A Year

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
Bernard Berenson

I realize I'm coming up on the "year" marker of this page. How strange. This page has been anything but constant in the almost year it's been around.
I began it with the hope of finding other people to share goals with. I'm glad that that project has been started with Lessons, but that left me wondering, "what is THIS page for?"
I have a journal that I write in for reflection or importance. So what is this? I've thought about shutting it down many times, especially throughout the summer. But when I left for school, my mom gave out the address to my family. And this is an easier way of keeping people updated when you've been blessed with such a large family :) It's unnerving though, sometimes, not knowing who exactly is reading this. There are people I would definitely prefer not to read this, but I suppose that's the risk you run putting your thoughts on the internet.

I ask myself though, why I felt the need to start this in the first place. I suppose I felt the need for growth and change when I started this page. Which was stupid of me, looking back. Self-induced growth is never for the right reasons, I think. It would be nice if you could look at yourself in the mirror and say, "Grow!" and it happened. I think if it did, my brother would be much bigger than he is. :P (He called me last night, by the way. He never calls, so it was really exciting that he wanted to talk to me. I miss him like crazy. There's no one like him around here)
Jokes aside, we're always growing. And it was an unfortunate decision of mine to try to stay "fixed" as I was my Senior year, because second semester I decided I had to catch up on growth and boom, here this page is. I think it takes a lot of courage to admit that this started for a stupid reason. I felt the need to be more mature and changed, since one of the most important people in my life told me I wasn't good enough.

And as I approach THAT year marker, I've had a lot to think about as well. It's amazing how much we change in a year, isn't it?
And yet how the same we feel...

As Jason Robert Brown so perfectly captures, one minute you think you've got everything, and in the next, you're a complete stranger to yourself.

I leave for Africa in 2 days. I don't think I will come back the same person.

A new world calls across the ocean....