Loosely Related

Surprise! I am blogging!

Today I took the bus home from school where I had been working/spending time outside of my house.  (Working from home starts to feel awfully prison-like when you have no car, but then I think any summer job starts to feel awfully prison-like).  Everyone on the bus got off at my stop, which always leaves me wondering about what a driver does with an empty bus.  I suppose the answer is that he keeps driving his normal route in his normal way, but I like to pretend that he dances across the bus and invites his friends to have a tea party with him on the bus or something to just completely abuse the bus driver authority.

A little woman who got off the bus with me was met by her husband waiting at the bus stop to walk home with her.  There was just something about it.  He was wearing socks with sandals and he took her backpack off her back and wore it for her.  And they met each other with huge smiles.

In other news, I had a dream last night that I was on some sort of reality show that took place at a camp where there were an equal number of boys and girls.  And every week one of the girls murdered one of the guys and whichever girl everyone thought did it had to go home.  We had this challenge where the girls had to kiss one of the guys, and this girl murdered the guy I kissed and I was really upset because I thought I was going to be sent home since he was the guy that I kissed.

Lastly, there are a lot of girls from my high school choir who are either recently married (including my beautiful best friend) or they are engaged.  It's like they put something in the water because the choir was small (about 26ish people half of which being girls) and 4-5 of the girls are married/engaged.

and those are my thoughts about love.

Picture:

To Borrow a Cooking Term

My dears, I am done with all negativity today.  Do you ever look at yourself and realize you don't like the things that you spend so much time and energy thinking about?  I am doing an over-due spring cleaning of all the things I worry about, because they are not important.

And I am replacing myself with new things that make me happy.  It seems to me that we people are always wanting of something.  Wanting more or wanting something new or wanting to feel a certain way, etc. and so forth.  And wanting is good so far as it keeps you out of complacency, but bad so far as it keeps you out of contentment.

This last weekend, I watched my roommate cook and bake her cares away.  And I watched her do it all with a tremendous smile, because cooking and baking just simply have that effect on her.

And then I just watched her marinate in all those good feelings because she was doing something she loved.  She marinated all weekend long.

THAT is what I need to do.  Marinate in the things I love.

I am for the next while, car-less, and I think this is the perfect opportunity for me to try and do that.  Because instead of feeling stuck and bored, I want to feel like this is a new opportunity for me to enjoy the world in a new way.

Ya digg?

Questions

Sometimes (let's face it, it's quite often), I walk into a room or reach into my purse, or turn on my computer, and I can't remember why.  My mind goes a little blank, and I think
What am I doing?
This question haunts me.  Every time I take notes in a class that I have absolutely no interest in, I hear it like a whisper in an empty room.  When I find myself laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, too lazy to put on a pair of pants and face the world, it pops into my head.
      What am I doing?

Usually, I let the answer be that I am just doing what needs to be done.  That there will be a reason if I keep going.  These four years are not the end all be all like I thought they would be.  And that is good.  But they are important.  I will want to remember them for a long time.  Plus, there are all sorts of good things going on.

Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself what I decided.  I want to fill my life with love.  Am I doing that?  Most likely, no.  Most likely if I am  feeling so lost and negative, I am being the opposite of love, which is selfish.

I don't know what I'm doing, quite honestly.  But maybe that doesn't matter.

Superlative

"The world tells you that to be more confident you have to be more than others in some way - that you need to have more things, more talent, more intelligence, more popularity.  This is simply not true.  That is counterfeit confidence." 

College for me, if it had to be one life lesson, is that I am not the best at anything.  Absolutely nothing.  There is not a thing that I have done that someone else hasn't done better.  And that is good too.  I used to think I deserved to be the best at something.  That I earned it somehow.  That there was something in me that was inherently better.  I used to take pride in being the smartest person in a room.  Or in being the tallest.  Or having the best hair.  Or in having written the best paper.  Or figured something out the fastest.  Or in having the ability to shove the most information into my brain, only to let it all spill back out in a test.

I haven't fully learned the lesson.  Part of me still likes it when I find myself the -est in a room.  But my freshman year, I learned quickly, that I could try really hard and still not be the best.  I was not the nicest, the smartest, the hardest working, the most unique, and at first it was okay, then it was discouraging, and then I hated it.  But over time, I am trying to learn, that not being the best in the room does not mean that I am not good.  Standing next to a model in a picture doesn't make me uglier. In fact, standing next to happy people usually just makes me happier.


Oh there are so many things I am bad at.  There are also a very few little things I am not terrible at, and I'm going to try and do those things over and over again until I die.  And I am going to try and add more things to that tiny little list of things.




Oh to be college.

$50 on 5

Oh, I owe you a few stories, and maybe an explanation.  There are just so many emotions that this cold heart of mine does not want to relive.

I keep going home.  In the seven weeks that have occurred in this quarter, I have gone home twice.  That's a total of 24 hours of driving.  Just me behind the wheel, driving driving driving.  Which is probably why I haven't been doing anything as often as I'd like.  I'm behind in school, in blogging, and I think today I just finally caught up on all my sleep.  So here we go, me attempting to get back into blogging.  I think I'm afraid that I'm no good at it anymore.  Not that I was great to begin with, but that homeless guy/little girl I babysit post was one of my favorites of all time.  That was two trips home ago.

The last time I went home, I left for my drive at like 740 PM.  Except at the gas station before I left, I locked my keys in my car.  Yes, my only key to my car, trapped right inside my car, visible.  I had no phone, only an ATM card that I had grabbed in order to pay for my gas.  So I ran into the gas station and borrowed the cell phone of the man working there to call triple A, only they couldn't find my membership record so then I called my dad so that he could drop everything and take care of it remotely for me.  (I have a really outstanding father by the way).

AAA didn't get there until just after 9.  So in the mean time, I had so, so, so much time to talk to the man working at the gas station and to keep myself from crying because it had already been a long day and I just wanted to be home already, and I don't handle these things well, as it turns out.  I can't remember his name, mostly because I never quite pronounced it right.
But the man was from Nepal.  And in Nepal, he had gotten his college degree in Economics and then after graduating, he got a visa to come to the United States, and without thinking twice, he and his wife and child moved to this here US of A.  And when he got here, he tried to take some college courses and some English languages courses, but he had to make ends meet, and he took a job at ARCO to get some money and to help his English.

This man told me that he knew all of his numbers very well.  After 5 years of living here, his son had near perfect English, but he and his wife still struggled.  And when he got to this job, he learned that the only thing that people would say to him was '$30 on 4" and "45 on 7 please."  No one ever said more than that.

I would have cried for that man, except that by the time 8:45 rolled around he started asking if I had a boyfriend and if I was on facebook and if I liked to go out to the clubs.  It got weird fast, and I made excuses to go clean my windshield.  But still, I had to think about him.  I don't realize sometimes, that I am literally living a dream.  I am a Stanford student with a bright future and I'm studying Econ, a topic that just seems right sometimes.  In fact not only am I living a dream, but when I was in high school, this was my dream.  Only now I have new dreams.  Too many dreams that don't quite meld together very nicely.

I think my point, or my realization, was that dreaming is good, but living is more important.  Or maybe that happiness is not going to happen all of the sudden if a dream comes true.  Life is not a waiting game til the next thing you want happens.  Every moment is not a stepping stone, it is a time, right now.  Today is a day; 24 hours where I can decide to live a happy life.  And there is so much to be happy about.



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P.S. Look for me on my sister's blog.  I will be posting there ish-regularly and if I'm not there, than you can just admire how much cuter her blog is than mine.  No, but seriously, her blog is so cool.

Melt my Heart

I had the opposite of that moment I talked about the other day.  where everything felt right.  Instead, everything felt wrong.  I was walking through downtown Palo Alto which is a bizarre place.  It just seems to want so badly to not be  Palo Alto, but it is.  As a drunken man stumbled past me, I felt the seed of anxiety get planted somewhere deep in the pit of my stomach.  The opposite of awesome for me is anxious.  It is the worst emotion I can think of.
Anyways, I was almost back to my car, when a homeless man and I made eye contact.  Do you ever step on a grape when you're barefoot and halfway through you realize what you're doing, but at this point you can't help it and your doomed to have a smushed grape on your floor/foot?  Or you're driving sort of absent-mindedly and you realize the light is yellow, but you don't want to slam on your breaks so you go through, but as soon as your car has passed that threshold of the crosswalk line the light turns red and before you know it, you've broken the law?  As I made eye contact with this man, I realized I had somehow done wrong.  He looked into my eyes and he hated me.  I could have anticipated the words if I hadn't been hoping they wouldn't be said, but they came out of his mouth anyways, a loud, "F**k you."

1.  I think I look like a white trash Mom in this pic.  2.  This pic gets somewhat relevant, I promise. 

I spent Friday night babysitting, which is like paying me to eat cookies.  Literally, I was being paid to eat their food.  And watch their 3 1/2 year old little girl.  I'm not always the best with little girls, but in general little boys love me.  I just have more practice with them, I suppose. 
But we bonded, mostly over our knowledge of Disney princesses (girl was showing me up - she could differentiate between Flora Fauna and Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty) and our mutual enjoyment of dancing in the middle of living rooms to Vampire Weekend songs. 
An hour into it, she kept accidentally calling me Mama.  Which I suppose, meant she identified with me, liked my company, and saw me as an authority figure.  Two hours into it, she stopped playing, stared at me, and said, "I'm so glad to spend time with you."  It was very cute, and as one who does not spend much time in affectionate environments, it was sort of a surprise.  About three hours after she had met me, this little girl stopped again to tell me she loved me.  I hesitated for about half a second before I told her I loved her too. 


I am, in general, very stingy with giving my emotions out to others.  It takes me more than three hours to love someone, and much longer than that to tell them about it.  Negative emotions, which I am probably (wrongly) more liberal with, still take me a bit of time to develop.  I have never hated someone with one glance, which is probably a good thing, but I still think there's something to letting yourself feel.  I recently told me roommate that I had never cried over a boy.  She thought that was really weird.  Which I suppose it is.  I am more ready to give away my kisses than I am to give away my feelings. 
But in the moment, I realized that I love that little girl.  which says a lot to me about the ability of children to open hearts. 


I think I made all my points.  Gosh, I wish I were better at tying bows at the end of my posts, but I'm just going to leave you with that. 

Text Me.

A few weeks ago my phone went on strike. 

On Monday I sent a text and got no response.  I sent many more text messages throughout the week.  Many many more.  And none of them got responses.  It was a busy week, and I figured everyone else in the world was busy too. 

I was starting to get a little bugged.  Why would you just not text me back when I wanted to  hang out with you.  Are you friend-breaking up with me?

On Friday evening I called my dad.
"I guess you didn't think the joke I texted you was very funny.  You didn't even respond."


A light bulb went off.  I tried to send myself a text and it didn't go through.  I hadn't been receiving any calls either.  Everything outgoing was working, but nothing was coming in.  I called my service provider and had my service reset and got about 30 text messages at once.  People wanted to hang out with me too, it turns out.  My roommate had asked if I wanted anything from the grocer store.  So thoughtful.

This whole thing got me thinking...


I've had unlimited text messaging since I was 15 years old.  Since then, I have been able to send any message to any person at any time as frequently as I wanted.  Since then, there's probably been about a month of total time where my phone was not within five feet of me.  I got my phone taken away in high school once for using it in class. I had finished a test early and there was nothing else to do.  

Maybe it's not good.  Maybe I've spent too much of life attached to a thing.  but behind that thing there are people right?  I mean I don't think I would ever communicate with my oldest brother if it weren't for text messages.  Minus 6 months where our main communication was weekly emails, text messages is definitely about 70% of my interactions with him.  So better texts than nothing.  


But maybe I'm getting impatient.  I mean, I texted my mom at 2 in the morning the other night to tell her I had changed the time for a doctors appointment.  I need to be heard, and I need to be heard now.  What I am saying is so important that I am going to tell you it in the middle of class, while eating lunch, in the middle of the night, while I'm talking to someone else in person. 


But most of the time they are not important at all.  Most of the time my texts are just "hahaha that's crazy"  or "Okie dokie, I'll check and let you know" or something to that effect.  Maybe I've been raised in a world where people communicate constantly instead of deeply.  


I hereby resolve to do absolutely nothing.  I mean, I thought about what I could change and I decided nothing.  I like a text now and then.  It helps me know others are thinking of me, if even for a little bit.  




A picture for picture's sake:

Taken from my phone, if that makes it relevant

Friederich Nietzsche Once Said,

"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once."

I'm not joking, he actually said that.

I've hit a trifecta:

1. I did Jillian Michael's "Killer Buns and Thighs" video yesterday on level 1, doing the modified versions of all the moves, and today I am the perfect level of sore.  You know, where you can feel the muscle's tenseness if you move just right, but it's not so bad that you avoid moving in that way.  It makes me want to dance around my apartment.
2. I ate crepes today.  Before church there was a little brunch for the women-folk and I got to both make and eat crepes.  It was yum-a-liscious.  And fresh berries are on my go-list.  Forever.  
3. I made a fool of myself in public today, only slightly intentionally.  We were talking about something or another in Sunday school and I decided to comment on making the choice between going for a run or reading my scriptures in the morning and then closed it off with, "which, I mean, I do neither of those things."  Which evoked more laughter than I would have expected.  But I felt embarrassed because I forgot that I do read my scriptures most days.  

Ok, what is this a trifecta for?

Umm, I don't really know.  Oh man, FAIL.

What I mean to say is erm...

Hmmmm...

Pretty tulips that were down the street?

No, I don't think that was it.  

Here we go!  What I mean to say is, it's my blog, and I'll say what I want to.  But that doesn't mean I just say every thought that goes through my head.  (I know, you are surprised).

I have this friend who is one of my few loyal readers that I am not related to and she doesn't like it when I talk smack about myself or, more accurately, when I apologize for being a bit much on my bloggy-poo.  But you know what, I don't do it for you(obviously).  I do it because I want to acknowledge that I'm aware of how weird/whiny/conceited I sound.  because really crazy people don't even know that they are crazy.  average-ly crazy people are generally knowledgeable about their schtuffs.   

Well...

Was that really it?  I think the pretty tulips might have been better as a point.  

Oh you know what is great?  Today my dad offered to give me money!  Isn't that the college student's dream.  And also, I definitely got some dancing in so today can't have been a complete waste.

Sorry, that might have been a bit scatter-brained.  

The Thinker

I've been overcome with hatred for my a couple of my classes lately, which is really bad.  I just have this huge gap between what I'm actually studying and my real life (or any jobs that could come about as a result of what I'm studying).  So I've been a little down on Stanford lately.  Why am I here again?  Why do I keep busting my butt when I end up getting the same grades regardless of effort and it allllll seeeeems soooooooo poiiiinnnnnntttttlllleeeeessssss?

(Whiny enough for ya?)

So, among all that, I decided I needed to get some good Stanford on for the first time in a little while.  So I went to the museum and I saw the Walker Evans exhibit.  In case you don't know (I didn't), Walker Evans is the photographer behind these beauties:

All of which I got to see in person.  I was staring and staring and staring, and it was good for my soul.  And then I saw this quote and I knew I was in love.

"Stare.  It is the way to educate your eye, and more.  Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.  Die knowing something. You are not here long."

You are not here long?  Walker Evans, from the dead was speaking to me.  Do it!  Explore!  So explore I did, and as I turned a corner in our museum, I saw this little beauty.

Yes, that is the famous Rodin sculpture, "The Thinker".  I think it's one of 6 if I remember right.  Seriously, the museum at my school owns this and just got it back and I think I'm too cool to still go here?!?  Geeze Louise!  This guy really knows how to put a girl in perspective.

I wonder if Rodin had that in mind as he made this famous thinker.  To get me to thinking.  What am I thinking?  What is he thinking?  Am I overthinking this whole thing?

(Terrible joke-y enough for ya?)

But seriously, my school is awesome and full of splendor.  And I've been realizing that now is a great time to be.  I keep wanting to fast forward through the next year and a half and just be done studying and schooling and stressing and all that jazz.  But who doesn't look back at their college years with fondness?  I look back at my freshman year with fondness and it's only been a year and a half.

In five years, college will have been a blast.  I think.

Just Do It.

I have another theory.  I don't know if I actually share about a third of the theories that I think about sharing on here, but anyways, I've got another one.

So you know those days where you just absolutely don't feel like doing anything?  Where you know you probably should be productive, but you just aren't feelin it?  I have those days, even if you don't.  Especially if my day isn't structured.  I just feel so blah when it happens.
Okay so those days?  I have a cure for those days.  So if you have never had one of those days, now you will really  never have one of those days because now you know how to stop them dead in their tracks.

Are you ready for it?  I don't think you're ready (for this jelly).


All bad jokes aside, here's what you've got to do:
Force yourself to complete one task that you know you can finish.

Not just a task you can finish, a task you can accomplish.  Something that has a clear, "I'm done" point at the end of it.  Even if the idea makes you want to lay in your bed and think weird thoughts about which is the unsexiest fruit or how your life would be different if you were a different race (would it be different?) or why you try to kill a fruit fly by clapping it to a smashy death when you know it will just gross you out to have a dead bug between your palms.  Because once you finish, I'm sorry, accomplish this task, you will feel good.  I promise you, if you are built anything like me, you will be like, "hey look at me, I did something." And that in turn, will turn on the part of your brain that likes to do things.

Oh, and while we're completely on the subject, do you like the blue?  Answer my poll on the side up there (under the about me part on the right side there), pretty please?

Just an Everyday Occurence

As I laid in bed flossing the other night around one in the morning, I started to try and imagine what the everyday will be like for me once I settle into my own life.

This guy!

And then I thought that that is a very odd way to be thinking about my life. Once I settle into it?  What does that make me now?  Unsettled? That's a little bit disgusting.  What is wrong with my life now?  Why settle into a routine ever?  Why have just one career, one mate, one day over and over?

I've come up with a couple of explanations for this line of thinking.
First, I'm not big on uncertainty. For me, unless there are some other circumstances, I wouldn't like to take a job that would be only for a few months even if it paid quite well, if I knew I could have another job for a lot longer.  I just like to have a plan, a direction, a goal to aspire to.
Second, growing up as a Mormon girl (if you haven't had this experience, take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt) you're sort of, how do I say, brainwashed into thinking that the most important thing you can do in your twenties is get married.  I'm kidding, but Mormons do take family very, very seriously.  And starting your own is definitely part of that.  So for me a secure future always includes having a trusty husband at my side.  Thus, yeah, I'm not settled down in that sense.
And third, I keep thinking about this idea of all of life as an adventure.  Now before you're all, "Wow, way to get all inspirational cheese on me," let me persuade (or have some oogly attempt at persuading) you to my inspirational cheesey line of thinking.

I've spent a lot of time this summer being bored.  Sitting on my fat behind, watching the television and the likes.  I don't really have a car, I kind of have two jobs, but both of them only kind of.  Anyways, I keep thinking over and over about that thing your mom told you when you were little and you couldn't think of anything to do and kept bugging her: "Only boring people get bored."

What an insult!  I am not boring. How dare you, me. So I've really been thinking about how I can add adventure to my life.  Like my boring, car-less, job-less life right now.  And for me I guess that just means deciding that the things that are around me to do are terribly fun.  All of them except putting the silverware away.  That could never be fun.  But taking a nap?  Sure, I'll have crazy dreams.  Cleaning my house?  Just an opportunity for a one girl dance/cleaning party.  Ordering 200 cookies from a nice bakery?  Just an opportunity to talk to someone I have never met and try and picture what they look like.  (About 5'4", blonde, very smiley, always wears her hair in a pony tail - and you thought I was kidding).

So I hereby declare everything ever is not boring.  Never again will I be boring.

......And back from the cheesiness and back to the picturing of my everyday life as an older version of me.  I like to think that I will figure out a way to keep myself entertained for the rest of my life.  That I will teach my children that they don't need television or video games or the coolest toys to find a way to have a good time.  And that I will keep my husband on his toes.

And I don't see any reason why I shouldn't look forward to settling in for a good time.

Getting a Little Perspective

I really wanted some quiet on my Sunday.  Somewhere where I could just sit with my thoughts and enjoy a little down time.  Living in a dorm with over 300 people means I have basically forgotten what quiet sounds like.  

So I went to the balcony of one of the biggest classroom/auditoriums at my school.  I don't think it's supposed to be open on Sundays.  I even tried to be really quiet because I think there was some sort of janitor on the main floor for a while.  

It was really neat.  It's funny how I kind of hate living alone in the way that I do because I a rarely ever have people with me, and yet I still never really get alone time.  Time for just me to do what I want.  

I took this picture, and I don't know what I even pressed, but my camera made it take in black and white. I kind of like it:

The only thing I don't like is that you can't see all the empty seats on the main level.  There's something about being in an empty room that was meant to seat 200+ people that makes you pensive.  

I was trying for a while to write down a few of my more profound thoughts, but I decided they were just on the borderline of profound, but not enough.  Let's just say that my brain in the course of an hour can bounce from the rapture to vanilla bean to going to the beach to what I want to be when I grow up to the lady at work whose blog is fascinating in a hippie-ish way.  Not in that order, of course.  

I can't wait to see my Pops this week.  He's coming to visit me here in Stan-land.  And I can't wait to go home for the long weekend!  It will be such a party. Let's go to the beach!

Just a (not so) little post

You know what makes me feel good?  Getting things done.  Also, having posts that don't suck.  I feel like my posts suck lately.  Should I stop trying?  I keep trying to hammer it out and hope something magic happens.  Should I wait until something truly blog-worthy happens in my little life?

I like to think that my life is little.  Is that weird?  I like to think that I have my own sphere of people and places that I know.  I like to think that little things can be important things too.

I think I keep blogging even though nothing of note happens to me because I like to think that little things in a little life can be important.  I mean, lots of big things are the results of billions of little things right?  Like molecularly.  Or take voting, for example.  I think little things have to be consistent in order to make a difference.

I like to have an end goal when I blog, but I don't really have an end goal with this little post.  And it's getting less and less little by the word.

But the point of blogging is that I take a little writing and I do it consistently and I become better at sharing little things.  I develop a skill.  Which is weird because I'm not sure if that skill is writing-involved or not.  I think that skill is maybe expressing?  I think everyone needs to learn to express themselves.  But in my case, I think I learn to express the right parts of me.  Like I said about choosing the things you love and making them bigger.  Making them a larger slice of the pie.

I love the little things.  I love chocolate milk with my family.  And words like "racist" and "holla".  I love singing in the car.  I love the toes of babies.  I love the sore feeling the morning after exercising. I love crossing something on a list out.  I love utility curves.  I love planning my little life.  I love notes on a staff.  I love the scars on my fingers.  I love words on a page and on a screen.

Was that a boring list?  I hope not.  I think little things are the things that make people interesting.  I think little things make it easy to fall in love.  I think pretty highly of little things, in case you couldn't tell.  Which is probably why I keep blogging even though nothing big is happening.

One little thing I do when I have the self esteem for it is themed photo shoots.

Remember the 80s?  I don't actually.  I wasn't alive.  But I remember parts of the early 90s, which are more or less the 80s.  Hence the following picture:

There are others, but I am too embarrassed to show them.  But I also wish I had a hair scrunchie.

A hair a scrunchie is a little thing that would have made a big difference.

Mwergh.

You know how I said that occasionally I have been known to flirt a little bit in order to get something from something from someone?  Well the opposite works too.  I don't quite mean flirtation, I just mean I can have pretty good customer service sometimes.

On Saturday I volunteered at a TED event.  TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design.  It's basically a conference full of speakers who are pretty good who talk about "ideas worth spreading."  I hear about TED talks all the time at schoolio.  People think they're really cool.  At some events tickets are $6,000, but at the one I worked at they were only about $200.

Anywho, the TED event was pretty good for me because I am good at smiling and answering questions.  Everyone was really easy to work with and it was great.
Mostly.

It bugs me when people think they are entitled to things.  Or think that they are more important than other people.  Ok, story time.

Because I worked at the event, I got to hear all of the speakers (until I decided I was exhausted and just ditched the whole thing three hours 4 hours before it ended - but in my defense I had already been there for 7 hours with only a 15 minute break for lunch).  But they were really cool talks so I had been taking little notes on my program.

After lunch, when the next session was starting, a few people had lost their programs and asked if they could have mine.  I told them where they could find more and people were generally ok with that.  One lady just wouldn't take no as an answer.  She asked for mine and I told her where she could find others and she still just wanted mine.  So I told her I had taken notes in it and she just said thanks and stuck out her hand.

WHAT THE HECK??  Just because I was wearing a red staff shirt and she had paid money for her ticket does not mean that she can take anything she wants from me.  What's next, does she want the jewelry I was wearing?

I don't know why this bugged me so much, but it really did.  Am I crazy?  I know it was my job for the day to help people, but I wasn't about to carry them to their seats or anything.  I'm probably overreacting, but it really got under my skin.  It made me not want to help people for the rest of the day.

I ended up giving her my program.  But I also flashed her a look that was both a smile and a dirty look at the same time.  I don't think I've ever really done that before and meant it.

And then, just so that there's a picture in this post:

A (crappy) picture of a dancer from Stanford's PowWow a couple of weekends ago.  

Getting in touch with my roots, yo.  

The Only Thing

I don't like about this shirt is that it implies that I am only 50% awesome.

Oh and that it's actually my little brother's shirt.  But Marcus and I can share like ALL of our clothes.  It's kind of magic.

And isn't it really hard to blog without blogger?

I mean, I know that my brain is still here and that my computer is still here, but I have like 3 drafts of posts that basically have like a sentence each in them that are supposed to get me started.  And I kept thinking of things and then flipping to blogger and being completely unable to write them down in an easy way (never mind the fact that I could have typed them up somewhere else or used a paper and pen).  So blogger, I say to you: Booooooo. 

Which reminds me.  Someone in the google family has a similar sense of humor to the one that I have.  Hence this little gem:

Oh google chrome, I knew we were soul mates.  Every time things suck, I too say Boo. Also, can you even read that?  It says boo

OK, so let’s witty-gritty.  It’s like the nitty-gritty except it’s the part where I try to be witty.  Which is not to say that I succeed very often.  I would say about 80% of the time I end up thinking I posted is like when someone changes their facebook status to show that they bought a gallon of ice cream at Albertson’s – does anyone really care?

But that’s the whole point of this post.  The point is that blogs are such a weird concept.  I basically share a little piece of my world with some shapeless audience and pretend that you all are hanging on my every word (But aren’t you though?).  And you in turn decide to read it all, personal information and all, even if you don’t know me very well.  I know because I do it.  I read blogs of strangers.  They are (for the most part) somewhat famous on the internetz for the blogging skills, so it’s not that weird, but still, it’s pretty weird.  I know intimate details of the lives of women who live in New York, DC, Provo, and Arizona.  I have never met these women.  But I know the nicknames that they have for their husbands and a lot of the things that make them laugh.  Creepy?  In some ways yes, and in some ways it is actually quite awesome.  I feel connected with these women and I like it. 

I was trying to put into words why I blog recently because I was supposed to get other students to be interested in blogging at an activity fair at my school.  The thing is, I don’t even really like writing.  I think I like attention.  I like telling stories.  I like being able to put into words the new beliefs and ideas that I get about my life.  I try to do it often, because I think it makes my brain work better.  To have an entire infinity of people to bounce ideas off of. 

I also try not to do things that are easy.  Because most of the time I bore myself writing them.  Like posts that are like OMG listen to my cool cool life.  Or lists.  At the start of this blog I did a lot of lists because they were easy.  But not in a while.  They’re easy to write but boring to read.    Stories are better.  But since I suck at those, quips and anecdotes do.  And mostly I try to do things where my personality comes through.  So that I don’t sound like my life is perfect or that the things that I think are funny are actually the funniest things in the world (but f’reals, that spinach joke was hilarious ….. to me) or really anything where I come off as the awesomest (unless it is a reference to how I am the awesomest at life, because well, the obvious reason).  But at the same time, a blog is soooo narcissistic. 

I don’t know.  This post is already too long, but I can’t really tell because I wrote it in a word document instead of in blogger.  And I also don’t really know what I’m getting at except to say that blogging is weird but I like it.  Is that weird

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.)

Why does anyone have children anyways?

I'm going to attempt a serious blog post here.  Because I have serious things on my mind and I sort of like it when other people post serious things.

I'm taking this writing class with the very general topic of happiness.  We have to choose one topic for the next ten weeks to write about and do presentations on, as long as we can tie it to happiness somehow.  I'm writing about the Disney brand, but that's besides the point.
My teacher wanted to get the creative juices flowing, so she made us read a billion different articles to try and inspire us.  We somehow came to the topic of families, and specifically having children.  We discussed how study after study shows that having children does not increase happiness at all.  My professor went on a rant about how people know that having children will make them more tired, less financially stable, more stressed, more emotionally tired, more pressed for time and yet they stupidly continue to have children.  How in the old days having children served an economic function, because you could get your kids to help you with the work on the farm.  But now, the roles have reversed and parents are, in essence, slaves to their children.

I bit my tongue.  It was the second day of class, and I didn't want my teacher to hate me just yet, so I just let all the words pass by me.

Let me explain:  My Freshman year of college, after my very first term, my oldest sister was really pregnant, and my mom couldn't be there to help my sister out during the first few days of Preston's life because he kept playing tricks on all of us even from the womb.  My other sister was out of the country, and Adri didn't want to be without feminine help while in labor.  So I went.  Me.  18-year-old, knowing nothing about the miracle of birth (I was 5 when my youngest brother was born) and all, I went.  And I try not to be too weird about this, but that day changed my life.  I didn't really realize it then, but thinking back on that day I remember the rush of emotions that ranged from worry and almost panic (He was almost born without a doctor in the room) to discomfort to the most instant and complete sense of love that I have ever felt.  I'm not just talking about the love that I had for the baby, even though Preston means a whole lot to me.  I'm also talking about watching my sister and brother-in-law and the love they had for their new baby and for each other.  It was something I will never be able to adequately describe and something that I hope everyone gets the opportunity to someday experience.

The point of that story is not that I think the miracle of children is awesome.  It's not even that I think the studies are wrong.  The point of the story is that I decided, after that point in my life, that I wanted to fill my life with as much love as possible.  That my new life's goal is to love as many people as I can get this heart of mine to love, and to be surrounded by people who love me.

So maybe children do make you unhappy.  I know they do sometimes.  I also know that they make you happy sometimes.  I can't really say for sure which there is more of because I have never had children of my own.  (Though I love my nephews so much that I feel like they belong to me a little bit).  But I do know, that nothing ever, in my entire life of 20 years and half of a Stanford education and various jobs and relationships and friends, none of it, has ever brought me as much love as the love I remember in that room almost a year and a half ago.  Love like that has nothing to do with someone being forced to work for someone else.  And every time I think back to that day, or to those two little boys, I can't even believe how much I love my family.

Love lasts much longer than happiness anyways.