Balance.

You ever have those moments of pure joy? When life seems to contain endless possibilities and you're young and on top of the world, where no one can witness your actual skipping down the road and contagious grinning at nothing in particular?

That was me the other day. I had the day off and I decided to take myself on a little date up to Mount Diablo. Sounded innocent enough. 

I drove up the winding mountain roads, passing the occasional biker, with nothing but the open road ahead of me. When I got to a proper spot, I took the route off the beaten path to the top and was lost to the wilderness. 

Call it the uplifting music playing in my ears, or the Vitamin D soaking into this girl's awaiting skin, but being out there by myself at that moment took me to the highest highs, literally.

I couldn't contain my excitement and joy and man, it flew out of me, the mountain being the only one witness to my happy dance (unless there were other hikers who saw this grooving girl and her manic grinning, in which case, #sorrynotsorry).

I told my mom about it later and she reminded me of the tendency I often fall prey to: feeling deeply.

I've been this way all my life. I don't exactly know what living a balanced life feels like. For years, I admitted that my weakness was sensitivity, being over emotional and feeling to extremes. To this day, it remains so.

As Rupi Kaur so appropriately puts how I often feel,

when I am sad

I don't cry I pour

when I am happy

I don't smile I glow

when I am angry

I don't yell I burn

the good thing about feeling in extremes is

when love I give them wings

but perhaps that isn't

such a good thing cause

they always tend to leave

and you should see me

when my heart is broken

I don't grieve

I shatter

There have been many occasions during this move of mine where I've been confronted by the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows. One day, I'm crying about my future and confessing to my journal my worries over my personal failure and then the next day, I get a job offer and am dancing on top of a mountain all by myself, whole, complete, and belonging completely to myself.

What I'm finding though is that the highs don't cancel out the lows. That as amazing and glorious as those highs feel, they don't eliminate the fact that within minutes, I can go from 100-0 real quick, and that that transition period from high to low or low to high throws me off quite a bit. 

I'm not apologizing for how I feel, or saying that feeling deeply is wrong and should be corrected. I've learned that it's an essential part of who I am and that in times like these when I'm fully aware of my transition into feeling deeply, I need to balance how I feel. 

Not balance the times when I feel really good to the times when I feel really bad, but to find a happy middle. A balance between the two. That way, I don't fall prey to the depth of my emotions to the point that I have trouble coming down or going up. 

It made particular sense to me on this day at Diablo. As I looked around, I saw proof of how important balance is to life, to nature, and how the earth operates to sustain human life. The balance of gravity that allows us to walk, to run, to remain rooted to the ground, and the balance of the breathing in oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide. It works together to sustain human life and it reminded me to do the same for myself. 

Oh it is both a blessing and a curse to feel everything so very deeply...

Teacher Appreciation Day.

I've had many teachers. I've had a teacher that bullied me, a teacher that exhibited sexist discrimination towards what I chose to don my body in (never mind the fact that it's not the female's fault when boys are distracted, it's the boys who can't handle their hormones), a teacher who used to toss tootsie rolls that had been softened by the overhead heater to students who answered the right questions (he was the best!), and even a teacher who gave me a graduation present, one whom I continue to be in contact with to this day. 

But there's one teacher that remains an important educator, one who, at the time, said something I felt repulsed by, but that I now look back on and thank, for she was right. 

It was sophomore year at Kenai Central High School. I was shuffling along, looking longingly at the clocks in every classroom counting the hours till the boring and domestic drudgery could end and I was free to go and dance my heart out after school.

There was a new teacher in town, and she taught my favorite class: English. At that time, I was as much a writer as I am now, but my future was full of hopeful aspirations in the entertainment industry. I was pursuing modeling, acting, singing, and dancing, a career bright with paparazzi and fame. 

It was after class, and as I was putting away my journal, that I realized I was the last one to exit the room. As I smiled at my teacher on the way out, she stopped me.

I don't exactly remember the precise details of how this came about, but I think we had just been handed back written papers. A paper I had probably and unsurprisingly scored an A on.

She looked at me and said: Elan, I know you're a talented performer and want to be in the entertainment industry, but you are a fantastic writer and you should never give that up. You have the potential to make a career out of this, I just want you to consider that. 

Like I said at the beginning, I was turned off by the comment. In a time where my only concerns were how to pose best in photographs, dance with soul, and be the first one to sit front row at auditions, I couldn't believe that this teacher had the balls to tell me I should pursue anything but a career in the arts.

I look back now and think my gosh, she was absolutely right. 

Don't get me wrong, I would still love to sing, act, dance, and model, but what really sets my soul on fire is writing. 

I always knew I had a voice. And at the time, I communicated it through different outlets: dance, song, performance, photography, and through my fingertips as they raced across the keyboard and frantically went to work on paper. This teacher saw that, but she noticed that it was best exhibited through writing, and she wanted me to consider the possibility of making that a part of my career, a career in communication.

She encouraged me to consider other options. She inspired me to pursue something I hadn't really considered a possibility, and I thank her each and every day for that. 

I see now that my future belongs in communication, as my passion is sharing/telling/presenting something that needs to be said to an audience. Whether that's through dance, song, performance, or modeling, I can now count writing alongside those options.

All along, that teacher was write (Pun intended. By now, you should know that all of my puns are likely intended).

And for that, I thank you, Mrs. Nabholz. 

Here is a VERY throwback photo for you. Elan, wee age of 16, a sophomore in high school...

I also still have that sweater. Wow I keep clothes a long while.