Where in the world is Carmen SianDiego?

The year I turned 21, two days after I graduated, I packed my bags, left the house I'd lived in since I was two, said my tearful goodbyes and never looked back. This is the story of where I went.

[pogandthett]

There is a feeling that is impossible to name that builds within you when it is time to leave. It turns your stomach into butterflies, it clouds your mind, it places a tight squeeze on your heart. You feel unable to focus, unable to settle, unable to relax. It builds and it builds, it takes a firmer grip, a firmer hold and you feel that pressure mount inside of you.

Even when it is not time to leave, when leaving hasn't necessarily been chosen by you. You have just taken the path of least resistance. Accepting that while you may not be completely ready to leave, you must. You may never be ready to leave. Because making that decision and taking control of your future is terrifying.

It is time to leave. Or perhaps, it is not so much time to leave but time to return. Time to go home, reunite all of those parts of yourself that you left behind. Time to go to a place that is home to your history, home to your past, so that you can tell what has changed and whether it will be home to your future.

There are no goodbyes because they are too final. Only see you later's and a promise of return. 

[pogandthett]

To the man who taught me to waltz,

standing high on his toes so that my steps could follow his.

The first man to tell me he'd love me no matter what I did,

although he might not always tell his friends what it was.

A man who would sidle up to me and whisper in my ear,

then tell me off for laughing with a twinkle in his eye.

To my grandpa, and one of my favourite men on this world.

There's no way I'm letting our goodbye two years ago be our last. 

[pogandthett]

This video made me so overwhelmingly homesick and happy for my country, our people... love.... that I ended up sobbing. Tumeke Aotearoa. 

[pogandthett]

My lungs heave like the sails of horizon ships and I know it’s time to go, know it’s time to pack the brushes and the christmas lights, the cast-iron pots and the framed pictures of letters you wrote me from the other side of this continent, know it is time to leave this small snowglobe of a hamlet, to unroll pavement like long lines of fruit-by-the-foot for tasting. I’ve starred constellations of cities on the worldmap beating against my rib cage and still don’t know what accent I will speak my tomorrows in, don’t know whether or not to bend back the arms of this compass or to trust in their magnetism, don’t know with whom or for whom I will do all of this travelling. And maybe it’s just this quaking of restlessness right beneath the bones, a bruise of the tectonic plates of my history bumping into one another, converging to push my heart to exit, or maybe this is just the way time works, to bring you to places so that one day you might leave them, to bring you into the new arms of new people to help you pick up the pieces of everything you have left. I am of all things anchorless and wide-eyed. There are so many oceans, so many lives to wade through. I shed this one with love and affection, with a fondness I know will root itself into the soles of my feet long after the others have turned to salt from all of their over the shoulder glances. I will not look back, not yet, not with the sun so juicy in the distance. I know it is time to go and so I set forth to snag the cracking dawn.

When It’s Time To Leave | Thought Catalog

[pogandthett]

I woke up this morning to snow & a phone call from home. Two things that I knew were inevitable but that I was convinced wouldn't come yet. 

[catbushandludicrous]

[pogandthett]

I keep seeing Jack at the local pub but he's never this well dressed. How disappointing. 

[pogandthett]

[pogandthett]

[pogandthett]

People keep saying it's going to snow. That it's going to be the coldest winter in England in 100 years. That Heathrow is preparing the runways for snow this Sunday.... snow in London is still one thing I'm incredibly sceptical about. My brain does not process it snowing in a place I like. Pish Posh. Snow?! 

[pogandthett]

Eat Your Heart Out, St Barts Pathology Museum 2012

[pogandthett]

Smithfields Meat Market

[pogandthett]

[pogandthett]

[pogandthett]

"Dahling, I don't do scrapbooks" 

Between Clare & my flatmate who is a chef in training and makes me pancakes at 11pm, I am bound to end up in 10 years pointing at the telly and saying "Oh yes, I used to live with him/her" and nobody will ever believe me. 

BUT OH! So excited for this play!!! 

[pogandthett]

Chin Chin, Nitrogen Ice Cream, Camden.

[pogandthett]

Today my dad summited 6,346m in Nepal at the age of 55 and my mum got me advice on my career path from a Senior Policy Analyst. My parents might not be Felix Baumgartner, but they're kind of my heroes. 

[mesogeios]

Questions I ask my grandparents:

What were your first thoughts when you heard that man walked on the moon? Where did you see a television for the first time? Will you tell me what Moscow was like in the 1960’s? Paris? New York? Grandpa, Will you tell me about your parents? Who was the first person you know to start wearing denim? At what age did you start drinking coffee? etc.