I’m
sitting here, trying to write my statement of intent for my graduate school application and all I can comprehend is
that I’m not entirely sure how to make someone else understand my intentions, at least within the context of the
program’s entrance requirements.  i could paint pictures of my future, of my intentions, they’d be painted in both warm
and cool tones, joy and sorrow, pride and fear, love and hope.  and peace.  they’d include images of impact, of making
a positive change, of working to create a place where environmentalism and preservation walk hand-in-hand happily,
without strife.  there would be children, and learning, and teaching and growing.  as i’ve grown older i am beginning
to comprehend my own inadequacies with words, i comprehend and yet i can not share.  i lock things inside, due to my
lack of common vocabulary.  i want so many things for my life.  i’ve come so far from where i started, i will not give
up now.  this is random and jumbled and babbled and i’m learning not to care.  i’m learning to let things tumble and
fall into the pile that they will and let them take care of themselves sometimes.  i am highly motivated.  i love what
i do, and i can’t imagine doing anything else.  and yet i am hesitant, unsure of my skills and talents, holding myself
back, tethering myself to the image that others overlay onto me.  if i could paint the pictures of my future and my
intentions, i would hope that people would be inspired by them, as abstract and inward seeming as they might paint
themselves to be.  “i am nothing of a builder, but here i dreamt i was an architect and i built this balustrade to keep
you whole, to keep you safe”… but i am something of a builder, i take great pleasure in the manner in which tools and
raw materials combine to create objects and spaces and places and feelings of great beauty.  i love the history of
buildings, not just the physical history, but the cultural history, because a building is more than just a sum of its
parts, its a living entity, composed of materials that should not hinder the land on which it sits, but which should
strive to uphold it.  i wander, my mind wanders, my paintings will wander.  they will take me where they will, i have
control, but prefer to let things run the course they’re meant to take, instead of imposing a set of structures over
it.  i don’t like being forced into someone’s little box and i won’t have any of it. not today, not tomorrow, not ever
again.  i live for myself and those i love, and those who love me in return (if only those two things meshed more
closely some days). i am thankful for the people that have made me who i am, both the positive impacts and the
negative, and i’m thankful for all of those people that forced me to realize that i could never live their life,
because it wasn’t the way i wanted to make my world…i see these pictures, they flash before my eyes as i sit here and
type this and i’m at peace.  great amounts of peace, and i force myself to remember that graphically, i understand my
intentions.