If you need a little bittersweet pick me up...

Whenever I’m anxious, mad or generally feeling down, I like to remember everything I am grateful for.  Mostly I remind myself that although people drive like idiots sometimes, I should feel blessed that I can afford to be in a car.  Or when I’m feeling kind of unspectacular as an individual, I remember all the times in my life that made me feel special; even small, silly things like being a proud mom to a healthy hamster.  There was one particular moment that I would like I’ve been itching to share. 

I was making dinner the other day and I was in a bit of a mood trying to rush and get the potatoes in the oven because they take forever, so naturally I was chopping them with purpose.  If you’ve ever chopped raw potatoes you’ll probably be familiar with how loud it can get.  So there I was loudly cutting with a touch of impatience, and my mind wandered to a commercial I saw for a Houdini mini TV-series.  Adrien Brody was portraying Houdini and I thought to myself how talented that man was as my thoughts drifted to The Pianist.  It was then that I stopped with the potatoes for a while to recall the scene when Szpilman is living in the apartment his German friends hid him in.  In one part when he is slowly starving to death, he is trying to reach up into the cupboards to grab a plate to put his exceedingly old, rotted potatoes on.  If you’ve seen this film, (which I HIGHLY recommend you watch if you’ve yet to do so) you will know that Szpilman is so weak he cannot even reach the top shelf, and plates come crashing down.  Essentially the Germans next door hear him and realize he is a Jew hiding in a German building, and he is forced to flee.  To me, this is one of the most devastating scenes in the entire movie.  I don’t mean to undermine the other utterly horrific suffering, but there is just something so heart wrenching to see someone so pitifully forbidden from living a happy and healthy life that gutted me. 

Back to making dinner, I thought.  But turning to my cutting board I felt so full of emotion that it took me a minute to even want to pick my knife back up, because I felt so guilty that I could have the audacity to feel anything other than immense gratitude making these potatoes.  I felt pity for those who would have given so much to be able to cut their potatoes loudly.  I did eventually go back to making dinner, but I made a promise to myself that every time I held, cut, or ate a potato I would think about how wonderfully blessed I am.  I share this with hope that the next time you find yourself down, you can think of this and feel grateful.

Watch Me

 

When I was nine years old, I was given a drawing at school of a scary picture.  Our task, given that Halloween was right around the corner, was to write a scary story to go along with the picture we were assigned.  I was given a drawing of a window with the glass smashed open, as if someone had thrown a rock through it.  The story was about a young girl who was home with her father, both in their own rooms quietly working and studying. 

In the story, the girl hears a window break open, and due to the thunderstorm outside, thinks nothing of it.  A few moments later she hears someone downstairs, knowing that her dad has not left his room across the hall, and no one else is expected to be home for another few hours, the girl runs to her father.  She tells him someone is downstairs and asks him to check.  As expected in most horror stories, the first victim is taken in a brutal struggle while the petrified main character sits in silence unable to move from fear.  At this point I was running out of room on the lined paper we were given so I ended the story with the masked intruder running up the stairs, the young girl summoning the strength and anger from knowing her father had just died fights back.  She struggles against the force of who might soon be her murderer, and finally escapes from his grasp in just enough time turns around and kicks him down the stairs.  The story ends with our heroine looking down at the crumpled mass of the man who murdered her father and that she had just escaped from.  Knowing that the man has died, she goes into her room to call the police, but after she returns to the top of the stairs, the man is gone and she is no longer safe.

I know in hindsight, the story was fairly illogical and poorly written but I remember being terribly excited to write it, and at the end of the class, I was so proud of my story.  I brought it up to my teacher and asked her to read it.  I stood there patiently waiting for her to tell me it was simply terrifying, but as she finished reading, she set down the paper face-down on her desk and told me it was fairly graphic for my age-group and that I was not old enough to be writing about such violence.  I should have been devastated by her blatant dislike of my story, but I ignored her and took it home, very sure that my family would enjoy it much more.  I read the story to my sister and her friend around a campfire that night.  I fully expected my cliffhanger ending to give them goose-bumps and want to go inside to watch a happy movie to distract from the fear, but they simply laughed at me.  Offended as I was, I was and continue to be proud of the first scary story I ever wrote.  So, now that I have grown, I’ve known so much more failure but whenever anyone tells me that I’m too young, I don’t know enough, or am incapable of doing something, I remember back to that story and think, watch me.

I have come to know that these lessons of life that you learn do not have to be a horrific tale that scarred you for life.  I learned to persevere, to never let anyone make you feel worthless, and defy the boundaries that others expect of you.  Although I could not have told you then that that was what I was doing, I knew in my heart never to accept anything less than what I was worth.  I am ever thankful to my nine-year-old self for keeping her chin up and ignoring all who doubted me, and continuing to do so now that I am much older.  It has kept me firmly on my feet and allowed me to stand right back up broken and bruised when the world decides to see how far it can push me.  Every time the world throws me to the ground it is like being asked “can you handle this?!” and I get right back up and say “watch me.” 

I cross some off my list

Staring at the moon and a pineapple (sort of?) 

Escaping Suburbia

Lately I have made it a goal to try my best and devote one day of my weekend to a series of events I like to call Escaping Suburbia.  Just yesterday I brought my favorite wilderness companions along with a quest to make it to the Eternal Flame Falls (a second attempt to a previously unsuccessful mission).  Long story short, we made it, and it was magnificent.  It was a memory that I will hold fondly forever and I found myself think on the way home how deeply sad I was that it was over and I had to go back to my “real” life being a student and working and dealing with Aunt Petunias. 

This steered my thoughts in a direction that lead to a list of things I would rather do than go back to school and work

Without further ado, here is…

The Long List of Things I Would Rather Be Doing Than My Civic Responsibilities

1)      Forage for my own food

2)      Yodel on top of a mountain

3)      Climb the highest tree I can find

4)      Learn how to back flip

5)      Stare at the moon

6)      Stare at a pineapple

7)      Stare at anything that isn’t my teachers

8)      Watch grass grow

9)      Dress up as watermelon

10)   Run into a Hollywood film set and flip every table I can find

11)   Build a larger than life replica of a Furby

12)   Develop night vision

13)   Knit a sweater

14)   Knit two sweaters

15)   Wear the sweaters to a sweater party

16)   Learn how to speak fluently backwards

17)   Make lunch with Michele Obama

18)   Ride a hippogriff

19)   Get my Hogwarts acceptance letter

20)   Comb my eyelashes

21)   Get struck by lightning (and live!)

22)   Bro fist Bill Nye

23)   Talk to my stuffed animals

24)   Churn butter

25)   Hand dip my own candles

26)   Buy the Bills and force them to perform Alice and Wonderland for me

27)   Build a house deep in the forest for nomads

28)   Be able to pay my college tuition…

29)   Have Donald Trump pay my tuition

30)   Discuss the philosophical resonance of children’s movies with Ellen DeGeneres

31)   Meet a centaur

32)   Inhabit Beyoncé’s body

33)   Free fall into a vat of Jell-o

34)   Go down Niagara Falls in a barrel (and live!)

There you have it… feel free to share with me your list of things you would rather do than whatever you’re supposed to be doing!  I hope one day both you and I will be able to do most of the things on our respective lists.  Until next time, my friends.

How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail...

“Hey Julia, when are you going to blog again?”

“When’s the last time you wrote on your blog?”

“Why haven’t you blogged all summer?”

Aloha, dudes.
First off, I know that only about fifteen people really read my blog posts and if you have genuinely asked or thought any of the above questions, thank you.  I appreciate that you decided your time would be even decimally influenced by my writing. 

Secondly, I was really into summer and having the sun and enjoying being away from my computer. 

Speaking of my computer… Have I got a story for you! 

Coming from a nineteen-year-old girl who has an iPhone, a laptop, and multiple other technological devices, it seems fairly odd to know she has trouble working these things (just a side note; I had to add iPhone to my computer’s dictionary…) but believe me when I say I DO NOT UNDERSTAND TECHNOLOGY.   I really hadn’t even touched my computer for months, and it was getting to that time in the summer when I had to start thinking about getting books for my classes, working on financial aid, etc. Using a Smartphone is not a very desirable way to do any of these things.  So I dug out my laptop, dusted it off (literally) and attempted to get online.  Long story short, it did not connect to the internet, but my wifi was connected.  So I went on this quest to get this hunk of plastic and wires to work with some imaginary beams bouncing around the atmosphere.   That’s the part I don’t get, why is it that I can’t just pick up a cable and plug it into my laptop instead of trying to grab onto a piece of the sky and make it into the internet.  I would rather nail jell-o to a tree.

 I have thought long and hard about ways you could make that happen too because one time, someone told me I couldn’t.  Now, if you personally know me, it is a really bad idea to tell me I can’t do/am not/won’t be something, because A) I’m a teenager B) My Zodiac is a Taurus and C) Because I’m Julia.  Now, disregarding the fact that my plan of action for mission NJTTT (Nail Jell-o to The Tree) might not be physically possible, I do have an idea that could possibly debunk this over-used cliché.  See, technically no one said the nail had to go straight through the jell-o so I would start by making a row of nails that would resemble a shelf, I would continue to make a frame of nails that I could potentially just place the  jell-o into and it would sit like a flubbery doll on a shelf.  But really… don’t nail things to trees (I’m busy hugging them). 

You may be thinking right about now I have no idea what this blog is about or why is she using so many parentheses?  Well, my dear readers... I am ranting and I like to add inner dialogue to my writing (which to me adds another level of subconscious thought (HOW COOL?!)). 

Alright folks, time to get to a point… See I had all these great ideas of what to write, but they’re all serious and inspirational, and while they may be very insightful and intriguing, I just feel like spouting off the first thing that comes to my head, it’s more fun.  I suppose I could make that my point. Go with the flow, man.   

Disclaimer: Going with the flow does not mean sitting in the river of life in a gondola with no paddle and being okay with having no influence in the direction. No, it means you stick that paddle in the water and you go your own pace and take whatever fork in the road suits you.  Be Pocahontas in “Just Around the River Bend”, which is a song I highly recommend you go listen to right now (Go do it, trust me, nothing will mislead you on the internet). 

I shall leave you all with that.  I promise next time when/if you read my blog (which I would love if you did) I will have a more coherent theme.  Until then, Peace Love Go With the Flow.

Thoughts during my nature hike

People will always tell when you'll find yourself, but I think you should never stop searching. 

Organic Mind

Most recently I have been paying a lot of attention to how much we as humans have lost touch with nature.  I’m not sure if we've all just forgotten that we are a part of nature as well, or every one really does think we are separate entities from the earth.  Technology is incredible and obviously very useful, hence why you are reading this right now.  Still, I wonder how often (if even at all) people stop to think about nature and life.  Every night before I go to bed I just lay there and revel in the silence.   Silence is one of the greatest gifts for thinking minds.  It isn't long until my hamster wakes up and relentlessly runs on his noisy wheel, but I do get time of just pure silence, even if it is only a moment long.
 The quiet is hard to come by in populated areas.  I think the quietest place I have ever been was at the top of Machu Picchu about four years ago.  It wasn’t that I was alone, there were plenty of people up there with me, but we didn’t speak at all.  There is no way to explain how it felt to be standing in such an incredible place.  That’s probably why we were all so quiet.  Now, I’m aware that not everyone seeking solace can just hop, skip, and jump on over to Peru, but there are plenty other silent places in the world.  If you travel far enough into hiking areas, and parks it can be fairly quiet (WARNING: Watch out for bears and other potentially dangerous things/people, snakes, etc.).
I also am in the process of eating more organic.  DID YOU KNOW at the grocery store (or at least mine) you can find some organic products for less money than the grocery store brand?  Just yesterday I discovered that the celery, carrots and lemon were less money if you chose organic.  So why the heck not pick out the organic ones?!  It makes so much sense.  For about a year, I have been eating diary free as well, because for one, I’m mildly lactose intolerant, and also, milk sort of grosses me out. So I don’t really have an appetite for cheese or anything anymore, but I’ll spare you the gory details because this is Buffalo, and, well… Pizza, right?
I also like to steer clear of artificial coloring, hard-to-pronounce preservatives, and all that happy jazz.  I feel like a different human being after I stopped all of that.   If you took my conscious mind and plopped it from my nineteen-year-old self to my seventeen-year-old self I would feel like a ton of bricks and want to puke my innards out.
Humans are part of nature, no argument about it, so why should we eat such horrifyingly unnatural food?  I do understand how good it tastes.  Really, Doritos are amazing, but go a year without eating them and then eating a few actually sort of hurts your tongue.  Same thing goes with pop (“soda” for you weirdos).  It burns your tongue if you’re not used to drinking it.  That’s because it’s actually disgusting.  Of course I still eat processed things, it’s hard to avoid, but I do my best.
In my attempts to become even more in touch with nature, I also am switching over to organic make-up.  Physician’s Formula Organic Wear’s ingredients are 100% Naturally Derived and 80% Organic.  For pretty much the same cost as other drugstore brands, it is by far the superior choice (No animal cruelty!).  
Being aware of our environment is so important because we are the environment.  So why not start acting like it? The next time you’re at the grocery store, see if you can’t get the organic fruits and vegetables.  When you run out of your mascara or foundation, try out the Organics Wear.  Maybe wean yourself away from artificial coloring.  Your body will thank you, trust me.  But if none of the above sounds manageable, at least enjoy the fresh air sometimes.  Roll the windows down while you’re driving and breath in nature.  Revel in the silence of the night, you’d be surprised what comes across your mind when you let go of the technological world and just look at the moon and think about what it is to be a human.  Just be.