5 stitches

It has been one hell of a month, hasn't it? January pretty much kicked me in the nads. I talked earlier about how I like to bring in the new year in a way that will make the rest of the year rock. So far, January has let me down.
But there's something to being hit, quite literally, in the face by reality and fate that makes you wonder what's in store next. And even if a little-more-than-a-little-blood, 6+ hours in the infirmary/ER, and 5 stitches isn't enough of proof that there's a message the universe is trying to send to you, you realize it eventually. We all do. Sometimes it comes in a small dose, like having a sensory reaction you didn't expect, and sometimes it's a 30 pound door being swung in your face. 3 years ago it was a car accident and a blinking gas light. I call these moments "resets". They are the times when you look, introspectively, on what you've done in your past and what you could do better in the future. Call it what you will, but fate has a damn-good way of stopping you in your tracks and making you re-evaluate your life.

So far this month, i've thrown up my guts, i've had my heart broken, and I got my ass kicked by a swinging door. I'll be damned if I can't call it interesting at least. Hopefully it's just the universe's way of saying that something even more interesting, and hopefully better, is on the horizon.

Until later,

Stop the clock.

With only a short two weeks between my teenage years and the years of, you know, being an adult but not being able to drink legally, I found this incredibly hilarious. And true. Take a look at what you've done. Take a look at what you want to do. Change your life.

And thanks to Ms. Schaffer, who posted this: you deserve massive amounts of credit and gratitude.

A Checklist For The Age 19

Sep. 8, 2011

By Jennifer Schaffer

1. Decide that you will not be jaded. Be indecisive about most things but certain about this. Say to yourself, ‘I will not be a jaded twenty-something, I will have self-respect, I will become a minimalist and move to New York and I will never complain, I will recognize sweetness and I will make it last.’ Mid-mantra, experience near-fatal blows to your beliefs about the integrity of the world and your place in it. Arrive at realizations that everyone else has already reached, crude truisms you’d idealistically dismissed or ignored. Money is power, pretty is good, sexism is the status quo. Adults don’t know what they’re doing, most mistakes matter, and you will never be cool. Try to be realistic without growing disillusioned. Bite the insides of your cheeks until they bleed.
2. Avoid telling strangers your age. Wish that you were 20 already, because when you are 20 people will take your emotions seriously, they will take your ‘work’ seriously, and they will take you seriously. Simultaneously take great solace in the fact that no one takes you seriously at all. Find comfort in the reality that you are still a teenager and glaring errors are still permitted and perfection is still suspicious. On low nights, take shelter in lowered expectations and fulfilled clichés and bad alternative rock. Recognize that once you turn 20, no one will describe you as a prodigy, no one will call you ‘exceptional’ or ‘advanced’ or ‘gifted’ or ‘special,’ Craig Ferguson will not say “Wow, and she’s only 19!” when the entrance music dies down. Master the art of feeding yourself consolatory nonfat yogurt while wrapped in blankets and reading things on the Internet. Let your eyes grow wide.
3. Begin a relationship with a person who feels more ‘real’ than your high school sweetheart, whose words sound heavier and more trustworthy, whose touch feels more intentional. Keep your feet on the ground. In an attempt at full disclosure, ensure that he sees you at your absolute worst. Be honest. Approach love consciously, in real time. Do not drift. Do not write poetry. Use words like ‘solid’ instead of ‘dreamy.’ Consider the concept of semi-permanence. Linger, savor, know now that there is no rush. Use your past as a parachute, then discard with metaphors and, for the first time, love someone in concrete terms. Feel like you could maybe spend your life with this person. Mail your parents a 20th anniversary card and realize that you have no idea what that means, no concept of how much ‘spending a life’ costs. Love on a day-to-day basis instead. Build slowly. Learn that this is more than enough.
4. Panic. Frequently.
5. Lack the chutzpah to drop out of your elite university, where you are currently pursuing a degree that entitles others to prematurely inform you of their latte order. When people over the age of 28 ask you what you will do after graduation, answer honestly. When they give you a look, that look, modify your reply. Turn the dial in the direction of money. Visualize corporate offices with potted ferns and floor-to-ceiling windows and expense accounts and fast elevators. Keep adapting your answer until their eyes mock less, until they nod, until they smile. Feel deep-seated despair when you hear the words ‘law school.’ Know that you are on track for successes that will always be secondary to that thing you really wanted but were too cowardly to chase. Imagine yourself surrounded by Excel sheets on 40-inch iMac screens and feel terror. Then, as the conversation drifts, remember that you are not a coward, that you are invincible because you are still 19, and tell them that you will [do that thing that you are not afraid to do], that you will make people feel less lonely, that that is what you are going to do. Do not recoil at the sight of raised eyebrows. Do not let pity sting.
6. Try to be a better person. A better son, a better daughter. Try very, very hard. Try to express the respect you have for your parents. You’ve begun, if only tangentially, to understand the sacrifices they made, the lives they didn’t lead so that you could live yours, so that you could read books, so that you could explore boredom and restlessness instead of real suffering. Feel zero desire to raise a child. Try to ask nothing more of your parents. Still need money, still need health insurance, still need their approval. Cringe at your dependence and immense good fortune. Realize how lucky you got. Be grateful. Try to be worthy.
7. Anticipate existential crises like screams heard from the back end of roller-coaster waiting lines. Have a conversation with a woman in her late-twenties who declares she’s still ‘just a kid.’ Decide that the only thing worse than being jaded is being in denial.
8. Get excited about things like jogging and dinner parties and rooftop gardens and adopted mutts and raw foods. Start training for a 5K. Throw together an evening with sliced tomatoes and Charles Shaw and medium-rare, Forman-grilled steaks. Climb onto the roof of a two-story academic building at night. Visit the websites of animal shelters, point and click and say ‘that’s the one.’ Develop neurotic habits when choosing produce at Trader Joe’s. Craft convincing imitations of a world you’ve yet to enter. Exist in a perpetual state of preparation for a life you’ve yet to earn.
9. Forgive. Forget. Fake it. Chin up. Wear lipstick, make lists, make sure your voicemail isn’t full. Mix protein shakes, send timely thank you notes, sip drinks more slowly, stare at adults’ eyebrows, smile without dimples, develop perfect posture. Be gracious, be kind, eliminate self-pity. Look in the mirror and shift your internal monologue from ‘How do I look?’ to ‘This is my face,’ from ‘What the hell am I doing?’ to ‘This is my life.’ Capitalize your emails, read the news, walk briskly, stay focused, and never, ever let on that you are somewhat lost and sometimes lonely and so completely confused (and would someone please just let me know what it is I’m supposed to do next, where exactly I’m supposed to go–). Just keep going. Go, and do not stop.
10. Every so often, you will need to scream. That’s okay. That’s allowed. Scream. After all, you’re just a kid. You’re only 19.

Ode to Awhile.

It's been awhile. Everyone still listening? We just paused the song for a bit.

I was busy for awhile there. I hate when that happens in college; you work so quickly, and sometimes you get so wrapped up in yourself, that you forget what's important. Not that these posts, this mundane and rather boring blog is all that important. But sticking to your promises is. My greatest fear is putting myself out there and being rejected. It's stupid, but in this sense, if I had stopped posting, i'd be rejecting myself. Which is really unfortunate. I'm the one person I hate to let down.
So. To prove that there is something worth throwing out there, I want to re-post a post I found online over the summer. I saved it in a word document, and i'm glad I did. It explains, rather eloquently, my sentiments at the current moment. Ladies, if you're listening, pay attention. This man deserves a medal:

Ode to the Nice Guys

 This rant was written for the Wharton Undergraduate Journal

This is a tribute to the nice guys. The nice guys that finish last, that never become more than friends, that endure hours of whining and bitching about what assholes guys are, while disproving the very point. This is dedicated to those guys who always provide a shoulder to lean on but restrain themselves to tentative hugs, those guys who hold open doors and give reassuring pats on the back and sit patiently outside the changing room at department stores. This is in honor of the guys that obligingly reiterate how cute/beautiful/smart/funny/sexy their female friends are at the appropriate moment, because they know most girls need that litany of support. This is in honor of the guys with open minds, with laid-back attitudes, with honest concern. This is in honor of the guys who respect a girl’s every facet, from her privacy to her theology to her clothing style.

This is for the guys who escort their drunk, bewildered female friends back from parties and never take advantage once they’re at her door, for the guys who accompany girls to bars as buffers against the rest of the creepy male population, for the guys who know a girl is fishing for compliments but give them out anyway, for the guys who always play by the rules in a game where the rules favor cheaters, for the guys who are accredited as boyfriend material but somehow don’t end up being boyfriends, for all the nice guys who are overlooked, underestimated, and unappreciated, for all the nice guys who are manipulated, misled, and unjustly abandoned, this is for you.

This is for that time she left 40 urgent messages on your cell phone, and when you called her back, she spent three hours painstakingly dissecting two sentences her boyfriend said to her over dinner. And even though you thought her boyfriend was a chump and a jerk, you assured her that it was all ok and she shouldn’t worry about it. This is for that time she interrupted the best killing spree you’d ever orchestrated in GTA3 to rant about a rumor that romantically linked her and the guy she thinks is the most repulsive person in the world. And even though you thought it was immature and you had nothing against the guy, you paused the game for two hours and helped her concoct a counter-rumor to spread around the floor. This is also for that time she didn’t have a date, so after numerous vows that there was nothing “serious” between the two of you, she dragged you to a party where you knew nobody, the beer was awful, and she flirted shamelessly with you, justifying each fit of reckless teasing by announcing to everyone: “oh, but we’re just friends!” And even though you were invited purely as a symbolic warm body for her ego, you went anyways. Because you’re nice like that.

The nice guys don’t often get credit where credit is due. And perhaps more disturbing, the nice guys don’t seem to get laid as often as they should. And I wish I could logically explain this trend, but I can’t. From what I have observed on campus and what I have learned from talking to friends at other schools and in the workplace, the only conclusion I can form is that many girls are just illogical, manipulative bitches. Many of them claim they just want to date a nice guy, but when presented with such a specimen, they say irrational, confusing things such as “oh, he’s too nice to date” or “he would be a good boyfriend but he’s not for me” or “he already puts up with so much from me, I couldn’t possibly ask him out!” or the most frustrating of all: “no, it would ruin our friendship.” Yet, they continue to lament the lack of datable men in the world, and they expect their too-nice-to-date male friends to sympathize and apologize for the men that are jerks. Sorry, guys, girls like that are beyond my ability to fathom. I can’t figure out why the connection breaks down between what they say (I want a nice guy!) and what they do (I’m going to sleep with this complete ass now!). But one thing I can do, is say that the nice-guy-finishes-last phenomenon doesn’t last forever. There are definitely many girls who grow out of that train of thought and realize they should be dating the nice guys, not taking them for granted. The tricky part is finding those girls, and even trickier, finding the ones that are single.

So, until those girls are found, I propose a toast to all the nice guys. You know who you are, and I know you’re sick of hearing yourself described as ubiquitously nice. But the truth of the matter is, the world needs your patience in the department store, your holding open of doors, your party escorting services, your propensity to be a sucker for a pretty smile. For all the crazy, inane, absurd things you tolerate, for all the situations where you are the faceless, nameless hero, my accolades, my acknowledgement, and my gratitude go out to you. You do have credibility in this society, and your well deserved vindication is coming.

Good, right?  It really made me think about what being taken advantage is. Nice guys, you deserve better. And one day this crazy thing called love is going to work out for us. Breathe deep, and work harder, if you have to. Turmoil is only a state of mind. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back in the saddle. And wait for that smile that could kill you.

"A comb-over as a result of some bad ecstasy" Or Enough

I received some of the best advice tonight. Sometime I forget the advice people give me, so i've gotten into the habit of writing it down as soon as I understand it, somewhere I simply can't forget about it. But then I think, What if writing it down makes it useless? Am I more apt to follow advice I take in internally and let soak within me?

But what is this thing i'm doing here but an extension of myself. Because I have no readers. And that makes me the only reader.
So I guess to take it internally is the same as writing it down here.
The advice was: The minute you get anxious about being lonely and making an emotional connection is when we are furthest from companionship and and when we are most lonely. Our anxiety isolates us from what we fear most. I've struggled with this idea recently, striving for emotional connection to ease my anxiety, when in fact it's a vicious cycle. The more anxious I get about being lonely and not feeling connected to people, the further I get from making a connection, and that leads to more anxiety. Vicious. Vicious, vicious, vicious.

On that note. Life comes full circle often. We see it's dualities all the time. in deaths and weddings. In loss and creation. Life can surprise us, and I think i'm going to start letting it. Because frankly, i'm sick of driving this car. I'll let life do that for a little while.

I am enough. And I will never be fully happy until I realize my contentment with my current situation. I don't need validation, even though I search for it.

Thanks zebra, for that. It means the world.
Until then,

Expectations

'We all have them. We all assume something will work out the way we imagined it, and when it doesn't, we have our expectations to blame. The standards we set control how we stumble along from day to day.

 One of my greatest flaws is the fact that I set giant expectations. I always imagine moments before they happen, rehearse them, practice what I want to say and how I should inflect the phrases. Bullshit. When the moment comes, i've lost all the practice I put into creating it, and my expectations destroy the beauty of the spontaneity. I like to imagine, sometimes, that i'm in some sort of movie, that there is an audience. That i'll get a reaction out of these moments. And if anything goes wrong, if something doesn't fit the way it should, the moment is ruined.

I never know how to stop, though. How can we not have expectations? They allow us to know what's in store, and actually tell us a lot about what we want from the moment. Our dreams, hopes, prayers, and so on are revealed in our expectations. God, that sounds corny, right?

Screw the emotional and deep shit, answer the question. How do we stop having such high expectations? Are expectations a bad thing? do they always leave us disappointed? Looking at them now, yes. You expect something out of a moment, it doesn't go that way, it seems lost somehow. But what does our world look like without expectations? It lacks definition. We don't know what to expect, so we're unprepared for any sort of response. So I guess it's just about finding the appropriate balance of expectation and reality. You have to be honest with yourself.

Back to How I Met your Mother and pondering life's mysteries.
Until later,

Choices

Life is full of them, isn't it? It's fascinating how a decision, something we make consciously using knowledge we have and risking that which we don't know, controls the fate of our lives. Sure, it could just affect a moment, a miniscule period of time, a mere few seconds. But still.

People say that we often don't have control over our lives. That there is an eternal being, a mapped-out guide to our life. Trust me. I believe in fate and all, but a choice contradicts that, doesn't it?
 Today I was thinking about the moments of this past year that defined the year. The milestones. The times where I knew I would remember that moment forever. They defined the year. Shaped it. Shook it up. Sometimes made me feel like i'd never get through it. But I did. I passed the new year, and 2012 so far seems to be already deciding the path it wants to take me on. But all of those moments were decided by me. I choose to make them happen; I said the right thing, or I made the right move. I chose the right person, or the right time, the right place. And those choices are what make me think that control isn't what we strive for as humans. We don't want to be in control. We want the choice. We want the thrill of knowing we made some sort of mark on the 'fate assigned to us'.

Today I chose to be in love with my current place. And it's the happiest i've been in a long time. I chose to be content with my past choices, and that's probably the hardest thing you can do, mentally. Try. for just a minute. Try to be content with all the mistakes you've made, all the shit you've done, and all the people you've hurt. It's not easy. But it helps to know that, somehow, you had the choice to do so. And for some strange, and maybe brilliant and correct reason, that choice was right. Take the leap, folks. It's harder than you think.

until later

Date and Time

Hi there.

There was a meteor shower last night, if anyone saw. It was a shame that it was freakin' freezing out. I didn't last more than fifteen minutes. But I think shooting stars are really interesting. Sort of like flickering lights on a christmas tree. For that brief period of time, they get the chance to shine brightly, then nothing. Ryan Adams has a song, Firecracker, with the lyric "Well some folks want to live forever, but I just want to burn up fast and bright", which always reminds me of shooting stars.

What ever happened to dating? Our parents did it. Our grandparents invented it. But somewhere along the line, dating became impossible, stupid, and associated with embarrassment. Why are we perfectly okay with something we call 'sexting', but not okay with expressing our feelings or attraction for someone face to face. Intimacy has completely changed since our parents were 'courting' and 'parking' (gross). Technology has made dating something we can do over texting. I thought connection could only happen in person. Evidently, that is not the case. So what next? Eating dinner with the family via Skype? Watching the birth of your child or grandchild on a webcam or on YouTube? The direction that we are headed in can only lead here. Unless dating becomes a thing again. I tried so hard my freshmen year (of college) to go on dates, to experience the dating culture. But in a society reliant on the hook-up culture, how do we reverse the effect? Answer: One date at a time.

Until later.

Hello

Hello.
Anyone listening? How are you today? I'm a bit pensive, actually. Let me start with a simple hello, anyways.

A lot of people would say that a blog is just one way to spread your ego. I've heard people call 'bloggers' (god, that's an ugly word), egotists, and self-involved. That's not my intention. I guess I should start with a bit about me. I'm 19 years old. I'm in college (for privacy sake, I won't say where). I'm studying Secondary education. I love my family and friends. I have two sisters who have taught me more than I could ever describe. Music gets me through the day. I have a dog (he's pretty old, but more on that later). I love acting, and dream of one day becoming a director for high school students and of running my own theatre company.  The reason I am starting this blog is because it was part of my new year's resolution. I resolved to learn more about myself, and i'm sort of on this quest of self-discovery.  I sat down and thought: what the hell do I want to do with my life? There were so many things, so many lists (I'm a huge proponent of making lists). I got overwhelmed. So I watched some 'How I Met Your Mother', and forgot about it. But then it hit me, I have to stop avoiding things i'm terrified of. I'm sick and tired of being run over by the present because I didn't see it coming. Didn't Ferris Bueller say something about that?
It's getting to a point where I need to start making some big decisions (not huge, but big enough to be scary.......that's what she said). So I thought the best way to get through to, well, me, was to talk it out. And what better way than here?

I promise I won't get self-involved. We learn best when we learn from each other, right?
That's the goal.


Anyone listening? Okay.
Until later.