paradigm shift.

I'm a dreamer. Since I was a little girl, I've had a wild imagination with an insatiable desire to do more. To live in Italy. To sky dive. To write a novel. To move to California. To run a marathon. To pursue my professional passion to the very top... but as all the dreams of my limitless, child-like imagination come true, there is still a resounding emptiness that has catalyzed a shift in my paradigm. The concept of do less, be more has been reverberating inside my soul recently. Lately, I find myself dreaming with just as much fervour but on a much smaller scale. I want to foster lasting friendships and dream of Sunday brunch rituals with the besties. I want to be a wife and dream of meeting someone to spend the rest of my life with. I want to be a mama and dream of starting a family. I want to settle down and dream of creating a home to call my very own.

I went back to Tennessee for a quick visit with Grams, Kara + Reese, and Jess + Ella the past four days and I'm currently writing from the sky, surprising myself by just how much I am dreading my return to Seattle this afternoon... back to the grind, as they say. When trying to decipher exactly what it is that irks me about coming back to the coast that I truly do fancy the most, I've come to realize it's the ginormous amount of miles that separates me from the feeling of home that makes my heart ache. As I watch from an aerial view as said miles melt in to the distance some 34,000 feet below me in the form of perfect squares, rocky mountain ranges, and fluffy clouds... I find myself fighting back tears looking out the window of 11A as the comforts of being home, that intangible feeling I've relished in all week... dissipates in to the indistinguishable layers of the atmosphere.

You lose that sense of belonging flying back to a city where I hardly no anyone. Where my sole purpose is to work and go to school and live my life for myself... And while these are both incredible opportunities I've worked hard to get to, they are just stepping stones to the grander things in life... the utopia in my dreams... full of love and babies and family traditions.

I used to think it didn't matter where you lived, that every friend was a phone call away and every family member was a plane ride away no matter where you were in the world. Home was where you were in the moment and life was about exploring new places and meeting new people. 

But as I grow up and the paradigm shifts in this new quarter of my life, my ideas, or more so ideals, of what really constitutes a home are evolving in to something more.  

It's not the place, in particular. Or a certain smell. Or the firmness of the mattress... that emulates the rich feeling of being home. These are all constants that can easily be recreated wherever you go. It's so much deeper than that. It's the quality found in the day-to-day. It's the interconnectivity of the people in your life; the engaging conversations had over a pitcher of sweet tea. It's the reminiscent moments where you're smothered in nostalgia looking back, all the while creating memories that turn in to stories we'll tell our grandchildren someday. It's the security that envelops you when the simple elements in your everyday hold so much meaning that they will carry you through to your forever.

Forever, I will be a product of my grand/mother, a best friend to my sister, an auntie to the most adorable niece. Forever, I will have a close knit family made up of incredible friendships that are founded on the principles of love and loyalty. Forever, I will be inspired by the ordinary but striving for the extraordinary. Forever, I will dream. 

The circle of life is a tangled web of the unique forevers that define you and when all of the particles that you live for are perfectly aligned in one single corner of the world, that is when you will know you are home. 

A girl can dream, right?