Your life is an Occasion

I've found within myself this week something that has been missing for a while. I've been so caught up in other people...in work, in school, in scholarships, in weddings and events I have to go too that I've forgotten to breathe. It probably is more this one person's fault and that's ok...how easy it is to lose ourselves in other people. Your world becomes so crowded that other things fade into the background.

Well these past two weeks have been quiet, and this week is spring break which means I'm simply working all week and so to a certain extent my brain has had the opportunity to simply rest. I've had a lot of thoughts lately....about where I want my life to go and who I want to be. Do you know what simply came to me? Stories. I haven't written anything in so very long that wasn't a term paper or and essay exam...and all of the sudden in the midst of my silence came this creative energy. How wonderful, it feels to be creative again. I've been sketching and drawing and writing and scouring the Internet for inspiring pictures and I do believe I might finish my book this time.

(This is one of the pictures that inspired me. wow.)

I don't want to jinx it.

But I was thinking the other day, how many people my age have had a story to tell, and told it and had it published? I've had this stigma about it for so long. I'm to young, I have to graduate from college first, blah...blah. Well guess what? There isn't a better time than now to pursue the things I want for myself. One day I'll be married with children running around me with a house to clean and food to cook and I will never have the blessed silence that I have now until they're grown. So now I think is the perfect time to focus on me...and then one day I'll focus on everyone else.

Plus if it turns out I'm really bad at this, better to find out now before I'm out of school. A change of major might be in order :) I was watching Mr.Magorium's Wonder Emporium with my class of four year olds yesterday and I had forgotten how much I love that movie. It's magic in a movie and you can't get much better than Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman. Anyway- at the end of the movie Hoffman's character puts his hands on Natalie's shoulders and says,

"Your life is an occasion. Rise to it."

I love that. My life is an occasion. What good are any of us if we don't rise to it. What good are dreams if not a single one ever comes true. I want to be everything I can be in this life.

What about you?

A New Beginning

"For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning."

I suppose I decided to be apart of this year's voice. I've gotten to where I read a lot of Blogs, and somewhere along the line I decided to write one too. So, an introduction is in order.

My name is Lauren. I am many things, a writer, an artist, an actor, a dreamer, and to some people I'm a comedian. I love photography, all things vintage, movies, books, fashion, and the Internet. This blog will be a culmination of both things that inspire me and things that crack me up, because in the end, we all need a little more laughter in this world.

Why the title Finding Neverland? Well First off, Peter Pan is probably one of my favorite stories...ever. I know this makes me sound like a child but in the end we all have a bit of a child inside of us and it's important to keep that alive...to find the youth and magic and imagination in life everyday. To take it and keep it and be inspired by it and live better lives. In the first Chapter of the book, JM Barrie describes Neverland as whatever a child imagined it to be. To Wendy it was someplace entirely different than to Michael or John, and yet when they went it was somehow the best of both worlds. I think adults still do that...have a place inside their head that makes them happy...or a story, or an alternate reality. There is a quote that I love that says,

"Reality is for people who lack imagination"

And so I hope to designate this space to all those things that spark the imagination, and inspire the soul and hopefully, on some days, invoke the child that is within you. It is of utmost importance to remember where you've come from and to also believe in where you are.

sincerely,

Lauren

(picture cred : erm, I don't remember them all but the laughing boy was taken by me, and the bottom one is definitely a' la' the Drifter and the Gypsy. The Glitter faced girl might be hers too. I save pictures I love and tend to forget where the come from.)