Skydiving.

You never really realize what you're getting into until you hop in that plane. You take the training courses, watch the videos, and sign all the papers. But nothing can compare to actually getting in the plane and jumping out of it. You can watch others take off, jump out, and land safely. They tell you their experiences while still gasping for air immediately after they land. Their words are broken, and you can tell by the look on their faces that the experience is unforgettable, life-changing, surreal, motivating, exhilarating. You want that for yourself. You want to experience that joy, excitement, fear, nervousness. You want to experience all those feelings that other people have.

Finally, your plane takes off. The tiny plane shakes so much during takeoff that you think it'll blow away with the wind at any minute. I'm strapped to the instructor, literally sitting in his lap like a child in the mall sitting with Santa.  "We're at 5,000 ft," he says. This is the moment I've been waiting for. This is the moment I've envied all this time. I've watched everyone else do it, and now it's my turn. "6,000 ft." I look next to me only to see my "big" brother with his eyes closed. "7,500 ft." I can see the sun outside slowly sneaking behind the horizon. My brother scheduled the last flight of the day for this very reason. "10,000 ft." I'm thinking to myself, "Should I be doing this? Should I want what others have had so many times? Am I going to be that tiny percentage of people that don't make it safely? Will my parachute malfunction?" Too late now. No looking back.

"11,000 ft." Only 1,000 more feet until we jump. Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap. We're really doing this. People are going to be so jealous when they see our faces. People will finally want everything I have had in this moment. Can't wait. Let's go. Let's go. Let's GOOOOOO. Then we jump.

Everything is going so fast that you can't even think. You live in the moment like never before. My cheeks are so cold yet still on fire. I look over to see a guy taking pictures of us the entire way down. I see lakes, fields, clouds, the sun. I'm seeing everything from a completely different perspective than before. This is freakin awesome. I wanna do it again already. The ground is speeding up at us at ridiculous speeds. Everything getting bigger, bigger, bigger. Cars that look like ants become, quarters, then basketballs, then the ground is almost right there. The exhilaration. The nervousness. Everything I thought I ever wanted. Right in front of me. For only a couple quick minutes. Everything they had, everything I have. Blood pumping adrenaline pulsing through every inch of my body. I want this forever.

"Wait, where's the parachute?!" I yelled.

Then. I woke up.

Quote of the Week

"If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters." - Alan K. Simpson

First Blog

So. This is going to be fun. I've decided to start a blog. It will not be the typical, "Regurgitation of my daily activities" type of blog. Most of the time people don't care what you do throughout your day unless something exciting happens. For instance, I'm really intrigued about the daily routine of my best friend, Logan Monday, who is living in South Korea right now while teaching English. He also has a blog if you're interested: www.livinginsouthkorea.blogspot.com

However, for the rest of us, we are pretty much living our every day lives to the best of our abilities. I, for example, will be graduating soon from the University of Tennessee, and then will be entering the job market. That in itself is not very exciting to read about, but, all of the problems, struggles, ideas, observations, thoughts, wants, needs, hates, loves, laughs, questions, curiosities, secrets, feelings....That's what you want to read about.

That will be Living In Words.
Let's go.