partager. to share.

I apologize that I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth, but I have an excuse because I have been busy learning. Over the past few days that I haven’t been blogging, I have learned so much about Paris, my French university, Paris, myself, and about life, in general! So much has happened, in fact, that it is difficult to explain all of the minute details, but basically I have learned that I love to share.

“Sharing” is the perfect word, it seems, to describe what I love to do, and also, what I want to do for the rest of my life! I will change that to “what I will do,” however, because I remember that another thing that I learned was that from now on, it is “I will” and “I can,” instead of “I will try” and that even “I want” is questionable! You have to make things happen yourself, and there is no time to sit around and desire or dream, otherwise it will be too late!

Back to sharing, I choose this word carefully because I am constantly asked as a student, “what do you want to do,” or sometimes worse, “What do you like to do?” As simple as these questions seem, they are extremely important in deciding major life choice, consequently, my answers matter. One of the reasons why I am studying abroad is because I did not have satisfying answers to these questions, because I was searching with specific and exclusive nouns and verbs! The key is that the answer should not limit you, but actually open you up to new possibilities! I haven’t wanted to say, “I love to write,” or “to read,” or even “to cook,” because all of those things are so definitive, and I do not want to be confined to one subject or topic of conversation. My struggle has been finding the right response, or perhaps, the best response that I can imagine, which, at the moment, happens to be, “to share.” The inspiration came to me in bed, when I was failing miserably to fall asleep thinking about all five hundred things that have happened to me just in the past few hours, let alone days! It works for now because it describes why I love to write, to read, and to cook, in addition to a majority of my interests. More and more, I am discovering that in a generally sense, I love to describe things in my own words, and equally as important, to hear others describe things in their terms, as well. Every new perspective enables me to understand myself and those around me, and it makes life that much more enjoyable! This ties into reading and writing, obviously, because I can do the explaining and the listening, but less directly to my other hobbies like cooking. As far as cooking is concerned, eating is another wonderful opportunity to have wonderful conversations, or “to share,” with friends and family, plus delicious food is involved, so what is not to love!?

For a brief digression, and to better explain my lengthy absence from the computer, I was severely ill from a weather-related epidemic, spreading in Paris. It sounds worse than it was, but at the same time it was miserable, and I was in bed for at least 17 hours straight. If you know me at all, then you know that means that I was, in fact, violently ill, because I never sleep in past 9:30AM! It was mostly mucus, gross, and most likely T.M.I.* but the truth, nonetheless, and I believe that I have coughed, blown, and or spit away most of the vile substance by now. It is dreadfully cold out still, and I have to be careful because it is easy to get distracted and to not pay attention to your body, telling you that you are tired, sick, and or generally in need of rest. Who has time to rest in Paris, right!? Three weeks passed with me continually ignoring all of these signals because I was high on life in Paris, and or over-whelmed by all the tasks that I needed to accomplish, and so I easily avoided taking care of myself, which is never the best solution! Now, I have had to begrudgingly slow things down a few notches, hence the lack of blog entries, and the similarly time-consuming activities, and yet I have been able to enjoy things that I haven’t thus far taken advantage of here in Paris. Life is all about balance and that one cannot achieve every single goal at once, and that some things take time and patience. Time, particularly, is more valuable than money ever will be, and therefore, if you must worry about anything, then worry about not having time, and not about being penniless, because after all, money is only an object that determines an object’s value, in the first place! What is a valuable possession if you don’t use it while you have it in front of you?!

*too much information