Unfulfilling Sunday Nights

I was going to write something interesting and insightful and it was going to reveal all kinds of things about my soul and the kind of day that I had.

But there's a cantaloupe quarter waiting for me, and the 10 o'clock news is about to come on.

That should give me time to sort out how I feel, shouldn't it.

Jeff Winger?! What Are YOU Doing Here?

I was reading someone's Facebook status today, and it read something like, "We choose our own happiness" and so on. This gave me pause.In my patriarchal blessing, it says that I have a naturally cheerful disposition. this is a statement with which I have struggled because sometimesI'm just sad. It's completely overwhelming, it's out of my control, and it just happens. So this is what I think:

I think that to some degree, because of our agency, we can decide upon happiness. This is not a blanket statement- depression and sadness and anger are a pat of being human. We should not deny our emotions, negative or otherwise. I believe that when all is said and done, we can look back on our day or our year or our life and then we can decide whether we will be happy, whether we are proud of the decisions we've made and whether we can move forward with hope and optimism.

I have chosen to pursue happiness, which well may be

the same thing.

Maybe wanting to be happy coupled with righteous desires and a pure bit of faith is all we need.

Maybe it's more like a habit, a skill developed in trying times.

Maybe it's even less definable than that.

Maybe, and I think this is true, we have glimpses of happiness here and won't really know it until the eternities.

I think I got off track. Choosing happiness is a selective thing, as it were. That's all I had to say on the matter.

Change of tack!

But I do want to talk about the utter ridiculousness of my school, before I forget again.

Sometimes, not for the quality of the education but for the administrative process, I feel like I attend Greendale Community College, Joel McHale-style.

This feeling was affirmed by the first week of school run-around, the presence of the Human Being,

and the millions of fliers the school printed out to announce its impending paperlessness (see Community Season 1, episode 10: "Environmental Science"). Also, I seem to be the only person in my Math 950 class who didn't flunk out of the third grade.

I never know how to end these things.

~~~

Recorded 8/26/10

Any Day Now, Loan Fairy

The problem with window shopping is that one often falls in love with something one cannot afford.

Tonight, in a fit of I'll-kill-you-if-you-open-your-mouth-again-type rage, Lou and I escaped to a shopping complex in American Fork hoping to find dishes worthy to be placed in the cupboard of our soon-to-be apartment. After a thorough yet fruitless search of Ross, we wound up at Bed Bath & Beyond, where my hapless heart set its pretty little hopes on these:
Paisley soup bowls! How perfect are they? Not too patterned, not too plain, big enough that they could potentially aide me in drowning my sorrows in ice cream or Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and off beat enough for them to speak to me. Maybe I loved them so much because I wasn't expecting to find them. Maybe the cosmos aligned and led me straight to the dinnerware of my dreams.

"Alack, that heaven should practice stratagem upon so soft a subject as myself!"

Wouldn' you know it, these bowls, since they cost any money at all, are way out of my price range.

...

Poop.
And I had the whole kitchen designed around them!

Harrumph.

A Celabratory P.S.

This was me on graduation day, a little over 4 years ago:

I'm the one on the right.

This is me last month:
I'm the one on the left.

It's about a 60-pound difference, in case you were wondering.

Sometimes life is just good.

Perspective

Surer footing. That's what this summer has changed the most; somewhere among the washed-out parking lot jam sessions, picnic lunches, and late night conversations, I think I have finally felt that indescribable sense of self awareness that gives purpose and meaning to life.

When my mom died almost two years ago, I fell apart. No, that's not quite right. It's like I split in half. Or was pared down, the most complex parts of me sloughed off, dissolved away. I was left with a poor imitation of the thing I'd lost. I became, out of necessity, some form of a mother to my friends, my siblings, my dad, myself. And that was fine. Sarah-lucy says that's where I needed to be. I think, though, that I've grown out of that. I don't know whether it's because I've begun to heal... I have a hard time believing that I don't need a mother anymore. Whatever the reason, whatever the origin of this growth, I am ready to move on.

I need to live on my own. I need to be in an environment where I don't feel responsible for the emotional well-being of everyone around me. Now that I've grown accustomed to sweet independence (not just a lack of curfew, but the true, rich, blessed freedom that comes from a sure center), I have to hold on to that, cultivate it. Therein lies the way to restoration, to reparation.

I feel better.

I'm still an emotional wasteland who misses her mom, but I feel closer now to the person I want to be (someone loving and trusted and delightfully complex and confident and brimming with potential) than I have felt in years.

~~~

Recorded 8/21/10

Out of the Dark

If you're wondering what I've been doing with my summer, the answer is this:




You should come see it because it's wonderful and it just might change your mind about Shakespeare or about life.

Also, I've been discovering my path, probing my fate, searching for that something that will lead me to the fulfillment of all my dreams. But seriously, I've been growing up.

Apartment hunting. It makes me feel mature. It makes me feel scared. It makes me feel like I can't wait to leave this place, but how could I ever go?

I have to remind myself that moving out does not equal betrayal, and that everyone will be a bit better off with me not in the house.

I have to remember that I can always come back for Sunday dinner, and that I can still take the girls out for movie nights and such.

And I have to think about how much I will grow, and how that will better qualify me to raise my own family when it's my turn.

So.

With the remainder of my summer, I'll be tapping in to my core and illuminating my future.

Hobey ho, let's go...