So next year I am living in a house!! I get my own room!! My own room and my OWN bed and my own bathroom (you have no idea how exciting that is).... Oh dear, my own room!!!!! I can't wait. Next year is going to be awesome.

I am still not sure what I am doing this summer. I think I am going to Europe for a long time. I am so excited but also sort of scared to come back here. I think it will be very hard to tear myself away from a place where absolutely no one would recognize me. And a place where I could go write, and would have things to write about. And what if this is the only time in my life in which i have the chance to actually just be in Europe, somewhere, and simply enjoy it. Then I come back... back to preparing myself to be a band director.... I dont think I can do it. The way I love music and the way I love writing.... they are completely different. I will never, ever stop writing as long as I live. And really whenever I imagine this summer, I just see myself sitting somewhere... somewhere more ancient than anything I know here.... and writing and writing and writing the whole time. I want to come back with full journals, no blank pages. I don't know what I'll do with them all, but what if it's the last time I can record my own thoughts? I mean, my uninterrupted thoughts. I'll be taking classes there... but I dont really care about them. I dont need the classes. I just need the place, the experience. And when I get back, everything leads up to me finding a job, moving to a city, and eternal busy-ness. I hope someday I'll have a summer again to simply breathe and hear myself think. But this might be my only chance.

What do you see me as? Do you see me teaching band? Any of you who read this? I can't tear myself away because I LOVE music, I love theory, I love opera and concerts and even the school of music. But I keep losing sleep... I stay up thinking about what I would be reading if I had an English class... what I could be writing about instead of musical variations... who I would know, where I would be... where I could go and what I could do with a degree in English. Graduate studies in journalism or creative writing.... what if I really could write a novel someday... Just when I get to the point where I convince myself that I am in the wrong place, I hate thinking about quitting something. That KILLS me. I have worked SO SO SO hard at becoming good at music. I'm not even there yet, but I have put so much time into it. I can't stand the thought of giving that up... of not having pursued that to the end of my abilities. I hate stopping before I am done... and that's why I miss English. I stopped. I cut myself off from the primary passion I have had since I was little. But then, what if I can't do music anymore? But i know, I know with everything I have in me that there is more to come. I will find literature again and study it and learn again to write. And one day I'll walk by a bookstore and there will be a novel in the window, and my name will be on it. Molly Beth Martin. It's gonna be there, I promise. So many times have I started stories. I have numerous outlines and character developments on loose sheets of paper... all over my room at home, in my notebooks here. In the middle of all my class notes I have all these random pages of thoughts and ideas. I cant wait to be a struggling writer, with a small apartment and sheets of paper everywhere. I've struggled before, it'll be ok... but I'll know that I worked my way out of it, I proved myself. And I don't just want to be any author. I dont even care if I am a bestseller now. But I want to be read a hundred years from now. I want to be the author that kids do book reports on. I want to be an Austen, a Bronte, a Dickinson... and I have all the ideas I want to portray... I just need the stories. But, I can't stand to quit. I never ever quit. I just don't know what's going to happen. Maybe I'll figure it all out in Europe.

Well, maybe now I can sleep some. Sweet sweet dreams....