope all have a wonderful school year doing new and interesting things.