plans A-Z

its the stress!
you offer cigarettes
just how is sucking poison supposed to make me feel better?
first its smoking
then its choking
and then its rigour which is the tensest kind of tense.

and the drinks
they make me tired
which makes me want to stay awake
because as soon as i lie down
the shorter it will take
for me to wake up
and have to face the world again.

but sleep is what i need
more than anyone or anything
because if there's one place i can forget
its where my head meets my bed

but if i forget then i'll have to remember
because the spark will remain, the memories ember.
and when i've hit the last snooze and my eyes open
i'll have to find a conscious method of coping

and so my neck will feel this pain
my mind will buzz
motivation will wane
i will eat more
and over sleep
i'll snap, i'll grump, i'll sigh, i'll weep

but i will still get up
and brush my teeth
i'll pick out clothes that make me look thinner
wash my face, pack my dinner
and another day will be gotten through

so there is just one thing left to do.

"Oh God I can't make it without you.
You know I need this confidence boost.
I'm sorry I've doubted your truth
that love and compassion will always pull through.
I'm sorry I listen to the standards of the world
please turn me into a better girl.
Stand by my side, don't leave my mind
whisper in my ear that it will be alright.
Because you are God and you are good'
though i don't always do as I should
inspire me today
let this tension melt away
give me that bit of release
give my mind peace."

why smoke, drink, sleep, or eat, when you can pray...

HOBBIES HOBBIES HOBBIES

Now that college is over, my time is to be reorganized.

Let's break this down.

There are approximately 168 hours in a week.  (Assuming I just did the math in my head correctly.  I am a bachelor of ARTS after all.  math almost failed me.)
40 hours a week of work is whats been deemed humane, but lets be reasonable here.  I'm going to be working non-profit, and probably and extra job on the side just to keep the bills paid.  So lets be nice and say 50 hours a week for work.

Ideally I would like to spend 15-20 hours at church.  Let's say 20.

Now the world says I need eight hours of sleep a night, so six nights a week thats 48 hours.

168-118= 50 hours a week.  My daily commute round trip is approximately 80 minutes, or an hour 20.  Times seven thats nine hours and twenty minutes.

So i have 40 hours and 40 minutes of free time that would have previously been mostly dedicated to either the doing of homework, or the stressing about homework if i wasn't doing it.  A full time jobs worth of worrying and stressing. 

I plan on losing my college weight, ya'll.
I'm going to read more books.  Starting with more Terry Prachett.
It's been too long since I've picked up my clarinet.
And there's a couple of other instruments i've been iching to learn.

Ladies and gentlemen.  I give you...FREE TIME.

My new mantra.

You can't stop change.

You can stop progress.  You can stop growth.  You can direct and redirect the course of your life.  But the course will always continue.  You cannot stop change.

I believe that we never wake up the same person we were yesterday.  Something was learned the day before that has since been processed in our sleep.  Some food was consumed that added nutrients or protein that hadn't been there, and it has since been metabolized.  Anyone who has lived past the age of five has got to have figured out that things can be completely different in an instant.  One day you will come home from school and find out that you're moving, or your mother's expecting, or someone is sick, or someone got a job, or someone lost a job.

I see change as I do many things, as being ultimately neutral.  Obviously there are good and bad changes.  It would be oblivious of me to believe that some changes were not positive or negative.  But what I mean is that we always have some kind of choice to make when we're approached by change.  It's not just the change that will be positive or negative, but our response to it.  I also see change as being neutral because of this innate sense I have of it all just evening out.  As if just as many bad things will happen as good things.  I have no proof of this, nothing scriptural or scientific.  It's just sort of the way I've always seen things.  It's also made me kind of nervous whenever something really good happens to me, as if something bad is waiting around the corner to even the score.  My life has never been like that.  It's never been that something awesome has happend and then almost immediately something terrible.  So I don't know why I even have this idea in my head.  But I think it is all just the basic knowledge that good and bad things will happen to everybody.  And because change is inevitable, both good and bad, I see it as neutral.  Time is neutral, and change is synonymous with time.

People say they don't like change.  At least I've never heard a person say "I love change."  I don't think that people actually don't like change, I just think that they don't like knowing change is happening.  When change happens slowly and gradually people accept it and even enjoy it.  Change such as the sun setting, or flowers blooming, or something like that.  When a big change happens in their life, so long as they don't think about it in terms of how their life will never again be "the same" they are more often than not excited, maybe nervous, but not upset.

So long as people don't realize change is happening they're excited.  People are perfectly content letting the world rise and fall, deteriorate and rebuild around them.  We are completely self-centered (and I can't imagine how we could be otherwise) and so long as we don't have to lift a finger and it doesn't really change our routine we're fine with change.

I guess I'm musing over time and change in this existentialistic manner because there are a lot of changes happening with me right now.  Graduation obviously, but other things as well.  And I am having this inner war with myself constantly anymore.  I'm being tossed around inside my own head between opinions and feelings about the whole thing.  I just don't know what to do.  I don't know if this is anxiety, or I'm just tired, or what.  It annoys me that the only possible causes I can think of are chemical.  But I can't think of why I would actually be feeling this way. 

It's just a lot at once.  I'm ascribing meaning to everything.  There is suddenly symbolism in the skies and I've never thought that way before, or if I have it was never so relevant.  (BTW, symbolism in the skies is the name of my next skoth band.) 

If there is any kind of conclusion I am attempting to lean to it is that there are a lot of changes happening in my life right now and I'm freaking out a little.  In the morning I face it wearily, in the afternoons I force optimism upon myself, in the evenings I go home somewhat satisfied, and then at night I start to freak out.  Maybe I should just go to bed earlier.

I said last night in a phone conversation with a friend that the knowledge that we would smile again someday was enough reason to smile now.  I believe that in my mind but still can' t muster the feeling in my heart.  Still I remember getting this weird depression when I was graduating high school too, as if there was no more point to life anymore.  But doesn't that make sense, from a mental perspective I mean?  New beginnings are a choice.  Ending's not so much.  Things will always end at some point, but for things to begin there has to be a choice, a spark, or something.  Someone has to make the decision to move forward, otherwise whatever change occurs (because change will occur)  will be less like the budding of a plant and more like the molding of a fungus.  But doesn't it make sense like to feel it's all over once everything you've been working for for years is finished?

I am finished.  And now I have to make the choice to get started.  Because otherwise I'll just sit here and mold.

I have to believe that once I get going I'll gain momentum.  I have to believe that I'll smile again even though all the things that have made me smile have the potential to fade away from my life.  The potential to smile in the future is enough of a reason to smile now.  The potential for a cultivated life in the future is reason enough to start one.

And suddenly like a caress to the mind I remember a piece of scripture that has become quite important to me this past year. 

Philippians 1:6

"...being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

God isn't finished with me yet.  He's still working in me and cultivating me no matter what.  Change is inevitable because it is His hand that propels the stars. And what new beginnings I have to offer no matter how nerve racking they may be will usher in new joys, and the potential to smile tomorrow is reason enough to smile today.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

So, I've been struggling with this sort of depression thing all week. There are moment when I feel its on the mend but it turns itself around. What really disturbs me about it is that I'm having trouble pinpointing the why of it. I'm not one to commonly have difficulty finding the root of my feelings. It's one of the reasons that I don't stay mad at anyone for very long, one of the reasons why I come to the decisions that I make. Even though I can be indecisive its because I look at all the options but take the time to figure my feelings in a situation out. And yes, I over analyze practically everything.

So when it comes to this funk i've been in, for lack of a better term, it would be super easy to blame stress, senioritis, health issues, lack of sleep, or maybe I'm holding onto something in my heart that I shouldn't be. There are many factors in my life that could lead to these emotions but for some reason none of them seem to fit right, and I don't believe it to be all of them at once. Its perplexing.

I've been short with people this weekend. I don't normally do that. So if i've been short with you lately, i apologize and shall try to be taller.

So I find myself at the old blog again which was always a place where I could work out whatever the heck it was that was on my mind. Its the next best thing to talking out loud for me. And quite frankly I'm much too in the mood for no talking.

So there are two kinds of meaning to me. You can disagree with this, many do, philosophers argue about it, but this is what I see. The first kind of meaning is what we give to it. This is what we often mistake in our minds as "deeper meaning" when say reading literature or studying art. I think the artist was thinking one thing, and the audience another, and basically the meaning of all matter around us winds up to be some sort of projection. It's like my mother says in response to how people treat one another. "People typically expect others to do what they themselves would do." That's why some people feel completely justified in talking about others behind their backs, because in their mind, those people of whom they speak are doing exactly the same thing. So when people talk about social networking about being more than just a network but about individuals trying to define themselves, or trying to present a picture of themselves out into the world to be seen a certain way and those pictures may or may not be "accurate." It is then that we are projecting another layer of meaning onto the whole social networking phenomenon. A meaning that if you were to ask me I would say were most likely a result of the invention of social networking, and not the cause. Because you see first people networked, and then they projected meaning onto that.

The second type of meaning would be the more controversial of the statements, and comes from the fact that i'm theistic, and that is the meaning God ascribes to everything. Now here's the thing, that meaning is actually the first kind. If we are to see God as creator then any meaning he gives is meaning he projects, just as we project meaning. The only difference is he is God and we are not and that means that his meaning is the only meaning that really...well...matters.

I can say that a job opportunity has meaning for me because it is a representation of my dreams and aspirations, but its true meaning is however it fits into God's plan for my life.

And just because I say plan does not mean I mean destiny. I don't believe in destiny, and I don't believe in fate, I believe in choices. I believe in right choices and wrong choices. I believe that God ascribes meaning to the horrors of our life because he is gracious, and does not create horrors in our life because of meaning.

So what makes me so unbelievabley frustrated is when I am so influenced in my emotions and my perspectives because of CHEMICALS.

And I wonder if I can't think of an emotional or situational reason why I've been so down (even though there are many emotions and situations that could push me into such a state) I imagine it has something to do with some kind of chemical imbalance in my brain. And that frustrates me. A lot.

So whatever the reason, my heart or my shoes, I stand on Mt. Crumpet hating the who's.

Or something...

I think I have senioritis and its worse because of brain chemistry. Lack of dopamine and all with the attention deficit and the unhealthy lifestyle of a college student. Dehydration, high carb low vitamin diet, and ignoring health issues for way too long because it would be just too complicated and time consuming to look into them.

So if it's God it will work out because he is bigger than my life, and if its chemicals I suppose i'll figure that out too, and if its any circumstances then i should stop projecting meaning and snap out of it.

It's like when you're a kid and your parents are telling you to finish your food, and you don't want to, and by now whatever distateful meal thats in front of you is cold too and beginning to congeal but you have to finish it bite after bite at a time and every single one of those bites is an eternity but you have no choice but to keeping going. And meals do end sometime.

Every last bite of this meal is making me gag but I have no choice but to keep eating.
And I have a very long running list of how my life will change for the better when this mess is all over.
Because it will be better, and it will be over. Sooner than I feel, but eternity never feels soon.

OPTIMISM

I've decided to make a list of my dreams. But first, I would like to make a distinction between dreams and goals. The list I am about to make will be a list of things I want to be/accomplish, its true, however some of them may be a little more fanciful than actual realistic goals. (This does not make them impossible, more like a "if I had my druthers" sort of situation.)

Furthermore, these are things that I would like, but there are limits to how far I will go, or what lines I will cross to accomplish them. I will not for instance, pick any one of these instead of taking a path I feel God is leading me towards. You may see this as a cop out, but its isn't. It is an honest to goodness statement, that in the long run whatever God has planned for me will be better then whatever plans I have for myself. I will be happier, and I will make a better and bigger impact on the world.

Another thing that makes these dreams and not goals is their relationship with one another. The list as a whole might be a little hard to accomplish for one person. I could maybe get one or two of them, but in addition to the rest of life there will be little time left to pay attention to any more. And I need my sleep.

Some of them are simple, and my not require much effort, the primary obstacles are more in my mind than anything else. Others of them may seem very complex and could take years to accomplish. I have no idea how much time I have on this planet. I could die today, I could die in 60 years. You just don't know.

1. Work in China for a non-profit. -This could be a job where I just have to travel to China a lot, or actually live there for a time. But I want to do something beneficial to humanity, I want to do it in China, and I want to put my Chinese to good use, which brings me to my next one...
2. Become proficient in Chinese.- I am only in my second year, and about to graduate, so actually continuing to learn this foreign language is going to require some real effort on my part.
3. Learn to play the cello.- I don't want to be a master cellist, I just want to be able to hold my own musically with the thing. This is a dream that will require some dedication as well as moolah. I can hold my own with the clarinet and I've had seven years training in that. I think I could hold my own by 4 years, but a string instrument is a different animal so we'll have to see.
4. Become a professional blogger.- I don't have the highest readership with this thing. My myspace one had about 30 though. I've just discovered that this is something I enjoy, and I wouldn't mind being paid to do it.
5. Be a healthy weight for my height and body type.- Okay this is one that should be easier than I make it but that doesn't make it easy. I've been overweight for a s long as I can remember, but not nearly to the extent that I have been recently. My dream is 145, and that is at the top of what's healthy for my shape and height. To be honest, I'd be happy with 150, or 175. As of right now to achieve this dream weight I'd have to lose 75 lbs. Benefits from this? I'd feel better, have an easier time finding clothes that fit. I wouldn't run through clothes as much as the wear and tear would be diminished. And whether or not people choose to admit it, I'd probably make a bigger impact in the work place. It's hard enough to be successful as a woman, try being an overweight one. As women our looks matter unfortunately.

These dreams are not requirements in my life to be happy. I can be happy without all of these things. They are things I would like, and all of them represent something bigger. The truth is that I have trouble achieving things. I do well in structured environments but when left to my own devices there is very little productivity in my psyche. All of these will require discipline, and that above all of these other things is what I really want. I want to be able to wake up on time, to be able to start and finish things, and the ability to decide I want to do something, and then do it, not pine because I try and can't. A lot of my struggles are rooted in my ADD, which as a disorder cause a lot of problems. I can't organize my time, can't stay focused on projects, and so forth. But if I could become a disciplined person I could work around my ADD.

Someday I may reread this list and decide I don't want these things anymore, and that's fine. But I never want to look back and regret not trying.

It's a Wonderful Life

I was watching It's a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart; a Christmas Classic and like all good movies should, it made me think. I began thinking during the part where Mr. Potter offers George Bailey a job, and is basically describing him as this noble person, who is finally going to get what's coming to him, so long as he makes this seemingly shrewd career move.

Mr. Potter was lying, but he was doing it with as much truth as possible. The best liars do that. They stick very close to the truth so as to not get caught in any loopholes, and play to the sensitivities of those they deceive.

George Bailey was in fact this ridiculously good person. Time and time again through out his life he came to a point where he had to make a choice between his dreams and the people who needed him and chose the latter. He never got to do what he wanted, which was to travel, see the world, be independent, and build sky scrapers. (I could never figure out of the sky scrapers were literal or metaphorical.) During emercencies he was quick to act without thinking, like saving his brother from drowning or keeping his head when the stock market crashed. He wasn't a perfect person by any means. More often than not he did the right thing begrudgingly, and was awfully eager at first to take that job with Mr. Potter knowing he'd be making ten times what he had been making at the Building and Loan. But in any case George Bailey was a good person and still his world came crashing down around him. Realizing that he was worth more dead than alive he wanted to kill himself.

The reason why it's such a beautiful movie to us is of course because none of us get to reach for our dreams all the time so we relate to George and we all want to think that life would suck for the world without us and that if we ever got to the point of wanting to kill ourselves, an entire town would give us their spare cash as well as a rich friend from high school in Europe and all of our problems would be solved in one chorus of Auld Lange Syne.

The movie ends, and we all feel warm and fuzzy inside as the season of holidays demands but its not long before we remember that life still sucks and we begin to question time and time again why the heck the world doesn't come through for us the way that it should.

But let me ask you something very important.

When was the last time you came through for the world?

We all do nice things for other people once in a while, but when is the last time we genuinly lived for other people; when every decision we made was for the benefit of others' but not ourselves?

George Bailey had built such a network of relationships around him with his good deeds that not even the richest man in all of Bedford Falls could ruin his life. We don't do that. In fact the reason why there are so many pessimists in the world is because we happen to believe this lie that we are all George Bailey and the world should come to save us and when it doesn't we think "Well, I guess this is a mediocre life."

It is not so an exaggerated attitude of self-entitlement that we carry but the truth is if we don't put our everything into existence then how can we expect an everything return?

So I'm laying in bed, post-feel good flick, and thinking about the parts of my life that are less than satisfying and wondering why things that I have no control over don't just work out for me. And finally I realize that first of all, I shouldn't be feeling so self-entitled, and second of all, where is my trust? If I were to actually examine my life I realize that the things I want to be different that I have no control over I still for some reason try to control instead of letting God take care of it. And yet I still expect everything to turn out all right? Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. (Star Wars: For the Win.) I fear my lack of control, I get frustrated at how life doesn't turn out and I end up miserable thinking "I do so much and get nothing out of it."

I'm not George Bailey, and this is not Bedford Falls.

So next time you want to bang your head against the wall because that part of your life you've spend so much time trying to tweak is falling all apart again think of this.

The world isn't going to pull through for someone who doesn't pull through for others. You can't control this, you can only control your compassion. When we all share, there is enough. When we give of ourselves, those things we have no control over will fall into place anyway. In this life no person can wash their own hands.

It isn't karma, it's trusting God, and doing what he's asked a million times, instead of fussing over the details that don't matter.

I'm going to go ahead and post this now, but for the record, this whole Jimmy Stewart related epiphany seemed a lot deeper in my head. But now that I type it I think, "Duh, Sara...duh..."

overwhelmed.

For as long as I can remember i've been...well...lets say husky. It mainly started when I was about 8 or 9. I went through this stage of a few years where I was really depressed, mostly because I didn't have a lot of friends, or any. I got made fun of a lot, and I spent a lot of time by myself and bored. Not playing with other kids meant watching a lot of tv, and developing the unfortunate habit of eating when I had nothing else to do. By the time I reached the fourth grade (easily the worst year of my life) I broke 150 pounds. To this day I can not remember weighing myself and being under 155.

It wasn't so bad in high school, I managed to maintain 175. Life was pretty good in high school I must say, and since I found myself incapable of losing weight I figured that as long as I didn't gain weight either I was fine with that. I would just be me.

Then college happened...

The freshman fifteen for me was more of a freshman 30. I thought that maybe with diet and exercise I might be able to fight off the sudden landslide of bad health I suddenly found myself in. But when the heck was I going to be doing this exercise, and how the heck could I diet when I could barely afford food let alone healthy food.

I now exist at 220 and counting. Tonight I had an experience that sort of let me see how big I was and possibly how I looked to other people. And I just...I'm overwhelmed. I don't know what to do because I feel so powerless.

It is so hard to maintain the things that are already meant to be maintained. I have to keep up with five subjects at school, sixteen credit hours four of which are for a foreign language (do the math for homework yourself). That's a full time job by itself. Add the job on weekends that I can't afford to drop. The volunteer time i'm trying to get that will work so well with everything i'm working for in school already. All that I do my best to do for LB, a 140 minute round trip commute every day, trying to maintain relationships with the people that I love so much but never get to see because of all of the aforementioned stuff... then those little things like laundry, sleep, showering...I CAN'T DO IT!!!! I can't go to the gym every day or run every morning or do curl ups before bed, or pull ups...ever...There's no way to incorporate it into my schedule, there's no room. There's no way for me to make the time because there's none to be made.

I wish I could say that I just wanted to be healthy but I know that that's not true. I want how I look to be different. I'm tired of being the big girl, even if it's only in my own brain. But i'm so lost as to what I could even do about it. Everything I do has a prioritized purpose behind it. I've given up things like theatre and my clarinet and having regular tv shows to watch every week because they can't be kept.

So I look at myself and I look at the scale and I look at my jeans and how they've grown and all I can feel is despair. There is no hope for me...i'm only going to keep gaining and i'll never be able to lose anything and i'm going to be unhappy with myself for the rest of my life.

And then I get mad at myself because I know that those aren't good thoughts to be having. I know that the bible says that my beauty needs to come from the inside, but no matter how hard I wish that outer beauty didn't mean anything to me it still does. And no matter how mad parents get or feminists or social justice activists get about the unrealistic standard of beauty set by our media or how vehemently they tell us that we're all beautiful and we need to be accepted for who we are I will still see the rest of the world step aside or bend over backwards for the skinny girl. And I don't want special treatment, but I don't like being treated like a lesser.

When I was a kid everyone was supposed to be beautiful and we were supposed to accept and love ourselves no matter what we looked like. Then I got a bit older and we were suddenly supposed to not "take any more of these excuses" and put our nose to the grindstone and fix it.

Then there's the whole God thing. Sometimes I wonder to what extent he cares about this issue. I know that he loves me, and cares for me, but if I focus so much of my attention on my weight wouldn't he just say "You're missing the point. Focus on others and the tasks I have set before you, and trust in me. You shouldn't be so worried about something so skin deep." ?

So...I guess what I'm trying to say in short is that I am dramatically overwhelmed by everything. I just want to have a separate life or a time turner. I've played the game before though. The more I focus on me the more depressed I get. I just have to have a life serving others or I won't be able to function. And I complain about how busy I am but I need it that way too. The less I have to do, then the less I do at all, and the more I find that I am actually not doing anything and that makes me feel even worse about myself.

For the record, any of you reading this who are bigger or weigh more than I do and are getting mad at me over that I'm sorry. I feel your pain. Every time a girl thinner than me complains about her body or her weight all I want to do is scream at her and tell her how much I wish I looked like her. That she needs to shut up and realize how good she's got it. I have no delusions about how blessed I am. I know that I am completely and utterly blessed. Having the friends I have, the family I have, the God I have, the education that I'm getting. Life compared to like...well tons of people is pretty sweet. But I can't help but feel hopeless.

I don't know if I want too much, or if I shouldn't be wanting what it is that I want. I don't know if I'm making excuses or making things too complicated. I don't know how much is my fault and how much is my circumstances. But mostly I don't know what to do about it. I don' t know if there's anything that I can do about it. I'm stuck.

Even if I was a healthy weight and size I'd probably be complaining about something else right? Something like my homework load and how I don' t know how to handle it all, or my money issues and how I don't know how i'm going to be paying back my student loans, or something else. But I'm not a healthy weight and size and whether its trivial or not it weighs most heavily upon my heart at this moment in time.

the end.