Young, Alive, and Lost and Academia

I'm in the library finishing my last paper of junior year before I go abroad.
I hate working, I hate staying up late, I hate giving so much of my energy to something that I just don't care about ...

so why do I feel like I'm going to miss this?

♪ Bliss

It's been an anxiety-filled week, and driving home for 90 minutes in the snow today would have been absolute agony if it were not for : EELS and the excellent work of music that is Tomorrow Morning!

Holy wow!

What a drive that was! How in love I am!

I highly recommend this.


<--- Pretty hot, this one.
<---So romantic to me. How I would love to be "Spectacular Girl."


<---And this -- the epitome of a wonderful day!

Yowza!!

Agony of a Good Song

There are few things more exciting than finding a really good song. This morning I was browsing through some new titles online and with this one, had to get up from my chair and play air guitar for a while in my kitchen.

It hurts, almost. When a beat or melody pierces in such a way, it's painful to think that every moment of this life is not so musical. In a matter of seconds, the desire arises to be behind a keyboard, a drumset, a guitar -- something (regardless of how well I can play it). It's like I won't be satisfied until I'm in a room with nothing but music, with nobody who's not playing something equally well. Life won't be good enough until I can somehow become music itself.

AAGGHGHGHHGGH. It kills me.

But here's to trying.

♫♪♫

Why I Do This Thing

Since my freshman year of high school, I've kept fairly dedicated journals. I had a colossal amount of teen angst and heavy destructive crushes, and so writing became the outlet in which to pour out some of my anxiety.

I had an odd inspiration the other day to dig out some of my old notebooks. And I have to say: my younger self has amazed me.

For one thing, my writing several years ago is so much better than I thought it was. Despite the fact that it never really follows any kind of structure or rules, and especially despite the fact that it conveys my embarrassing teenage girl attitude, I find it incredibly moving.

It's pure.
It's honest.
It's flawed and painful and confused, but at times it's some of the most beautiful stuff I've ever read.

Yeah. Arrogant. I know.

But this is why I write.

There's something about sitting down and sorting through your own words that is more truthful and clean than any other kind of communication.

Maybe it's just me. But I have a hard time writing without pouring out a good portion of my soul. And that has just about always been the case.

So much of my teenage ranting was written almost with a sense of shame, a fear that I'd grow up to look back on that writing as something silly and stupid, and that I'd have some crazy urge to destroy and forget it all.

And yeah. There's a lot of insignificant crap in those notebooks.
There's a lot of pain and confusion that I probably could have avoided.

But it's an amazing thing. That writing was probably the most honest and accurate reflection of myself and my thoughts. And no matter what that is, it's going to be beautiful.

I think most human beings have a hard time not absolutely loving sincerity. When I think about the people that I love and respect most, a good number of them aren't particularly very nice or friendly people. Some of them are, in fact, outright assholes most of the time.

But they know who they are. So gosh darn it, they're going to be it.

And that's what I find so shockingly beautiful about my old teen-angst ridden self. I couldn't be anything but that. While sometimes stupid and terribly misguided, it was still something real. Something pure. And like I said -- it's pretty hard not to love something like that.

So it inspires me to keep doing this thing.

I continually say I like to write; and somehow I've earned in my circle of friends the big title of “Writer.”

But here's a secret:
All I do is this journal thing.
That's it.

I take the mess of thought in my head and I throw it down on paper. Then I move on and forget about it.

No cute little stories. No poetry. No fiction.
No published work. Hah.

But somehow, this is enough. The random snippets of excessive thought and emotion are somehow more beautiful than anything I could think of or create on my own.

In most cases, I think truth is the most beautiful, incredible, and astounding thing out there. So it's what I'm going to stick with for now.

The best-selling work of fiction might come later.
(Again, hah.)

What I find especially hopeful is that in another three years I'll look back on my writing of today and be totally amazed again.

Not that I'm discovering all kinds of daily epiphanies or anything.
I just think I'm always going through something amazing.
Always.

Life is like that. It rarely makes any kind of logical sense. We plow through it without any kind of clear idea of where we're going. Through pain and through joy, we keep on doing this, and somehow, in the midst of it all, there is something beautiful.

Unfortunately, that's the best I can try to describe it.
And that simple phrase “Life is beautiful” doesn't quite seem to be enough here.

But it is. Life is beautiful. Despite everything.

I could go on, but I'd run myself into circles. I'm not the best candidate to write philosophical wonderings on life's inherent beauty.

All I know is that it's there.
And it's why I write.

So, like I said: let's keep doing this thing.

:)

Progress

Okay

...

Have I been really busy since the last time I posted April 20, 2009?

Actually, I kind of have.

And April 20, 2009 feels like it was six lifetimes ago.

There have been a few monumental events.

But for the most part, I've just been doing my thing. Progressing.

I just finished the first quarter of my second year at DU.
My good GPA is sliding quickly away from me. But so far, I'm surviving.

I've been working at a flower shop for over a year but that career started skyrocketing this summer. After months of menial tasks like cleaning buckets and processing flowers, I finally began that terrifying prospect of designing.

I distinctly remember several years ago, in an effort to free myself from helping with arranging flowers at church, explaining that I didn't like flowers, I couldn't make them look good, and I simply had no talent for them whatsoever.

Now, I'm designing for one of the top-rated florists in Denver.
God has a pretty good sense of humor that way.
What's even funnier is, I love it. It's my favorite job so far. It just happened to fall into my lap last summer, and here I am a year and a half later, absolutely loving it.

I'm continually amazed by the way my life progresses.

Somewhere between April 20, 2009 and now, I've been led to a much different standing with faith and God.
It's always been somewhat of a reality, but lately, It's become so much more significant. Much more continually present.
So that's been a milestone.
And in many cases, I feel like I'm viewing the world through a much clearer lens.

So today is a very, very different day than last April.

I still feel a lot of the time that I'm just hanging on to life by my fingernails. I never fully know what's going on, nor do I really have a solid idea where I'm going.
But. I have so much more of a knowledge that someone bigger and better than me is in control of things. That he'll steer me continually in the right direction.

And that's what changes everything.

It's so strange. I've grown up constantly going to church but things have finally started falling into some certain kind of place. I can't write about anything else anymore. When I used to write pages upon about the guys I had crushes on, I'm now writing about my relationship with God.

Maybe that sounds like a tacky thing to say.
But that's okay.
Because this is where I intend on staying.

It is here that life is continually surprising and continually new. Each day holds in itself a new and unique joy.

And so moving forward, while still a precarious thing, is a little less worrisome than before.

Someone bigger than us is, indeed in control.

There is joy to be had for us yet.

Dead Serious

I am realizing something. Seriousness--dead seriousness--is incredibly scary.

I mean, it actually exists.

Most of the time, I see the world as a pretty entertaining place. I like walking through sunny Denver days, singing to myself. I people watch, smiling at the way humans react with each other. I develop hysterical inside jokes with friends on a daily basis. I take excessively long coffee breaks.

I enjoy life, for a surprising majority of the time. I look at folks who are constantly worried and stressed, and think, God. Please. Chill out.

Maybe they should calm down a little bit. But life is, indeed, slightly more than coffee breaks. In fact, there's a whole hell of a lot going on here.

Recently, I've been trying to wrap my mind around this whole...existence thing.
That's not exactly something I'd advise. I mean, good luck in trying to fit the entire universe into a human mind.

There are so many shockingly important questions out there. What are we doing here? What is the purpose of life? Is there a God? What the hell does he want from us? What was he thinking, making...me? What am I supposed to do with this whole life thing?

The answer isn't exactly found in a cup of coffee.

My typical response to difficult situations is to ignore them--to shrug my shoulders and tell myself that it will all just work itself out eventually.

Here's the cryptic question : Will it?

How to Be a Normal Human Being

I commented recently, "Sometimes I just step back and look at my life. And then I see that I am so fucked up. I'm eighteen miles away from normal."

I was with one of my best high school friends at a Village Inn at 10PM, sipping coffee and eating breakfast for dinner. He just looked at me and asked, "Well, who's normal?" and I sat there staring at him for a while.

Life isn't exactly about being normal. Or fitting in. There's not a damn person on this earth who 'fits in' with anything, because there's not anything to fit in to! What kind of human should strive to fit into human made standards?

Let's face it: We're all confused. Is there anyone alive who doesn't feel thoroughly lost in at least one aspect of their life? That's what's normal -- nobody is.

A significant part of being human is being clueless. Or confused. Or scared. And yeah, kind of fucked up. I'm pretty sure we're all that way.

And while that's certainly not ideal .. In some strange way, it kind of is. It's one big unifying factor. I suffer. My friends suffer. The guy across the street suffers. There are as many different pains as there are people on this planet, and with that, who can really be "normal?"

There's no solution to this. There's no formula for complete sense, no way of finding instant nirvana. To phrase it simply, shit happens.

But ... it can be comforting to know that every person around you is probably sorting through just as much crap as you are. You're not the only one who isn't normal.

So, maybe we should just disregard the entire concept of normalcy. Maybe the best thing to do is to simply help each other out through the chaos.