New Years Resolutions

I actually want to achieve something this year.

1. Get a 4.0...ambitious much?
2. Read BEFORE class
3. Pretty much be like Beth
4. Read my scriptures daily
5. Pray morning and night
6. Make my drivers license correct again...
7. Complete a half-marathon and maybe a full...
8. Practice dance more. Make a gold class.
9. Stop biting my nails.
10. Think of others more often.
11. Make a new friend or two.


I know a lot of these are vague, but I feel like I have been stagnant for awhile in my progress of becoming a better person. I want to live a better quality of life, and I feel like I have a lot of opportunity that I don't take advantage of, so 2009 is my year.

Ready. Set. Go.

Christmas

I hate college because you are so caught up in the coming of finals, you completely miss the Christmas season. I was a crappy secret sister. I'm really sorry. I can't believe it's Christmas Eve. I haven't thought about one other person, and I feel horrible.

I hope everyone finds happiness and comfort and peace this next year.

catching up

I haven't blogged in awhile. I'm pretty bad at the whole blogging thing. I do this with my journal too. I write about once a month, but I remember back in elementary when I wrote EVERYday and it's kind of fun to look back and remember what I was doing a year ago. It's sometimes hard to remember the weekend sometimes. I fear Alzheimer's is settling in too soon.

So I'm at the grandparent's house for Christmas. My grandma gives me taco soup with huge chunks of beef and says, "you can eat that right?" Um, no...I am, um, pretty sure that's, um, meat in there....yeah, so I, uh, don't eat that. Every five minutes she always asks me if I'm finding anything to eat. Yes, Grandma, I'm eating. She means well. I just hate the look on her face when I refuse her cooking. It's the disappointment that she can't help. But I just love that she's around. I don't even bring up the vegan thing. When I come home, I downgrade to vegetarian when there are no other options. I miss soy milk :(

Here's the intinerary: Christmas Eve feast. Christmas morning breakfast feast. Christmas night feast. Day after Christmas feast. That's a lot of food. I guess we're going out of this year with a bang. The cool thing is that A LOT of my family is going to be together. The most we've had in a long time. My family is crazy and loud and talkative and gossipy and obnoxious and quirky and I love them. This should be fun.

Merry Christmas Eve.

Thx

Only Ashley Smith understands that title. haha. I miss those days of Tingey Hall. I really do.

So...it's Thanksgiving. I'm home. Everything fits right. Everything feels right. My bed is how I remembered it. My house smells the same. The dishes are just where I expect them to be. I still remember every one. Even at my apartment I'm always wishing I had that exact dish that I used at home. It was the right size, right material. I love being home. I love remembering the simplest things that I took for granted.

But I'm having a Wordsworth-ian moment where I realize as much as I reminisce over these things of my past. I can never go back to that time. I will never be able to live here everyday. Lauren will never be at her same house for me to go to. I will never use my dresser again or my desk. I will never go to "regular" high school (not that I really want to go back).

I want to be optimistic about the future though. I have really great friends in Provo. I've been so lucky to meet people that I just click with. Yes, school is stressful and dance is frustrating, but I laugh a lot. I talk a lot. I experience a lot. I live a lot.

It seems though that every relationship or experience you have to eventually put in the dresser drawer of "the past." I can't wait until I meet that person or those people that I get to take into the future with me. And I don't have to worry about the eventually. Eventually this will end or eventually we will go our separate ways.

That is why I'm so grateful for my family more than anything else. They are my past and future. We evolve together.

Happy Thanksgiving

mediocre

I feel like I haven't given forth my best effort this semester, which has really been showing up in my test scores lately. It is really frustrating, but I can't blame anyone by myself. I really waste my time sometimes. Sometimes it's not just a waste of time, but it still affects my school work. I feel like I have been sliding downward since high school. I was really on top of things back then. I guess we all have a bad semester now and then. I'm pumped for winter though. I am so making a come back....

Well dancesport is over...for now. I really just want to get better , but I don't know how. I have been dancing around my apartment non-stop because I'm just on a high. Ballroom really is what keeps me sane--ironic because most of the time I am ignoring people dancing around my apartment thinking about certain dance moves and obsessing over every last toe point. As much as I get teared down and critiqued and corrected and told that my technique resembles a 185 student and that I look like this [insert embarrassing rendition of my dancing by brent keck] and as much as I get discouraged and as much as I cry, I absolutely cling to my dream of making the ballroom team and getting into gold bar classes and coming back to washington to teach and give back to the wonderful program of Pacific Ballroom Dance that has enhanced my life so beautifully. I cannot even express what PBDC did for me. I have a drive and a passion for something in life. I have a talent to improve upon. It gave me something I care about. It gave me a challenge to rise to. I never ever want to stop dancing. It runs through my blood to my fingertips. I am always dancing. Even when I walk to class, if you look closely, my hands twist and extend because I am performing a routine in my head and it shoots to the ends of my hands because that's all I can do without appearing too odd. I often feel so behind of the people who started dancing at age three, blah blah blah. I discovered dance so much later, and I am at a disadvantage, but I figure that I have eternity to be a better dancer, so I shouldn't get too sad.

That's all for now.

The irony of it all

I'm going to be more...focused. (As I write this in the process of distraction.)

I'm going to set aside time for homework.
I'm going to be on top of things.
I'm going to study for tests.
I'm going to practice dance.
I'm going to make to-do lists.
I'm going to regain that self-discipline I once had...not too many moons ago.
What happened?

See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other

That comes from one of my favorite movies.

Anyway, one of my favorite websites is Postsecret.com. I don't know the history, but somehow this guy named Frank has all these people send him their secrets and he posts them once a week as an ongoing art project. I deeply love this art project. It is real and vulnerable and raw and emotive. Even if the secret has never personally happened to me, I can always connect to the fact of holding on to something so long and letting it weigh you down. I know that feeling of holding something precious in your mind and building walls around it and chaining it up and burying it deep so that it is never discovered. Post secret shows how amongst our differences, at the heart of things we are similar--not robot clone similar--but like everything fits like puzzle pieces to produce a picture of true humanity. We often ignore the fact that we all feel scared; we all feel vulnerable; we all feel guilty; we all want to hide something and show the world something else. Let's be honest. No one is an open book. That's not pessimistic; it's just honest. I think almost everybody has a front they put on. Everyone is weird (for lack of a better word), but we all buffer the weirdness, so that other people restraining their weirdness will like us. Why don't we just be ourselves? Why don't we just say what we mean and mean what we say? Why do we tip-toe around words like "love" and "commitment?" Why do we even have secrets? Why do we need approval from others? I think most people are simply scared--scared out of their minds. Fear of being alone is one of the most prominent on people's mind. We are afraid to get rejected and emotionally stranded on an island. We want human connection so desperately, but we all act like we are Okay, Fine, Good. We are invinsible. We are taught not to need. But there comes a time when we have to be honest with ourselves and say "Life's a fact." We can understand each other if we just communicate and throw our thoughts out there. I try to be as real as I can, but I'm not going to pretend that everything is peachy in my life all the time and I have no regrets and that I always live everyday to the fullest and don't care what others think about me and so forth. Because it's not entirely true.

I had more to say, but it's late and I think I'm starting to ramble...