Like most Facebook users these days, I admit I am quite the lurker when it comes to my newsfeed. Especially this summer when every other post is a picture of one of my many Facebook “friends” standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, bungee jumping in Interlocken or some potentially aesthetic photograph of that bridge with all of the locks on it. So to my dismay, as my friends all boast about having the time of their lives crossing off their Bucket List items, I am stuck here, taking summer classes at Tech. By no means am I the jealous type, which is why I’ve set off to make an adventure out of being “stuck” in Atlanta.
Expo-markered summer goals on my dry erase board including, but are not limited to, eating healthy, exercising, gardening, learning how to sew, learning how to knit, thrifting and organizing, have been slowly crossed off. I run nearly every day and have found an enjoyable route through Howell Mill and West Midtown. My first experience eating at Antico’s Napoletana and La Fonda Cantina was surprisingly this summer as well as a third year at Tech.
My summer “vacation” (that week between finals and the start of summer classes) was a relaxing seven-day trip to the Rocky Mountain Pizza, where I waited tables. To my disbelief I honestly enjoy working there. The staff is weird, nice, funny, random, as are the clientele.
“Treat every day like a new page in your autobiography…”
As I was walking home from my first day of classes all giddy about the grand potential that the first class brings (before you settle into the slump of not caring enough) a handsome lad was moving out of his house and asked me if I could take his roommate’s bike off of his hands. New free bike? I felt like a grasshopper that just learned it could make music with its legs.
I ate at the Crazy Cuban on 14th Street, and was recruited to join a roller derby team the same day a customer at work recruited me to be a stripper. While I was on one of my many #adeventuresintheHomePark, I saw a dollar bill taped to a stop sign with very noteworthy advice, “Save Money, Buy Drugs.”
Just this past Wednesday, I went on an adventure to Pullman Yard, an abandoned train yard in East Atlanta, with a friend. There are huge decrepit buildings with graffiti creating a new artistic tone and contrasting beautifully with the green fauna growing at every footstep.
One weekend I invited some dear friends over to hang out in my backyard, eat some guacamole and try some pomegranate Hookah. This past Saturday I MARTA-ed to the free concert in Candler Park featuring Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros! It has been the highlight of my summer so far. Not only was I completely absorbed in my element, but food trucks, jewelry and meeting up with a dear high school friend created bliss in my sometimes envious Facebook alter-ego.
Even though my free bike was stolen off my front porch, there was that hot pink condom on the sidewalk when I was running and some of my favorite people are traveling to really cool places, I’m making the best of the adventures I find in the every day. If we convince ourselves that college is the best time of our lives, that studying abroad is the most fun we will have in college, what is there to wait for when the white speckles fall to the ground in our temporarily fun snow globes? Treat every day like a new page in your autobiography, and as my good English mate told me, “Say yes to everything. It makes life more fun.”