Stella

You know what Stella and I have in common?  We both got our groove back.  Have you ever gotten your groove back?  It's pretty much the most awesome thing there ever was.

Definitely groovin'

I didn't realize I had lost a little bit of my life-fire (is that phrase too cheesy to actually use?) until this last weekend.  When I got it back.  I know it's a little soon to be saying that I definitively got some mojo back, but just listen to the day I had yesterday:

I woke up a full two hours before my first class and got ready, answered emails, read five pages of the Book of Mormon, and started cleaning my room.  I ate breakfast and went to class for an hour and then came back and then I did level 1 of Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred.  I showered and got dressed and finished cleaning my room.  I even vacuumed.
At this point it was only noon and so I got some lunch and then headed to institute.  After an hour of that, I went to work and after an hour of nothing much to do, I finished everything I wanted to.
After work, I called my brother, got dinner with a friend, sent my resume out to three different places and then headed to the library, where I finished my music theory homework, wrote yesterday's blog post, and brainstormed this one.
Then I wrote in my journal and got to bed by 11:30.

That amount of productivity has been gone in my life for sooo long.  I went through a while (an embarrassingly long while I might add), where I didn't do much besides go to class and lay in bed.  I barely squeaked by with my grades (don't worry Mom and Pops, still B's and better) and at work and I just felt like a blob.  A bloggy blob.  Haha

It's good to feel excited about life.  My point is this: if you don't feel excited about your life, don't settle for that.  Because being excited about life helps you to be a more Christ-like person.  (At least that's how it's been working for me for the last 20 years).  And I look at myself in the mirror and I feel more attractive.

And more importantly:  Being more excited about your life doesn't necessarily mean changing it.  I almost hate the cliché that if you don't like something you can't change then just change your attitude.  I prefer to think about it in this (only slightly different) way:

Choose your love.
Love your choice.

There are tons of things I don't like about Stanford.  There are tons of things I don't like about being a student in general.  There are tons of things I don't like about myself, my body, my family, my personality, my laugh.  I could go on and on.  But these are the things I have.  And they are great.  There are things that I am absolutely crazy about for each of these things.  So I am going to concentrate on accentuating those things that I love.

Sometimes, I am afraid to do posts like this because I don't want to sound preachy or like I have all the answers.  It is so very painfully clear sometimes that I don't have all the answers.  But I have decided from now on to be unapologetically grateful and happy and positive.
People make it so cool-seeming to be a tortured artist type.  Or to be so aware of the sadness on this planet that they cannot possibly be happy.  Sadness has its place.  It has an important place.  But I think in my life, I'm going to decide that happiness has an even bigger one.

I have decided that I am in love with my life and that I always will be.

(I apologize that I don't have a glass of wine to give you because that ending was cheeeeeeeese.)