Be who you want to be.

but how?

Some people are extroverted. Some people are introverted. Some people drink a lot. Some people smoke a lot. Some people get highly involved in whatever they're doing. Some people keep to themselves and soul search.

I feel like life is like finding the right recipe of actions, substances, and relationships and implementing them all properly enough and in the right order to eventually, without even trying, create the person you want to be. It's a recipe you don't know, and you have to test the recipe using various ingredients, so you end up trying over and over and over.

Ugh, this epiphany sounded so much more eloquent in my head.


Honestly, it's the "outgoing personality" that baffles me.
Whenever I hang out with someone dashingly outgoing, regal, and clever, I just wonder, HOW DO YOU DO IT?!

I'm not talking about the ordinary "outgoing" I'm talking about the "outgoing" that makes it obvious that everyone in the room likes this outgoing person. Everyone wants to talk to him/her, everyone likes what he/she has to say, he/she feels comfortable around the majority of people, et cetera.

One reason I got into psychology is because my entire life I've always been interested in HOW people become just WHO THEY ARE. In counseling classes it was amazing learning about how influential life experiences and growing up are on the adult's personality/psychology.

I feel too young and naïve to really understand this concept; even if the answer sat itself in my lap... But I want to, so badly.

3:24am 24 December 2011

ADD.
Whether I have it or not, I sure as heck know that I suffer from attention problems.
I just want to sit here and write a quality blog post.
I just want to sit here and let it all out.
Let it all out and organize itself.
But I can't.
My brain is everywhere all at one time.
It's hard enough to form these sentences.
Maybe it's the time of night.
Maybe it's the naïvety of my age.
But I can't seem to make this ink stay.

Handling relationships

One of the hardest things about relationships, is that we all have our own opinions. Sometimes, we have our own opinions about how relationships are supposed to be handled.

A handful of situations in my life have caused me to build up an unbreakable wall. My most personal/secret information is not allowed out.

Of course, I shoot my mouth off about unimportant things, surface level things. But other things, certain things, I will never reveal again, thanks to a difference in relationship handling opinions.

That said, I don't have much time to make a long post about it, so check back, and hopefully I'll have gone more in depth about it.

The Story of Stuff

Pride is not a feeling I feel very often, but last night, when my (University Program Board National Events) committee and I implemented an incredible, intellectual event we've been planning for months, I couldn't help but show my pride in the biggest grin stretched across my face.

Before you continue reading this post, please take 20 minutes of your time and go to www.storyofstuff.org and watch, at least, The Story of Stuff.  Annie Leonard is the director of the Story of Stuff project, and the featured speaker for the documentary you just watched. As you can read on the website, she traveled the world for 20 years researching STUFF: where it comes from, how its made, how we use it, and finally, where it goes when we dispose of it.

Before I saw this documentary, I had my eyes were opened wide when I was living in Chile and I realized how less wasteful Chileans were in comparison to United Statesians.  In common chilean homes, their garbage containers weren't as big as ours, and there weren't as many. My host mom would take her re-usable bags and cart down to the market to buy fresh fruit a couple of times a week. They never bought anything unless they NEEDED it. My host mom made a lot of clothes and crafts. It sure was a different world there...

Anyway, I had to watch the Story of Stuff documentary in my Human Relations 102 course in 2010.  Ever since then, I've more often considered the "reduce, reuse, recycle" methodology. First, see if it can be reduced. Do you really need it? Don't buy it. Do you really need 3 servings of this food? Save it for someone who actually needs it. Second, reuse everything that you can. And this means avoiding disposable items. Its hard though, when industries purposefully TRY to make things disposable, especially so that you buy a new one or latest model every few months. Finally, recycle. When you've used something to its last thread of life, search for a way to recycle it before throwing it in the trash, where it will end up in a landfill.

The National Events committee that I facilitate invited Annie Leonard to SCSU to screen her documentary and speak about her travels and knowledge on sustainability and being environmentally conscious. I wish I could have somehow recorded the entire event, because I wish I could somehow share it with all of you. Annie is an incredible and skilled speaker and it was such a high honor to have her on our campus. Over 350 students came to this event, and my committee and I couldn't have been happier with how smoothly it went.  Several students and faculty stayed when she was done, even after the Q&A, in order to speak with her.

Possibly the most incredible part of her speech was that through her messages about the world going to shit, people needing to be more active in sustainability, and how bad things are looking for the near future, she remained and continues to remain so entirely HOPEFULL.  Her smile and excitement never faltered, on and off stage. She is truly someone I look up to and will never forget. Its hard to believe I got to meet her and spend alone time with her, discussing college, students, and green initiatives.

Interesting fact...
About 3 minutes into the event, so 3 minutes in to the documentary, a woman stormed out of the auditorium. WHen I asked her what was wrong, she muttered between clenched teeth somethign along the lines of "This is why there is so much hate.... *grumble grumble* ... and *** occupy wall street *grumble grumble." I think the part she walked out on was probably where the documentary talks about the wasted money poured into the US military... I'm not really sure what her problem was... but it excited me that I helped facilitate an event on campus that sparked controversy.

I wish I was more eloquent with my words; though, no matter how I post about the event, I'll never feel like it will sufficiently represent how life-changing and amazing this event/speaker was for me.

In all,
I found a reason to take pride in my position with UPB and future aspirations. I got the chance to meet someone I look up to, aspire to be, and respect. I successfully implemented an event that I'm going to be proud of for the rest of my life.

A few committee members, my adviser, Zach, and Annie Leonard, after the event. She is the biggest sweetheart!

The Next Step

My husband Zach and I had a discussion yesterday about what we're doing after we graduate in May 2012.   I've been considering graduate school for a while now, knowing for sure that I wanted to further my education, but not exactly sure in which field. Until recently, when I decided I want to work on a college campus, I figured out that I was particularly interested in college student life and development.

It makes sense- I'm incredibly involved on campus: active in several student organizations and receiving payroll from 4 different departments.  I'm passionate about organizations benefiting students as they should and I also go out of my way to encourage and help my fellow peers the best that I can. I thought about it for a long time before I realized any department in student affairs would be interesting to me: career services, education abroad, student activities, advising, et cetera.

After a lot of research into dozens of universities across the country, I decided that Seattle University has just the program I want. It's part College Counseling and Student Development, and part Higher Education Administration (two degrees offered by St. Cloud State.)  They offer Master of Arts in Student Development Administration, and the course load looks incredible: social justice, leadership, multicultural perspective, adults in education.

As soon as I get back from a mini road trip at the end of the semester, I'm going to start filling out my application for Seattle U as well as some for several graduate assistantships on the campus.  With my involvement and good academic standing, I'm not incredibly worried about being denied entrance into the program. That doesn't mean I'm going to slack at all on the application, though!

I'm excited! I really feel good about this, and I think its really going to give me an advantage to graduate with my masters degree so young. It'll make me marketable when I start applying for jobs because I'll be relatively young and fresh :)

As for Zach, he is going to find work in the city somewhere while I'm in school. I know that Microsoft, Google, and Nintendo have headquarters out there, so I'm sure he is looking for positions in those companies. He is very intelligent and versatile, so I'm not too worried about him finding employment. I am a little worried about getting burnt out, but summer is usually a sufficient break for me, and I know that come August, I'll be itching to be in a classroom again.

What will I ever do when I am "done" going back to school in the fall?
Maybe I won't. At least the field I'm going into will keep me on campuses.
I certainly love learning.

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives. 

~Clay P. Bedford

Less than 6 months from now, our lease will be up, and we will be preparing to leave St. Cloud. 


Now its time to focus on the present. I have about 50 pages of papers to write in the next two weeks, and they aren't going to write themselves. Tonight, I'm tackling my group therapy implementation methods to prepare for implementing it on Tuesday, as well as some research (en español!) into how Don Quijote de la Mancha still has significant effect on modern art and is present in modern art culture. Maybe after homework I'll touch up my hair to make it look closer to THIS again:

Nostalgia. Always nostalgia.

Reading up on my friend's travel blog (http://amylaraeinbulgaria.wordpress.com) while she's in Bulgaria on a Fulbright Scholarship makes me incredibly nostalgic/jealous/sad/furious all at once.

I miss writing in my travel blog (http://chileanadventures2009.blogspot.com/) when I was living in Chile. Every day was exciting, every day showed me something new. I felt like I had a lot to say and they were all worth writing down. I miss seeing the ocean on a weekly basis. How did I expect to leave the ocean, dump myself back in the Midwest, and expect to be happy? The Midwest United States is NOT the place for a girl like me and it never will be. Thank goodness I'm married to a man with a similar travel/adventure bug. I miss learning a new culture, especially one so different from your own. You learn so much more about your own culture and yourself when you are thrust into an entirely new world and way of working. Four months was not nearly enough time to live in Chile, I needed at least a year. Four months was a tease and I feel like I learned a small fraction of the potential I could have. I miss having exciting things to talk about. In Chile, EVERYTHING was exciting! Whether it was the discoteca stories, the funny cultural jokes from class, last weekends spontaneous trip to Santiago, or next weekends vacation plans, there was always SOMEthing. I don't have that here, nothing is exciting, not ever. "What did you do over the weekend?" I worked and spent all remaining time in the library. When someone asked me that in Chile, I would say "I did some homework and planned next weekends trip to the south!  I especially miss planning trips on the cheap. I know I can do that here, but I just don't have the time with how demanding my schedule is and also the fact that I've already seen a lot of the Midwest (and there isn't much to see). I like sitting down and stretching my money as far as it can go, and even further, especially a place where it practically stretches itself, like South America! Finally, I miss meeting people from all over the world. Whether I was in a small town in Chile, or Buenos Aires, it was always exciting to meet people from Germany, Japan, Australia, and even the state right next to mine. I learned so much from them, and they learned so much from me.

I know I'm just down in the dumps right now due to an incredibly difficult semester arriving at its peak difficulty point, but I can't help but feel nostalgic for my life in Chile every single day. Nostalgic is the perfect word for it too, a tugging sadness yet happy longing for something that once was.


Some day I will return there, I know some day I will see my host family again, I know someday I'll be able to show my husband around the city that truly taught me who I am.

Aren't they just precious?

Finally, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for this semester, and with how epic my schedule looks for the spring, I can also see the light at the end of the tunnel in regards to graduation. More than patience, I need to learn how to make the best of everything while still taking care of myself.

Lima, Perú - November 2009

People say you "grow up" the most in "college," but I don't think we ever stop growing up. How could we? There are new technological, philosophical, medical, theological advances every single day! There is always something new to learn, and there is always something about ourselves we're not quite sure of yet, no matter how old we are. Sometimes I get scared that I'll be that ornery old person, caught up in her own opinions, and unwilling to open up. At this point I can't see it happening, but you never know! You just NEVER know what is going to happen, no matter how much time you spend trying to plan the future.

I have big plans for today:

• reply to an email I've been afraid to reply to
• discuss after-graduation plans with hubby
• including the possibility of grad school in Seattle
• get stuff done
• allow myself to relax
• cuddle with hubby

The Final Countdown.

Yep. THE FINAL COUNTDOWN. Why don't you listen to the song while you're reading my post?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyggY_R3jU8 
Feel free to do a little dance like Gob does on Arrested Development. Please do.


This is it. Tomorrow I register for classes at SCSU for the very last time. I'll never again have to complain about "honors" kids getting to register before me even though I have a better GPA. I'll never again have to run around SCSU's campus begging professors to let me into full classes. I'll never have to yell at the CEEP department again for not having a professor or time assigned to a class I need. Hopefully, I'll never have to spend another winter in Minnesota.

This is it. After May, I'm outta here.
I'm leaving.
Departing.
Escaping.
Hitting the road.
Leaving only dust behind me.
Before you can finish saying "congratulations" I'll be all packed up and ready to leave.
Its time for a move, its time for a change.

I won't get ahead of myself and blog about how "wonderful these 4 years have been" but I will say I sure have grown up a lot here. With as much as I feel like I change from year to year, hell, month to month, I'm looking forward to seeing who I'll be the day I'm leaving this place. Next semester is full of so many good things- classes, internship, events, and preparations to move across the country. I'm going to work less on campus and more at the gas station to ease myself away. I'm going to job search and start hardcore networking over winter break. I'm going to do the best I can to be the best I can be before I commence the my second big move.

For next semester, my classes are as follows: 

• CEEP 419 - Ethics in Psychology
• ENGL 342 - Creative Writing: Fiction
• PSY 378 - Theories of Personality
• PSY 345 - Psychology of Death and Dying

Class-wise, its going to be the best semester of my academic career. Not only am I stoked for these topics and professors, but I also don't have class on Friday for the first time ever. I sure deserve that.

On another note:
I have a hell of a lot to do before the semester is over, including 2 long and large presentations and about 50 to 50 pages worth of papers. Maybe I shouldn't think about the future so much...

St. Cloud, MN's first LGBT Bar

Biology 701 had a grand opening last night and boy, was it grand.

Before we even walked into the place, I knew it was unique; incredibly different from all of the other bars/hangouts in downtown St. Cloud. From a block away I heard the music and saw the crowd of people surrounding the entrance. It was a different type of crowd than the ones you see outside the popular bars in town, such as The Press or Red Carpet. Its hard to describe, but I sure liked it. The moment I walked through the doors I felt comfortable.

The atmosphere was fresh, open, and accepting. It wasn't dark and dank like some of the older bars, it wasn't crowded with pure muscly rednecks or wannabe gangsters and blonde skanks.  The variety of people there is what struck me hardest. Gay, straight, young, old, drunk, sober; everyone seemed to be there.

I was hit on by guys and girls, had my ego boosted, danced my ass off with my friends, watched my friends have a damn good time, and everything felt normal.

It is definitely my new favorite place. Especially after Zach and I had a dinner date there and tried their vegan cuisine.  We had the hummus and pita bread for an appetizer and then split the fresh veggie pesto pizza with vegan daiya cheese. Yum! It was splendid to have some quality time with him after he and I had a rough week.

Its about time St. Cloud opened an LGBT friendly bar.  The LGBT community is significant in size for this area and even those who don't identify as LGBT needed a place as accepting as Biology 701.  So far the food an drink menus are small, but I intend to support it to my hearts content as it grows, and I'm quite excited to watch it do so. The wait staff and bartenders are very friendly and were constantly asking for advice and suggestions throughout the night. I would imagine the deejay will get annoyed being so close and exposed to the dancing crowd, but maybe that will change eventually as well. I could tell he didn't like people putting empty drinks on his table, for sure.

Even in its up-an-coming stage, I'm already giving it 5 stars. I hope everyone gets the chance to see this place.

A day in the life of a college student.

Overworked and underpaid; hello, I am a student.

I stay up too late and get up too early. I work hard to learn what I wish, and slack off on general education classes. I don't have all my priorities straight, and I'm still trying to figure myself out. Sometimes alcohol is my friend, other times my worst enemy.

At 2:00am I could be at the bars, or in the library. I'm pretty sure the coffee shop calls my name.  Am I sick, or is it just lack of sleep? Oh how I wish I never had to get out of bed.

I miss my family. I'm nostalgic for a past life, and yet I believe the longer I'm here, the better my present and future will be.  What do I want to major in? Where will I be 4 years from now? Do you think I'll meet my future spouse here?

I must go abroad. This place opens my eyes and opens my heart to the world.
I have too many advisers that don't advise. Just get me out of here for a while!

Here's to random road trips across the state to take a break from studying. Here's to taking off our pajama pants to meet a friend at the pubs.  Here's to getting involved and loving every second of it. Here's to meeting the most amazing people of our lives. Here's to meeting our future husband or wife. Here's to music, here's to laughter, here's to love, here's to the future.

Who was I before I came here? I'm not entirely sure.

Hypocrites and limbos.

When your mantra is "keep calm and carry on" but you freak out and cry when the stress becomes unbearable.

When you try to be involved and passionate, taking on more responsibilities, only to realize you hate it.

When you're mad at your friends for bailing on you, only to bail on your friends.

When you're stuck choosing between letting your grades fall or taking care of your health.

When you want to be "in the moment" but you can't stop getting lost in nostalgia or thinking about your future out of this city and away from everything you know now.

When you give advice like "roll with the punches" but you'd rather get punched.

When you want to be happy but can't turn off the sad music.

When you tell your friend you need help only to realize she does too and you can't help her.

When your 18 year old hyperthyroidic cat is puking and pooping everywhere making you miserable and more stressed but you don't have the heart to put him down.

When you want to start up an sophisticated blog but can't help posting emotional rants.

Marriage.

I'm no expert on marriage, let me just put that out there. I've been married for just about 7 months now and that doesn't mean I know everything about it. It also doesn't mean I affiliate with what it stands for in a religious sense. Before I state my meaning, lets all be clear about what marriage means:

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found.
People marry for many reasons, including one or more of the following: legal, social, libidinal, emotional, economic, spiritual, and religious.  Some cultures allow the dissolution of marriage through divorce or annulment.
Marriage is usually recognized by the state, a religious authority, or both. It is often viewed as a contract. Civil marriage is the legal concept of marriage as a governmental institution irrespective of religious affiliation, in accordance with marriage laws of the jurisdiction.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage)

We all have our opinions, we all have our reasons for what we do. As much as I hate the fact that not everyone is allowed to marry the one they love in this country, Zach and I got married to legally, socially, and emotionally express our love and utter devotion to each other. NOT because we are religious, NOT because we wanted benefits, NOT because I was rebelling against my family, NOT for any other reason besides those listed above. I was/am so committed to him that I was willing to legally contract our relationship, and so was he.

"But why did you get married so young? Why didn't you wait? Why didn't you wait until at least after graduation?" 

Someone please tell me what I was supposed to "wait" for. If we were sure of ourselves, lacking any interest in a large wedding, and ready to bring our relationship to the next level... why should we have waited? What would waiting have benefited? Nothing whatsoever. We talked about marriage back in December of 2009, almost a year after our relationship began, and didn't get married until March 2011 and that is enough waiting for me.  The more I think about it, the more outright PROUD I am of us for getting married when we did.  For being sure of ourselves, for moving forward with what we thought was right, for not letting others strong arm our personal lives and opinions.

"but you're so selfish! didn't you want family there? didn't you want me there? didn't you want more friends there?" 

I'm sorry, but are YOU the one getting married? I didn't think so. A legal contract to swear our lives to each other, swear eternal love for each other, and eternal commitment has nothing to do with anyone but the two people who are agreeing to it.

Marriage is whatever you decide to make it: spiritual, legal, emotional, economical.
I strongly encourage everyone to rethink marriage and what it really means to them. Are you waiting for the wrong reasons? Did you get married for the wrong reasons?


On the notion of marriage, I will continue.
LOVE IS LOVE, no matter who or what you are.
Homosexuality exists in almost every single species: homophobia exists in only one. Ours. We created marriage to legally contract the union of two people. WHY are we denying this to a large population of the country? I will never again refer to America as the land of the free when LGBT couples are refused the right to marry.

How would you feel if you were denied the right to do something due to something about you that is out of your control?  I'm sorry, you can't get a promotion because you're too short and it would make the company look bad. I'm sorry, you cannot work for the church maintenance because you're an atheist. I'm sorry, you cannot fly on this plane because you look like a terrorist.  I'm sorry, you cannot legally, emotionally, and socially bind your relationship because you're not heterosexual.

GAY, STRAIGHT, BLACK, WHITE
MARRIAGE IS A CIVIL RIGHT

A good friend of mine is refusing to get married to her fiance until everyone in this country is allowed to. I'm with her 100% of the way.

Thoughts

Just one more wordpress post I wanted to save:

29 July 2011

I constantly have so much in my head. Swirling around and usually making no sense, but still managing to stress me out. And the moment I think “hey, writing it all down might help,” I get to a computer and my mind either goes blank, or won’t focus on one thought for more than a few seconds. I end up typing a sentence and deleting it, over, and over, and over again. As you can imagine it is quite frustrating. Especially because in the end, I don’t feel any better.


Today, though, I’ve been thinking a lot about sexuality.
I have several friends who identify in the LGBT community and there is a pride parade going on today on campus. Though I called myself “straight” until I was about 18 years old, I am really happy with my decision to stop labeling myself. It wasn’t exactly that I came to any realization that I wasn’t straight, I just realized over time that in my case, it didn’t need a label. Yes, I find myself attracted to men and women, but no, I don’t need to label it bisexual. Honestly, its partially due to the fact that a lot of people think those who identify as bisexual are either sluts or looking for attention, both of which I am not.  As I said earlier, I don’t need a label.

In fact I despise labels. They only cause problems. Are you gay or straight? Pro-life or pro-choice? Republican or democrat? I feel like the constant need for us to ask these questions in order to get to know someone just hinder relationships from building and causing problems all around. Haven’t we said for years that nothing is black and white? How about this instead, we screw labels and just discuss our beliefs the way they are? If two people don’t agree, it can be because they talked it over and don’t have the same beliefs, and not because, before they even met them, they figured out they had a bad label. If that makes any sense. *sigh*

Unfortunately labels make things easier. As I realized right after I finished that sentence.
Moving along…

I think the identity crisis I experienced shortly after moving out of my parent’s house and that is still going on to this day, is really helping me become the person I want to be. I grew up in a home where my opinions, my beliefs, and my schedule were given to me and I wasn’t allowed to question them. You can imagine how exhilarating and horrifying it was to move 450 miles away from home and realize that I was indeed allowed to make my own decisions. You can also imagine how many bad decisions I made at first; all of that power and I didn’t know what to do with it or how to control it.

Lately I’ve been really hard on myself. Well, I’m always really hard on myself. But writing this post helped me a little. I’ve come to realize that I’m still in the process of creating myself. For 18 years I didn’t do that, I was the person my parents told me to be. (Though I did rebel, I still lacked personality and opinion.) And its not going to take a few short years to figure out who I am and what I need to change in order to become comfortable in my own skin. I have to have patience and allow myself to explore every corner of the world, every opportunity that comes, and every option I can take.

Re-orienting ourselves

Just transferring over some noteworthy posts from Wordpress. I'm probably deleting my Wordpress soon; Blogger is easier to figure out, for me, and its attached to all my other Google applications.

21 August 2011


I wasn’t sure what to expect as an Orientation Leader for incoming freshman this weekend. We had training all week, and it was in a lot of areas with which I was already familiar, but I still just couldn’t figure out what this was going to be like.

Could I console worried parents? Would I make sense in my casual jargon with students who have never been here before? I suppose I mostly questioned my confidence. Throughout the entire weekend I had flashbacks to my own first weekend at SCSU as a freshman. How scared I was, how confused I was, how downright awful and awkward I was. I’m really really proud of myself for connecting with some of these girls and really helping them out. I feel so accomplished for what I did for them, it just feels so good. We had a really good day getting to know each other and getting to know campus; I found their classes with them and answered their numerous questions about how things work around SCSU.

I think the only difficult part of the day was seeing sobbing moms. I walked past a dad hugging a mom saying “she’s going to be allright. She’s going to be fine.” and he looked at me as I passed to ask “she’s going to be okay, right?” I don’t know if he was asking that for himself, or his wife, but I answered “oh yes, she is in great hands and she’ll be just fine,” with a smile. At that point the mom took her head out of the dad’s shoulder and looked at me. Her sunglasses couldn’t hide the wet cheeks. I had to look away because I choked up! My parents and I teared up when we parted ways. I was so scared and alone, and this was the first experience they had parting with a child so permanently.

To some extent, I’ve gained some kind of closure by being an orientation leader for my last year here. I came full circle starting from an incoming, orientating freshman to a leader of orientation activities, and it feels good. I’m glad I got that little taste of proof that I’m really as old as I am. It’ll be a reminder for the year that I’m graduating and should find a way to get my shit together and keep it together.

I’m exhausted, but the weekend was truly worth it. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Hell, probably even for free.

Trust.

It is something I have always been wary of.
Wary of trust, you say?
Yes.
Do people trust me? Do I trust others? How do I make this person trust me? What if I'm not trust-worthy?? What do I do??

It is a horrifying concept to me. My mind races constantly, and the majority of my greatest fears revolve around relationships. You can just imagine what goes through my head every second of the day. In fact, it is  rare that I can pay attention in class because of how much I worry.
I'm working on it.  That is about all I can do right now.

This post has been inspired by a recent event:
I recently have been trusted with the knowledge of a very personal experience of a friend of mine. A friend who I have known for some time and have wanted to get closer to, has revealed something about her/himself that is probably the hardest thing that s/he will experience in her/his entire life, and so far I'm only one of two people who know besides him/herself.

As we talked yesterday, I cried, I laughed, I jumped around, I didn't know what was the right reaction, so I'm lucky it was over instant messaging; but I was so full of emotion I just did not know what to do. My physical and emotional reactions were mostly due to the topic of conversation, but a part of my emotional overload was also the shock and pride that someone would trust me with such information.  I stayed up quite late just thinking about it:
How have my relationships affected his/her decision to tell me over anyone else? Did s/he not trust me enough to say it to my face, or was instant messaging more convenient? How will our relationship develop from here?

Above all my doubts,
I'm proud.
I can assure myself that I have done something right for once. I have created a trusting relationship. I have, in someone's eyes, become a trustworthy person. I am excited and very much looking forward to the future of this relationship. Through thick and thin I will stand by my friend and hold him/her up if s/he needs it.

The future looks more and more inspiring.



........................
I tend to question my decision to major in community psychology, but with posts like this, I have no doubt where my heart lies.

"Home is where the heart is."

And my heart lies with Zach.

I really don't believe that there is a city out there, in this vast world, that I'll comfortably call "home." I just don't.  I don't need a place to label "home" when I have everything I need. Well, almost everything. I'm trying to learn to live with that I have and appreciate the little things; aren't we all? I don't want to call New Berlin my home. Its not. I don't feel at home there and I never have. St. Cloud? Sure, I lived here 4 years, but it is just another place I reside; St. Cloud is no home to me. However, I'm going to miss St. Cloud when I leave it more than I missed New Berlin when I left WI.

Honestly, though, I'm a lucky girl.
When I think real hard about it, all I need is Zach. He keeps me happy, keeps me thinking, keeps me on my toes, and loves me unconditionally. Every day I wrack my brain trying to come up with SOMEthing to show him I care, SOMEthing to show him how much he means to me, but nothing can amount.

With everything going on at Wall Street and other various corners of the world, I can't believe I still struggle with sweating the small stuff.

Some day, I will learn.

Some day, I will be the person I want to be.

Some day. It is going to happen.

Body modifications and just why I love them so much.

Sure, it may have started out as a trend to follow:

In high school (2005-2008) I dyed my hair whenever I needed a change but didn't have enough control over my life to do anything more drastic. A few weeks into my first semester of college (2008), 450 miles from home, I pierced my nose just because I was free and felt like I could do whatever I wanted. Right before I left for Chile (2009) for 4 months I finally got the tattoo I wanted: a phrase that carried me through some hard times.

Why did I keep going, though?

I've been thinking about this for years and I came to realize it was the euphoria of finally appreciating and really liking something about myself that kept me wanting more. In high school and middle school, dealing with my pubescent body changes, dramatic friends, and not getting along with my parents were my hardest battles. I felt trapped, I felt like I had no control, there was nothing I could change, and it, as well as other personal experiences, led me to ultimately hate myself. At the same time, I started experiencing disordered eating as a way to take control. All of these are things I'm still recovering from to this day, but also something I have been dealing with, partially with the help of modifying my body to the way I like it. The little things I've done: getting tattoos, dying my hair, getting piercings, losing weight, changing my clothing style; it has all gradually added to my self-confidence and self-love.

I'm not yet to the point that I want to be, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to modify my body drastically or very much more from here. It just means I'm going to keep going wherever life is taking me.

"Running is a metaphor for life: there is always someone faster than you, and someone slower, so all you can do is keep going and put your heart into it."

 I like this quote because of everything it can apply to. In this case: sure, sometimes I compare myself to others and think "maybe I shouldn't have changed my body so much, maybe I won't be able to get the job I want, and maybe I should have learned to love myself the way I am" but I just don't think that is right. We're humans, the intelligent species of earth, and we invented body modifications for a reason. Sure they started out as spiritual reasons, but even that was something a person would do to feel PERSONALLY more connected to their god. To me, this is something I have done to myself PERSONALLY to feel more connected and one with myself, my own beliefs and spirituality. Do I see heavily modified people and think that their heavily modified body is my goal? No. To each his own, to the very end, and that is all I'll tell you if you ask me if I'm getting more.

Another thing I would like to address is body modifications in the work place. It boggles my mind how people can think that body modifications diminish a person's intelligence and render them incapable of customer service, so clearly he or she cannot be hired. I hope this doesn't sound too inappropriate, but I think this could one day be considered discrimination. On a similar note, HOW are facial piercings and unnatural hair colors "unprofessional"? You know what else is considered body modifications? Body building, losing or gaining weight, wearing make up, and painting your nails. Are those considered unprofessional? No. But its the same thing, the same category, the same concept.

Though, maybe things with society and body modifications are changing. I currently hold 5 jobs and I'm a full time student, and nobody has a problem with my own modifications (though, they're not THAT out there and obvious.)

If you're still intrigued after reading my semi-rant, do go see the documentary "Modify". Follow the link, it will change your life.

On that note, I bid you all adieu, for now.

Así es la vida.

"Such is life."
"So it goes"

Here, you'll find professional or unprofessional, happy or angry, outrageous or simple posts relating to my interactions with society or even just my own thoughts.