1:04 AM

It's my cue to quit procrastinating and just go to bed. I have an ever-growing to-do list and a never-ending debt of sleep.

I'm proud of the photos I took today and though my fingers were stinging by the end of the shoot, I was warm and glowing from my pride and contentment. I wish that happened more often. I wish I took the time to make the art I want to. I'm letting it all go, bit by bit, and it propels me further into a "practical" world, where the jobs to have (read: the "real" jobs) aren't the things I'm necessarily passionate about. I find them interesting, yes, like seeing a person's innards is interesting, or knowing how our government should work is interesting, but interesting doesn't equate to passion-inducing. I love to create, yet I'm afraid that if I do that too much I'll burn out. What if I'm not noticed, anyways? I know that not the point, but that makes it harder to make a living.

Everything I've ever loved to do since the age of 8 has been easily categorized as a "starving artist" field. No, my biggest passion is drawing bits and pieces from everywhere and putting two and two together to see the big picture. It's painting and writing and photographing and hearing and watching and making and destroying and thinking and loving and living. I'm passionate about living. Yet herre I am, every night, sitting in my room alone while the rest of the house sleeps. I don't talk to many people, not even my friends from "back home". What I'm doing is the farthest thing from being passionate about living.

My counselor asked me what I want to do with my life. I answered, "Everything." Do you hear me? Everything. That's daunting and exhilarating. I can't think of a better way to spend my life than doing everything. Do they have a degree for that? No, of course not. To do "everything" you have to become a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, an artist, a businessman, a banker, a teacher...you have to be specific, you have to narrow it down, you have to say, "I will do everything, right here." I don't want to. I want to do everything there is to do in every field possible. I want to travel, I want to teach, I want to open a bakery, I want to be an artist, I want to make a difference in the political/government sphere (beyond just voting), I want to be a mother, I want to make a movie, I want to write a book, I want to release an album, I want to play with an orchestra, I want to take pictures of everything. I want, I want, I want.

Everything.