What has Audrey been up to lately? you probably are not wondering. Well, I will tell you anyway. My summer weeks have been quickly wasting away. If I'm not working at my school's recreation center, then I'm babysitting sweet but sometimes devilish children of various families. Or watching True Blood. It's a recent, obnoxious obsession. On the weekends you can find me at this town's hippest bars, fulfilling, oh I'd say about 0% of my hopes and dreams via lemondrops, vodka sodas, and flirtations with cute (well, sometimes not) boys. The fantastic part about this schedule is that I get to make quick, fairly easy money without having to worry about school, my main source of stress. I finally can take my mother's advice about saving money, while simultaneously being financially able to spend some, too. From the outside looking in, my summer may look near perfect. Stress-free and carefree, full of drinks and boys, raking in the cash monay. My only real concern is making it to work/babysitting on time.
Yet, I have not written except maybe once this summer. When you tell people you want to be a professional writer, one of the toughest fields to break into, a lack of actually picking up the pen creates a few problems. On top of this, I make thoughtless mistakes and rash decisions, and manage to blame them on the pursuit of spontaneity. I have always been someone who has claimed no regrets. I do believe that even our biggest mistakes can be turned into lessons learned. Why trade a lesson for a cleaner slate? Lately, though, I've had this issue where I have just decided to ignore mistakes and, beyond that, ignore my conscience. A bit of a scary realization to experience, let me tell you, but an eye-opening one as well. The main solution to this problem is the replacement of shallow instant gratifications and indulgings with goals and aspirations. I never completely ridded myself of the latter; I think I just slowly but surely moved them to the back burner in exchange for a fun-filled summer. I'm so not saying that fun gets moved to the back burner now; maybe instead, fun, responsibility, and goals all get placed on front burners. Ya know, 'cause I have one of those big, industrial-sized stoves with many front burners in this hypothetical case. How does that sound, all you people who are saints enough to still be reading my ramblings? Good? I thought so, too.
Cheers to no regrets & lessons learned.
