obligatory new years post

I keep thinking that one of these days I'll wake up with at least one aspect of my future outlined in my mind in perfect clarity, but it hasn't happened yet and I doubt it ever will. Instead I'm just going to have to muddle along and figure things out on the way, which hasn't killed me yet.
Life makes me tired sometimes. But then I climb a hill and look around and all those things I was worrying about in bed the night before are so erased from my memory that I can't remember anything except how great the world is. I had one of those moments about half an hour ago, looking out my window and watching the snowy world outside. I love winter, but mostly I love snow.
In other news,
I am still waffling between culinary and counseling. The pros and cons are pretty even in my book, which makes this difficult. In the end I think the major choice will be between emotional exhaustion or physical exhaustion. Who evens knows. I certainly don't.
 On top of that, I've been struggling with a few personal things. As a side note, I never really understood "personal things", because isn't everything personal? But I guess in my case "personal things" applies to interpersonal things, so allow me to ammend my statement- I've been struggling with interpersonal things.
Something cool that happened this month-
Nick was in need of friends forever and I volunteered, so we shook on it and now we are officially going to be friends forever. Everyone knows that handshakes are a super-official adult thing that you can do to cement friendships.
Also I got to see a couple of friends. Man I miss my friends! So it was nice to hang out. But I would like to say that if we are friends and you go sledding without me, I will be supremely disappointed.

Anyways.
I've returned from my familial festivites and I am currently enjoying the solitude of my own apartment. Man I love this apartment. I'll be sad when I have to leave, but I'm sure that my next adventure will have its own plus sides.



(PS/ in conclusion-
this post had nothing to do with the New Year, because I think it is mostly a bunch of baloney and if I really wanted to change myself I don't have to use the next calendar year as motivation. That being said, I usually rely on Sundays or the first day of the next month, both of which come around more often than the next year. So. There is that.)

Do I have a brain tumor or something?

The question of my past year.
What the heck is wrong with my brain?
Dyslexia is certainly high on the list of possibilities, because my father has it. Also my entire family has AD[H]D, so that definitely doesn't help.
But...?
I need to talk to my friend Kristy about this, she could give me some dyslexic-to-dyslexic talk...
My problem isn't really with the writing and spelling. I mean, not so obviously. It shows up sometimes, but mostly I have problems talking and hearing things.
I did some looking around, and apparently dyslexia can manifest as auditory dyslexia and verbal dyslexia. I didn't really realize I had a big problem until I worked at a pizza restaurant, and I had to take orders over the phone. I've always had problems distinguishing words when there's ambient noise going on in the background, but it was especially bad there. It didn't seem like people were speaking English to me sometimes! Someone would spell their name, "W-I-L-L-O-W!" and I would translate it as "Y-A-R-R-L-Y!" Letters would get mixed up phonetically in my mind. The worst ones were always W, R, L, Y, O, N, P... Basically half the alphabet. I had to make up my own way of dealing with it- I would repeat the sound of the letter that someone was saying, over and over- "double you eye ell ell oh double you" and break down each letter individually. "Okay, double you means W, eye means I, ell means? L!" and so forth. I started to feel really dumb! It was discouraging. It still is!
Here's what really gets me, though.
I can't remember it being this bad when I was a kid.
I mean, maybe it was. My memory isn't that reliable! But I can't remember really struggling like this. It seems to be getting worse! Why? I keep wondering. Am I just now starting to question the things that I thought were normal? Or are they actually getting worse?

Also my father just walked in as I was writing this and we had a semi-infurating discussion about a small part of this and the only thing we settled is that my entire family has Brain Problems. Thank you.

Anyways!

Brain Problems Suck
(oh my gosh you would not believe how long it took to type all this I am not feeling well I am going to stop)

quick update on rose hips? and music.

It took too much effort to cut them in half and scoop out the hair and seeds, so I got about four or five done before giving up and trying to dry them whole.
I left them in an oven I assumed was around 150 F for about four hours, and there wasn't much of a visible difference (except the skin gets dark? did I accidentally burn them?) but the skin starts to feel different. I put them in a different oven for about an hour, just so make sure, and now they're sitting on my kitchen table. I haven't touched them since Friday.
So!
Maybe I will go see what's happening over there now.


Until then,
enjoy this song.

Good story-
One of my student workers in the cafeteria told me that the guys in Twenty One Pilots went to Worthington Christian, and one or more of them were there the same time he was. He told me that at their concerts, a large portion of the crowd are their old schoolmates coming out to support them and rock along. Also he mentioned this "remix" where somebody ends up standing on the piano? I am unclear on the details. Anyway, it sounds cool! Six degrees of separation and whatnot.


EDIT: 
Well, this is interesting...
I seem to have lost my first blog post about this entire rose hips tea thing, with all the information on it. Which is a bummer, because I put all of that information in one place to make life easy and now I will probably have to go find it again. I just don't understand how it disappeared- that's what bugs me the most! Did I accidentally delete it? But I don't think I've been on since I made this update post thing. Is my memory that bad? Etc etc etc.
Anyways!
Life goes on.

SO

For the sake of keeping up with this online journal- life is good! Life is pretty swell. Most of the time. I mean, all lives have that up and down, and I'm incredible lucky because life is mostly at this steady plateau of "not too shabby!" but there are always going to be downs and a lot of my friends are having a hard time and that makes me feel sad because I want to help them but I have no idea how! So there's that. There's also the "I miss people" feeling, but that's going to be a constant thing so it's barely worth mentioning, kind of like how your eyes adjust, you know?
But good things! Besides the fact that I have a job with free room and board, I finally got my apartment this week (last week?) ! I got it early on this week/last week, but I haven't had time to really unpack/clean/organize until today and now I feel super accomplished because I have about 1/4 of it done! Huzzah!
Other than that...
Yep.
Not much!
Work work work.
Yay for having a job in hard economic times!

hormones are dumb, the end.

HORMONES.
Wow hormones suck a whole bunch.
Hormones can suck it.

(wow that was incredibly fast)

Just wow!
So, remember how my only concrete plans were going to school part time and figuring out how to move out & get a job?

BOOM.
DONE.

Literally the day after I wrote all that, Lance texted me saying that they needed a taskforce cafeteria worker at our alma mater (is it our alma mater if it's high school?), which is fine by me because I was taskforce dean at Thunderbird and I'm pretty sure I'll be working less hours at MVA than I was at TAA and be getting paid aproximately the same! And still have room & board, yeah! Also I will endeavor to be not be a preachy old fogey, which shouldn't be terribly difficult but I have developed this nasty habit of mothering people which may be just as bad, we'll see.

So basically I spent this entire week jumping from incredibly happy to incredibly guilt-ridden and semi-sad, because my friend's dad/ my boss has been having a ridiculously awful week/month and so have his wife and his older daughter, and they've just been struggling with so much and it's really wearing them down and he's just so sad and tired! And it's all stuff that you can't really fix, so there's nothing I can do to help and it's just horrible! I baked him cookies, which is my go-to comfort method for just about anything, except I've never made gingersnaps before and I don't think they came out properly... ugh!


So, I'm going to move on from that because it is pointless to stress about things that cannot be solved! The most we can do is offer what comfort we can, and I've done that, so!!

On a completely unrelated note.

Does anyone else (who reads this blog...) think in music sometimes?
Like I read somewhere that people on the autism spectrum think in pictures, whereas most regular people think by hearing their thoughts?
Which is interesting, because I mostly hear my thoughts but they're also accompanied by sort of video clips sometimes, and I think part of that is dyslexia because I read someplace about something like that??? I can't remember.
But as I was saying!
I'll just be spacing out, not really thinking about anything, and then-!

Let's use some examples.
Yesterday I was really happy, and feeling good about life and how God answered my prayers, and "Joyful, Joyful" started playing in my head.
Okay.
Another example.
One Christmas, I was woken especially rudely, so I was in an especially foul mood! I walked down the stairs and the first thing I saw was our bright and sparkly Christmas tree. The first line of "Your Heart Is An Empty Room" started playing- "Burn it down, til the embers smoke on the ground,"
And another!
This one was kind of awful because it was entirely by accident.
My mother asked me to make her a new mix CD for her car, and it was only after the songs were playing that I realized I had put "Far Away" by Ingrid Michaelson right next to "You Don't Know Me" by Ben Folds & Regina Spektor. WELL THEN! Subliminally passive-aggressive much?

And this just goes on almost constantly. Now, whenever a song pops into my head unbidden, I stop to examine it. What is the name of this song? The lyrics? The general mood? How does that apply to me?
It's really helpful, actually, because a lot of the time I won't know what emotion it is that I'm feeling until the song makes me confront it. I have a hard time in general figuring out complex and/or subtle emotions, so I guess this is my brain's method of helping me out!

It's just really interesting, and I was wondering if any of you guys experience this?

sorry in advance.

I should just make that thumbs up motivational thing my blog header... I really feel as if I need the self-encouragement!

Quite a few of my friends are going into their senior/junior year of college this year, or have already graduated (those would be the friends that are older than I am, but still!) and I've been feeling increasingly like an aimless freeloader with no real plans for life!

Which is mostly true.
And it's killing me!

I've been trying to figure out what I want to do, and there are SO MANY OPTIONS it is legitimately terrifying. I'm like a deer in the headlights, with the headlights metaphorically being the huge amount of advice that I've been receiving. It's been great advice! If I had written all of that advice down, I probably could have made a really great book or pamphlet or something that would have been extremely helpful to other people in similar situations! Wow I'm pretty dumb for not doing that.
The thing is, though, a lot of this advice has been conflicting.

"You'd be a great teacher!"
"The teacher's environment outside of the classroom can be caustic. Have you thought about counseling or social work?"
"Pffft, don't be a school counselor! Let me tell you what I think of MY school's counselor! [unkind things]"
"Look at this! You have incredible talent! Have you thought about going into art?"
"Don't go into the art field, you won't find any jobs!"
"People who say that there are no jobs in the art field don't know what they're talking about! You just have to know where to look."
"If you're going into art, pair it with something marketable, like something relating to technology! If you can code and have art skills, you're golden."
"Go into the medical field! You can do whatever you want as a hobby, and be well paid in the mean time!"
"Medical students have incredible amounts of debt, work odd hours, and have to pay ridiculous insurance just to cover their butts. Maybe you should rethink that."
"How about business?"


It just goes ON and ON, my head is spinning and I have even less of a clue than I did before!

This is just getting ridiculous.

Most of my friends seem to know what they want to do and where they're going in life, and here I am on the sidelines kicking my heels around the country. One of my friends mentioned a long time ago that I travel to escape my problems, and at the time I thought that he was totally out of line in saying that but now I think that he may have a point and I'm beginning to doubt everything!

So.

What's the solution here?

The only thing that comes to mind is "JUST KEEP SWIMMING."

All I can think to do is just work through all of this. I've signed up for part-time classes at my community college this coming winter, I'm going to find a job, I'm going to move out of my parents' house, I'm going to just slowly figure things out from there. Baby steps.
In 2010 I ended the year knowing for a fact that I wanted to be a teacher- things have changed so drastically since then! I've learned so much. I'm continuing to learn! Hopefully, the learning never stops, and ideally I'll figure out what I want to do with my life and where on earth I want to do it.

Until then...
I'm just gonna...
sit in the sun for a bit.

Yeah, that sounds nice.

[[later- it was nice for about five minutes and then I realized that it was much too hot and muggy and I have relocated back to my spot in a nice air-conditioned patch of sunlight.]]

BELIEVE IN THE ME THAT BELIEVES IN YOU!

(anime references aside...)

(I'm just gonna bring this back...)

SO
I woke up at 7:30 am cursing my coherence, and after a long argument with myself I eventually succeeded in FINALLY getting out of bed with the intention of GOING ON A WALK! YEAH! up a hill.
That turned out pretty well, actually.
We have this hill with a bunch of steps and from the top you have this gorgeous view of the Mississippi river, and it was a nice cool morning and the birds were chirping and I passed this really beautiful garden that looked really difficult to maintain, and generally I just felt great about the world!
So I ate breakfast and went back to my room and putzed around a bit, until I thought, "Hey, you know what would be great? If I followed up that walk with a WORKOUT SESSION, YEAH!"

Things were going well until I got to the ab excercises.
Wow.
Okay, I need to workout more often because that was just sad!


In other news, have some Janelle Monae because she is STILL really great.

tick tick tick tick

My work area is slowly starting to fill up with origami cranes, because I've forgotten how to make anything else and I like to be busy with something.
I'll just choose an album on my album and putter onward.
Before I left I got a bunch of artists that I hadn't listened to often enough, and I'm in love with Marina & the Diamonds and Laura Marling. I have a weakness for female singers...

(PS when this song first started playing my first thought was, "TARDIS WHOOSHING?!?" and it would have been funnier if I hadn't been so excited.)

(on a totally unrelated note, I keep thinking about this dream I had where there was this disease spreading, it was new and fatal and there was no cure. vines. vines would sprout on you somewhere, and then you'd know that your time is coming soon because they were in your body and slowly eating you alive, they'd spread inside and outside your body- it looked beautiful except people were dying. I remember staring at my palms and up to this point in the dream I'd been trying to help find a cure and to ease peoples' passing, and there were these tiny shoots coming out of the center of my palms and I showed them to the other council members and they started crying. my palms itch just thinking about it.)

People can be silly sometimes, the end.

Grape Juice City is a great song, too.

SO


I donated blood today! Usually I feel nauseous or at least a little dizzy, but today I felt fantastic! Until I had to go run a bunch of errands with my father, which is when I started to feel so incredibly tired that I was fighting sleep while trying to pick out conditioner! I took a nap & felt better, and there's really no point to this story except
DONATING BLOOD IS GREAT,
I always feel super-awesome afterwards because I have O neg and I know at least one of my friends is also O neg so if either of us is ever in an accident I sincerely hope that our hard work will come in handy! Not that I ever want to be in an accident, nor would I ever wish that on anyone I know, but still. O neg is the universal donor, but we can only receive O neg blood.
Enough about blood.

 

The thing I'm most proud of here is that I chose the colors myself...? Usually I pick out a color palette that's already been made, so I feel accomplished in this one small step.

dose of optimism

I couldn't decide whether or not to load these separately, but they fit so well together! I think so, at least. It's fun to look at these when I'm feeling down, because sometimes it's hard to remember that life is actually really fantastic! These are like doses of instant optimism. Yeah!!! I'm going to try really hard to be cheerful!
In other news-
UGH THIS SONG IS MY FAVORITE EVER,
whenever I hear it I'm reminded of these small golden moments where I'd lay in a patch of sunlight and listen to one of my friends play piano,
it's just
really beautiful.

Also,
WOW I REALLY WANT TO SEE THE AVENGERS AGAIN,
and also
LEGEND OF KORRA IS PERFECT (mostly Bolin, he is the most perfect perfect person on the entire fictional perfect planet).

I don't know if you've noticed, but I really like cool colors when it comes to these things.
Also I'm kinda proud of myself because I've been drawing more often and I can actually see improvement in some things? Like that previous post, I kinda just stared at that drawing for a while because I am still blown away by how proud I am of that hand. Like, the colors and the lines and just everything about it, I think I'll always be happy when I draw hands that look like how I actually imagined them looking. These hands up there don't really count because (shh don't tell) I kinda traced them from a photo that I took for reference but gosh darnit I learned a few things about hands in the process, right? I'll just keep telling myself that!
In other news,
I've been having problems sleeping again, and it's really annoying because I'm starting to notice these dark half circles under my eyes and they aren't that great! Also the nightmares, those are getting more strange and vague and I don't really know what's going on there but it's not good.
In more optimistic news!
Um!
I'm still really excited about summer!
My friend DJ will be in Ohio for a few days before he goes to Italy for a month & I leave for Missouri, so we're totally going to hang out then! And HEY DJ if you're reading this I had a dream the other night where I saw you drive up in the parking lot and I gave you the best sneak-attack-hug ever! And that's basically where the dream ended, because I woke up, but still!
Also my friend Kristy is hopefully visiting before I leave, and I haven't seen her for a really long time so that should be really fun also! Yay! So many cool people and adventures!

I'm really
excited for
this summer!!

(the song is actually called "whirl y reel"? I don't know why it's spelled funny in the video)

I'm almost deliriously happy with the colors of this, I am officially in love with this color palette site, it's like a candy store of beautiful colors. (also ack her left eye is way out there, I know, ack ack [n]ak)

I'm listening to this CD I just picked up from the library, it's pretty trippy. It's Afro-Celt? That's what the album says, and it's pretty self-explanatory. My thought when I picked up the album was, "What do African music and Celtic music sound like when they're put together? Let's find out!" Good idea, past self.

Here's one of the songs, if you're feeling adventurous.

In other news, MAY IS GOING TO BE AWESOME AND NO ONE CAN STOP IT.

FF # 1

This is a thing I'm going to start?
Question mark?

Yeah...
?
So anyways, this was the first one that came to mind because the people that I work with are so amazing, and I shared something with one of my managers tonight and he was just, so, cool about it, and then my throat started to close up a little and I thought, "Oh no, oh no, no no no," so I had to go to the bathroom and do some deep breathing and staring myself down in the mirror to calm down. I guess I was feeling especially grateful because before work I had just read a really great book, and Meg just keeps making my summer brighter and brighter, and I took a walk out in the beautiful weather, and someone I didn't know waved at me as I was walking, and the music I was listening to was really awesome, and then I went to work and made tips and it just all built up into a big pile of warm fuzzy things.
Hehe.
Yeah!

("so this is the new year, and I don't feel any different")

So I've been having a few ups & downs lately, and there's definitely a pattern, so maybe I should get around to solving that? It's just... difficult.

Gosh, I don't even know how to word it!

Haha, I literally just wrote three different paragraphs, and deleted each one! Paragraph, thought, delete. Paragraph, rephrase, thought, delete. Paragraph, exasperated frustration with clumsy fingers, delete.

This is going to be an interesting year.
I have no idea what I'm going to do!
I guess that means that every week is going to be an adventure, hm? In the good way?
Let's hope so.


Things I Want to Start Doing-

• working out semi-regularly (biking, weights, etc.)
• cleaning
  
• going places with friends!
• going back to school....? eventually....?
  

BLARGH

OKAY SO ST LOUIS AND EVERYTHING SURROUNDING IT WAS FANTASTIC,
thank you Sab & Meg for being such wonderful hosts [& people], it was so great that I can't even remember in what order we did things.
Mostly I just want to live at the City Museum and get a metro pass or whatever so I can eat delicious food and drink great tea all the time, that would be the best course of action, yes.
My feelings are just a giant keyboard smash of warm fuzzies.

(also-
"He could be a very tiny assassin! I read about it once!"
or something like that, I should have written it down as soon as it happened!
and I cannot forget that dream I had, with the kittens that went BLARGH instead of those cute little mews, aaaahhhhhhahahahahaha I was so confused in the dream but now it just makes me laugh!)

and on that note I will leave you with toe socks in love.



PS
wow this is a really quality way to start the new year, first post and all that jazz, I think I am actually going to try to change things this year, like work on who I want to be and what the heck I'm doing with my life, so I may or may not discuss that when I'm not feeling so discombobulated. Haha, jokes on you, I'm like that almost all the time.