Best thing ever, right? I told you so. If you enjoy wearing t-shirts, there are a few designs available in t-shirt form here. You best believe I’m going to buy a t-shirt emblazoned with Hermione’s brilliant gem “try not to get killed, or worse, expelled” on it, and probably wear it every day. Just sayin’.

all images via Keep Calm, Harry Potter

song: “Better Off Alone” by Marissa Maharaj

I’m really on fire with my 24 Before 25 list! Last Saturday I took a train journey to Brussels for the day; I left Amsterdam at 7:30am and the journey took three hours. I wouldn’t say that I passed through any remarkable landscapes while on the train, but there were a couple green idyllic areas that weren’t at all unpleasant to look at. You’ll see in the video that I moved to sit on the other side of the train about 2/3 of the way through (it seemed like more interesting things were happening on the right side of the train), but what you won’t see, or hear, rather, is the gentleman sitting across the aisle from me whose snore sounded like some kind of defective machinery. It was so loud and consistent that I initially thought the sound was being made by the train, but when I saw the lady behind him shake his seat in an effort to wake him up, I realized that this was one of the strangest human-made sounds I’d ever heard and couldn’t stop snickering to myself.

Brussels, to be honest, was pretty unremarkable. It’s like an amalgamation of Paris and Amsterdam, and as someone who’s seen Paris and lived in Amsterdam, it just didn’t really impress me. Plus, I experienced some of the characteristically-French snootiness in the few Belgians I interacted with, and that just bummed me out. I’ve always been of the opinion that the people make a place, and even if a place is gorgeous to behold, an abundance of rudeness in its people is enough to ruin it for me. Maybe that’s just me. Regardless, I’m glad that I got to see Brussels even if it was a little underwhelming. Here are a few photos from my afternoon in Belgium:

 I came across the most epic outdoor flea market ever in one of the plazas. It was a thrifter’s paradise.

Every day for the past week, it seems like someone I know has either announced that they’re engaged or that they’re pregnant. A girl I went to youth group with in high school just had her third baby. My middle school arch-nemesis just got engaged. A boy I sort-of dated four years ago is expecting a baby with his wife. The amount of baby- and wedding-related news in my Facebook news feed is mind-boggling.

It would be a lie if I said I wasn’t weirded out by all of it. Two years ago, if someone my age was getting married or having a baby, they were considered young. But now, at the ripe old age of twenty-four, it’s not simply socially acceptable, it’s normal. And when a life milestone of that magnitude becomes normal for a person your age, you can’t help but compare yourself to those who are collecting those milestones like pirate’s booty when you yourself don’t even have a map. Perhaps that sounds like a plea for pity, but it’s not, I promise: while I sometimes feel pangs of envy at other people’s engagements and pregnancies, I mostly feel like my life is more awesome for not having those things for myself.

I think what weirds me out the most is that if things had happened only slightly differently, that could have been me. I could be celebrating my first wedding anniversary this year, or I could be gestating a colloquial bun in my oven. And two years ago, that was exactly what I wanted! It just shocks me how much my dreams have changed since then: where I once saw a wedding and a husband and children, I now see travel and an advanced degree and the potential for a creatively satisfying career and freedom.

Does that sound selfish? Maybe it is. But I’m still going to call it freedom. Because this will be the only time in my life that I can move to Europe, or anywhere else in the world, without having to answer to anyone else. This will be the only time in my life where I can spend my money on whatever stupid thing I want because it’s my money and no one else’s. This will be the only time in my life where my identity is wholly my own, where I can be Kendall Goodwin without also being someone’s wife or someone’s mom. And I like all of that. I like being independent and I like doing things that I want to do and I like knowing that I’ll always be on time, and I want to hang on to that until I’m good and ready to let go because I know I will never have more freedom than I have right now. I want my twenties to be a monument to awesomeness, and I want to experience every adventure I dream of before my life is no longer just about me anymore. If I have kids, I want to have great stories to tell them, and I want them to be in disbelief that their lame mom could have done so many cool things. I want to wake up when I’m thirty-five and feel satisfied with my life instead of regretful at the things I didn’t get around to.

I don’t scoff at anyone my age who chooses to get married or have kids, and I don’t pity them either. I bet their lives are wonderful and miraculous in a way that I couldn’t possibly understand, but I also know that, at this point in my life, I’m not prepared to understand it. I’d probably like to get married someday, and the jury is still out on having children, but it’s all a long way off. So until then, here’s to not regretting what I didn’t do in my twenties.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

- Mary Oliver

I saw this video on Things Organized Neatly the other day and was very quickly in a state of deep swoon. Wes Anderson has such a distinct filmmaking style, and overhead shots of people doing things with their hands are like one of his signature moves. There’s so much attention to detail in these shots and so much that can be conveyed without words or even facial expressions, it kind of blows my mind. It seems like forever since Wes Anderson has released a film, so it was very good news to hear that his newest, Moonrise Kingdom, is set for release this year. It looks amazing and I can’t wait to see it!