Say.

Well, it's been awhile, but I'm hoping to keep up with this a lot this summer. I'm starting to recognize how quickly time and life pass me by, and I guess that for me, this is a great release as well as a good way to sort of document the moments and phases of my life and such.

I've never been much of a person for regrets, but lately, I'm finding a few.

Number one, I regret being so stupid with money. Seriously, I'm terrible. Here, as a 21 year old college student, I find myself almost $5,000 in debt. That's terrible. Shameful. I regret the stupid financial decisions that I've made in my past. For the past few months I've been doing my best to try and get things rolling, but to no avail. I can never seem to press through.

I also regret not taking more time to invest in relationships with other people. At the outset of this year, I was looking at a much more relaxed schedule, with some opportunities to really invest in some people and benefit in that way. Now, I look back at the year, and I discover I really didn't invest much in anything. I didn't invest much in my relationship with God. I didn't invest much time in making new friends, or more specifically, in growing closer to a few of the friends that I already have. I wish I would have taken less time feeling like I was a burden on other people and just take the risk of sharing my life with other people.

I really regret placing so much stock in my failed New Hampshire internship. That ended up pushing my graduation date back an entire year. With the internship I'm taking now (which, don't get me wrong, I am excited about), I'm not going to graduate with those I entered school with. It's kind of depressing.

I also really regret not taking the time to meet and go out with Laura. I waited like a month to finally work up the courage to even tell people about her, and then Ami delivers a golden opportunity right into my lap and I let my nerves and fears get in the way of ever trying to, you know, talk to her or ask her out or anything like that. Each day I log onto facebook, I am reminded of what a great girl she is, how surprisingly compatible we would be, and of the opportunity that I let drift away. Now I'm not sure what to do. I regret wasting my time pursuing a stupid, familiar relationship that I knew probably wasn't going to work out anyway instead of going after something new, beautiful, and exciting. I missed an opportunity there.

It's just kind of strange how life works out. I don't know exactly what I expected to be doing with my life at age 21, but I don't think I expected to be here. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing (or a good thing), but just something I didn't expect. I wasn't expecting to do a year-long internship. I wasn't expecting to spend another empty summer at home. I certainly wasn't expecting financial trouble. Of course, I wasn't expecting to be working a great ministry job in Springboro, either.

I also wasn't expecting to say goodbye for what seems like forever to my two best friends this year. I don't think that the weight of this has fully hit me yet. It's summer. But I know that when the beginning of the next school year rolls around, I will be missing C.J. and Ami a lot. It's just really funny how one second we're graduating together, and the next, they're finishing school before I've even started senior year yet. I still just kind of feel like I'm flying through. I'm supposed to be having dinner with them tomorrow night. I wonder if it will hit me then, as they pack up and get ready to leave on Friday. We'll see.

I'm listening to a song right now that proclaims we need to "say all the things that you really want to say." In that spirit, here's a few. I don't want to talk about my internship. I'm not ready yet. I'm ready to leave, but I'm not ready to part with friends. I'm not ready to put my life on hold for yet another year. I'm not ready to leave church. I'm not ready to face the questions of adulthood. I'm just not ready yet.

I don't want to have another talk with my family about my plans, or lack thereof. I just want to be allowed to live my life without necessarily having a plan in place. Why can't they just let stuff happen? I want to talk about Laura. I want to talk to Laura... I want to do something in that situation, but I don't know what. I want my dad to get a job so my life can feel like it has some semblance of normalcy. I want to be anywhere but here, yet not there.

Those are the things I want to say. I said them.