june 22nd 2022
today i woke up at 7 30 to take the train to paris i have an interim ticket this summer so
i've been taking advantage of the day trips i can go on before my big trip starts next week
i like spending time in bars it's a really uniform city and i feel like every building
and every person has their place there the man playing la villanos an accordion fellow tourists
asking you to take a picture of them by the eiffel tower the local huffing and puffing at the metro
ticket line being too long sometimes people over romanticize paris but i do truly find it to be one
of the most romantic cities in the world so much history has happened on the very spots you walk on
so many songs have been written about the streets and many novels were created right here
it's really silly to say out loud but back in january i thought about writing a book in the
future making it a goal i thought it could be fun to write a book about adolescence in europe and
experiences that shape our youth i wanted it to be a semi-fiction so i could mesh a collection of my
own stories and my time spent abroad the struggles of finding great friends and self-discovery but
if i made it only a semi-fiction then no one could ever be fully sure what was from my own experience
and what came from the creation of my own mind then i would still have the privacy to keep those
moments as my own but people would share them with others i'm saying it out loud now because although
i don't necessarily think i have the credits to write a book nor do i think anyone would read it
but it's something that i'd love to do even if only for myself to read this brings me to the
topic of today if you're live for a book what would be the title what would be the main theme
who would be the main characters it's a really fun exercise to imagine yourself as a novelist
in control of your own story it makes you think about whether your own life is exciting as it is
or if you need to spice it up and overcome some obstacles one of my favorite books of all time is
a million miles and a thousand years by donald miller and the book is primarily
about creating your own story and how we have to overcome obstacles to have a great story to tell
i really cannot recommend this book enough i'll link it down below
one of my favorite quotes goes a little like this we have to force ourselves to create these scenes
we have to get up off the couch and turn the television off we have to write the poem and
deliver it in person we have to pull the car off the road and hike up to the top of the hill
we have to put on our suits we have to dance at weddings we have to make altars this is such
a beautiful quote it makes you realize that great stories are only one action away you don't have to
quit your job move abroad or go for a tragedy to have a good story that you just have to say yes
more on my last night valencia i went to watch the sunset by the beach with my friends and they said
what if we just salsa danced right here and my initial reaction was that is cringe and i do not
want to be that girl badly trying to sell silence in front of everyone so they all did it without me
after a minute or so i realized no one actually cared what we were doing and they were all minding
their own business so i joined in i didn't want to miss out on this experience a moment later a
colombian saw the pain in our steps and showed us a little bit of how to actually sell sedans
although at the time i was really out of my comfort zone now i have this fun memory of the
first time i ever salsa dance with my friends we already spend most of our life in those
in-between moments sleeping working cleaning so it's imperative that you use the free time
you have left doing something that gives you a story something that gives your life a purpose
when we come out of the cinema we often have the feeling my life is so boring in comparison to
theirs but it doesn't have to be your life can be like a book or a movie if you want it to be
it's all in your hands to have a story worth sharing the romanticize your life trend is not
egotistic but instead a way for us to find beauty in the cards we were dealt and the actions we take
it's a way to say hey my life means something and let me show you how a lot of people wish
for an easy life i used to have little pain and only take the easy road to avoid conflict but
does the easy road always give us a good story to share make the change with the thing that's been
holding you down let go of that friend that takes advantage of you write yourself a better story you