well, hello 2008

I'm glad to say that 2008 was rung in with good friends, good food and good drinks, and has remained a pretty positive force these twelve days in. Sure, it's twelve days, but if it's a sign for things to come, 2008 may turn out to be a bit more positive than I thought.

Right now, I'm trying to write some personal statements for graduate school. Deciding to do this so suddenly will really be a test of my ability to organize in a flash, but as I put together writing samples and essays and letters of recommendation, I realize that this is really what I want to do. I love the idea of someday teaching college, and I really don't want to put off my advanced degrees if I don't have to. Besides, writing these essays has given me the distinct opportunity to reflect on what I learned in 2007, and in the mist of all the terrible, it was pretty damn good for me.

Honestly, right now, I feel like I could conquer the world. I've felt like this since a little before the new year, it's really nice. Really nice indeed.

I'm back at Shepherd for the last semester of my undergraduate career. As exciting as it is to look at May 17 as the first step in a great adventure, it's positively horrifying all in its own right. I love Shepherd, and this is certainly the only place I've ever associated with home, and I have the most amazing friends a girl could ask for...so I really don't want to leave. But...I know I have to. These are all good things.

Anyway, if anyone reads this, expect me to finally get this blog to take less of a personal thrust, and maybe thrust into one of my true passions: popular culture. Might as well start now, when the internets are a pretty good place to at least try and get myself recognized.

my hands in my pocket and my head in the clouds

Another Christmas comes and goes, and each year I am shocked when I look at a calendar and realize how close the New Year is. Since the trip to Rhode Island I have felt so amazing. I don't know what it is, and could easily be just a lot of high confidence days. Or, maybe I could really finally be feeling like myself again. Whatever it is...be it related to this year's size smaller Christmas jeans (!!) and camis or a lot of time to sit in coffee shops and think...I'm glad it's happening. I love feeling this way. I feel like I can do anything.

I'm not usually one for New Years' resolutions, mostly because I don't keep them. But...this last half of 2007 was pretty terrible, and I think that saying 2008 will be drama free if it kills me is a sure-fire way to guarantee the amazing semester that I feel coming. So...I guess that's a resolution of sorts.

I also want to do something spontaneous and dumb...or a few spontaneous dumb things, just to say I did.

There's something about Harford County. It's like a black hole. People just stay here...or are glad to come back...and I don't understand it. When I come home I'm always afraid that I will fall back into the girl I was in high school and lost all of the passions that I had about life...about making a difference. It's honestly very scary. I guess it's okay for some...if you want to raise a family here, it's a good idea...and close to places to work. But...it lacks an appreciation for arts and for culture...and an appreciation for people who want to explore what is beyond the confines of this northern Maryland town.

But...my family is indeed always amazing and the Christmas celebration was quite perfect. A quiet day with the family, and an evening at a family friends' house with a very nice bar.

*sigh* Ok...2008...bring it.

Someday, I want to celebrate the new year in the very first place that the new year hits...did that make sense? Where is that?

merry christmas

Merry Christmas, readers. I hope that everything the season is supposed to bring you is brought, be it in a package, through prayer or in the arms of family and friends...or all three of those things and more.

To me, the meaning of Christmas lies in the end of Linus' speech from the Gospel of Luke.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:
"Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth, peace, goodwill toward men."
-Luke 2:13-14-

But, Christmas, like everything else, is in the eye of the beholder.

As my great grandmother would have said: Merry, Merry, everyone!

Oh, and in the spirit of giving and reaching out to the rest of the world check out www.freerice.com Expand your vocabulary while donating rice to countries in need through the United Nations. Each question you answer right donates 20 grains of rice to the United Nations' effort to end world hunger. You can play for as long as you like, donating as much as you can...and it also helps fight illiteracy. Pretty cool, huh?

Peace

on selling myself short

Maybe I should have evaluated Shepherd's Masters of Arts in Teaching program earlier. Then, maybe I wouldn't have put all of my eggs in the living in town basket as soon as I did.

I did the research last night...and there's no way I could possibly apply for the MAT program for the fall semester. I need to take and pass the PRAXIS I and II, and have 50% of my coursework finished for my concentration area. I don't even know what the hell that last part means.

So...that's out, and I'm faced with yet again a decision.

Mom suggested I take some English classes at Shepherd in the fall, and take the PRAXIS I and II this semester and over the summer and in the fall, and apply for the program starting spring 2009. I could live in Shepherdstown, as planned, work someplace, as planned, and only lose one semester in preparation for my MAT. This is a perfectly safe, logical plan for my life.

Shepherdstown. Shepherdstown is safe. I know the town, the people in the shops. I know that I can sit at the Lost Dog for an hour or two and someone I know will wander in and say hello. I know I can go on a long walk and sit at the monument and read if I get frustrated or stressed. I know I can walk into one of the apartment buildings, or to West Woods or any of the traditional halls and find someone to watch TV with or talk to. I know I fit in there, and I know I am comfortable there. I know I'm safe.

I've always been safe. I'm everything a well brought up white middle class girl from suburban Maryland should be. I was rarely absent in high school, played in the marching band and acted in the school plays. I graduated on a sunny day in June and spent my last summer at home working with a community theatre. I went to college in the fall. Had a boyfriend there and liberated myself from him when I joined a fraternity that spring. I don't skip classes, only drink on the weekends, I do my homework and I'll graduate from college in four years. I make my parents proud. This all is expected of me.

Maybe the fact that all of my ideas of what my future should be have fallen through means I should disregard safety. Maybe, staying in Shepherdstown and staying in school is selling myself short of everything I could accomplish. Maybe I should stop deleting e-mails from CISabroad.com, and look into that abroad internship again. Maybe I should just do what I want to do next year: see the world...meet people...experience life. What good is a journalist that never experienced her own life? How can I write about someone else's fabulous life without writing a few stories of my own?

I should just come clean with myself...I don't want to be safe anymore. I don't want to go straight into a career and wake up on my 40th birthday and realize that I've been sleeping my entire life.

I'm back to square one...I don't want to be afraid of the next step.

Peace in the Middle East

misadventure

We landed safely in Rhode Island this morning, and I am happy to say that I have, in this past year, out grown my fear of flying. This is a good thing. This is a very good thing. In fact, I would not have panicked at all had the landing not come out of nowhere and feel like we suddenly dropped out of the sky. The strange man next to me was reading my "Rolling Stone" over my shoulder and commented that "Rockstar" by Nickelback should have been higher on this list of 100 best songs than 100. "It was actually a GOOD song," he insisted.

I laughed uncomfortably and retrieved my personal items from under the seat in front of me.

We went to a French cafe in Providence for lunch. At the end of our meal this French waiter who reminded me of a French version of Domenico from "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila" came to our table with my mom's left overs wrapped in tin foil shaped like a dog. We started talking to him because the dog was absolutely adorable. He said he was from Paris and he married an American woman and came to the United States to be with her, but they want to go back to Paris.

My dad told him I want to go to Europe, and the French man said:

"Go. Let her go, and if she doesn't want to come back, let her stay. There is nothing wrong with this country. This is a wonderful country, but they only care about money. Go there, and you can just spend time with people building relationships with people for not a lot of money. Money is important, but other things are too. Go, promise me you'll go."

I think that little French man may have changed my life. Funny...how things start fitting together exactly when you need them to...

Peace

i'm too sweet for rock and roll

Alas, I've felt every emotion that poor boy feels throughout all of 'Almost Famous.' There's a lot standing up against me as a journalist...and a music journalist at that. I'm not aggressive by any means. I'm also not male, like most rock journalists...and sad to say, a lot of people still don't take women seriously.

But...I'm passionate. More than anything else, I have passion. And I have my old 'Rolling Stones' and I can flip through them and think to myself, 'I wish i wrote that.' I can imagine my byline there. I'm willing to learn. You don't have to be an expert on a band to write about them. William Miller wasn't a Stillwater expert...he just loved what he was doing. And I do love what I do...or at least have the potential to do.

And, once I finish doing all that...I'll teach it to the kids like me...or even while I'm doing it, I'll teach it to them. I've never been that stand-out student that is amazing at everything. No one ever really notices anything I do. But...critics and supporters alike will tell you that I love what I do.

And...sure thing, I'm too sweet for rock and roll...but, I'm okay with that.

"We take all kinds of pills to get all kinds of thrills but the thrills we've never known is the thrill that will hit ya when you get you're picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone..."

Just a thought...it's been bugging me.

sometimes i drive or ride with my eyes closed tight...

This song came over shuffle while I was making myself presentable for the people in this small town today:

Skyline Drive - Mae
Sometimes I run, but I'm not afraid.
Why must you bring up all the mistakes I've made?
She makes me smile, but you come around.
The wind in her hair reflects the sunset I see.

You make it seem like it was yesterday.
But we've come a long way out of the rain.
Can't seem to figure out what happens after this.
Why can't I?

Why must you say I made a mess out of things?
I won't believe it.
Tonight feels right like I'm dancing on air.
I'll make it right, I'll make it right.
Pull over to the station and fill up on fuel.
And what will I do?

Sometimes I drive or ride with my eyes closed tight
because if the skyline looks this way
then I don't want to sleep tonight.
Never giving up, always seeking light,
we must always try, try with all our might.

So, as I'm getting ready, I thought about this. I've had a lot to think about since Friday, quite frankly. I've been told I need to think more, like a little child. This upsets me, as much as I know it's true and as much as I hate to admit I'm wrong. So, this afternoon before I had a coffee with Laura, I went for a drive through all the familiar back roads that served as my therapist between the ages of 16 and 18. And I put in a new CD that made me happy and I sang and I thought.

This semester has been the most difficult semester I've had since I've been at Shepherd. Not only academically, but emotionally. Two production classes as time consuming as single cam and animation with an internship was probably a terrible idea, but my writing grew and I definitely developed a love affair with film, tedious as it may be. But, academically speaking it was one of my best...I can boast a 3.4 GPA, which I was impressed by considering all of my less than productive nights spent pacing Birch and crying.

That makes me sound pathetic, but I think that's the only way I can describe it. Emotionally, I hit an all time low this fall. Never have I ever felt this out of control of how I felt, but that started in the summer - it just continued. It's frustrating, expecting something to go away once your back and in the place where you thrive the most, but to have it only get worse and to knock you out for complete evenings, or worse, afternoons. I felt like there was nothing I can do, and for certain, Rhonda helped me out of a pretty bad position and I'm better now. I don't sleep as much, but, sleepytime tea provides me with the coma I need. I've never cried so much...ever. I'm typically not a crier. I'm typically not dependent. I'm typically not a huge bitch. But, then again, I'm typically not a lot of things I was this semester.

I value my friends more than anything else in the world. Especially some of the friendships that were made stronger this semester. I suppose...a situation that probably should have been avoided for my own personal health couldn't have been. I wasn't willing to give up all of those late nights and bad TV, but maybe I should have?

That doesn't seem fair to me...or to them...or to anyone, but maybe it would have made things easier.

I miss last spring...when things were happy and fresh. I need to change a few things, or I'm never going to be able to feel that again.

So...here's to a new plan for 2008. A plan that doesn't involve drama and feeling through my tear ducts. Here's to simply living and soaking in each moment. To writing and reading and learning. And adventures. And everything I possibly can. And not letting it get to me...and to a new romance, perhaps...or new friends. And simply to love. Because, love is the only thing that keeps us going...and I believe that more than anything. And here's to sticking with my faith in God, and listening to Him and going in the direction He points me for once.

But, mostly...to love. And focus and concentration.

No more hate and animosity.

(If that didn't make sense, it wasn't meant to...and now on to your regularly scheduled program.)

I bought myself a Scissor Sisters CD today...and I dig it to death already.

Peace in the Middle East