That one question I keep asking myself

I am on an emotional carousel sometimes. Up & down, around & around.

I see so many jerks who have girlfriends when I'm hanging out with my friends. The girls are usually pretty good looking while the guys are either very attractive or very plain. They said crude things to impress their friends and act uninterested in the girl they are there with. This frustrates me when I witness it, mostly because the girl puts up with it but also because I am single. Not that I want a jerk for a boyfriend but when I see people who in no way deserve a romantic relationship with one, it makes me wonder what the heck is wrong with me.Why am I still single?

I answer this with the following responses, I don't put myself out there enough, I'm not pretty enough, I'm too fat, all the usual negative self talk I have. I wonder how much of this I make up in my head and how much of it is self fulfilling prophecy. I go back and forth about whether I want to be in a relationship or not. I don't really have time a serious relationship needs to grow and I enjoy my freedom as someone not attached. I do get lonely and from time to time I want to go on a date but have no one to be my other half. That's when the negative self talk comes to the surface, crushing my self esteem and making me second guess every life choice I have made in the resent future.

This is when learning contentment is hard. Not so much looking at what you don't have and desiring it, but knowing you will have it one day and at that time it be something you do not want.

Gimme Shelter and pass the tissues

Usually when I watch a movie, I don't cry. My friends will tell you I wear my heart on my sleeve as I'm often emotionally moved by, well anything. A song, a video, a certain piece of art, a really good meal, any number of things will cause my heart to swoon but is it rare that I am moved to tears. That's what happened while watching Gimme Shelter, Ron Krauss's new film starring Vanessa Hudgens.

Gimme Shelter tells the story of Apple, a teenager who's spent most of her life in & out of foster houses but in no one's hearts. After discovering she's pregnant, Apple reaches out to her estranged father for help but this doesn't go as well as planned and friction between her step-mother and her step-siblings causes her to seek other means of help. After a few days of living on the street, her desperate actions land her in police custody and a chance she's never had before, to have someone care for her. Based on the life of a girl taken into a shelter run by Kathy DiFiore, pictured above, this movie gives hope that the people who need the most help will get a helping hand at the right moment.

When the movie started, I knew this would be a difficult emotional journey. I have experience with the all too familiar story of a child abandon by her parents, a few of my childhood friends know this tale personally. The opening scene is brutal and heartbreaking as you see just how heavy a hand life has deal Apple. In fact, Vanessa's performance as Apple makes her unrecognizable, when she came in the theater for the Q & A, I wasn't sure the woman on the screen was the same person sitting in front of me. As good as Vanessa's performance was, Rosario Dawson's was outstanding. The scene they have together in the hospital is one of the best I've seen in a film as you see Rosario trying to explain how she is doing the best she knows how to be Apple's mother.

As I watched the film I was completely captured by cast's performance. I felt all of the anger, heartbreak, fear, and pain of Apple as she went from a scared little girl, who only wanted to have a family, to a young woman and mother who would do whatever it took to be everything her parents were not. I felt the disappointment, bitterness, failure, and fear June felt when Apple was taken away from her. Though I felt the end was abrupt, it ending on an emotional breakthrough Apple has in front of her father- she realizing for the first time she finally has the family she's always wanted- I feel this is a powerful, well produced film. I feel not only should people see it, but the performances Vanessa Hudgens and Rosario Dawson give should be seriously consider for awards and accolades.

Kathy DiFiore was nice enough to take a picture with me. 

Obligatory Post about New Year's Resolutions

I'm not really resolving to do anything this year. I'm making plans to travel more when I have time, pay down some debt, and in general be a healthier person but no list of things I plan to change. I feel if I hadn't made the plan to change my mind by now, I'm probably not going to change whatever habit I wish leave in 2013.

One thing I do every year is a cleanse of some kind. At the beginning of the year my church has a fast, A Solemn Assembly. It is during this week that we fast from TV, the evening meal, and spend more time getting to know Christ. The idea is to seek after God, get closer to Him, and start the year as you intent to spend it, putting your relationship with God first. In the past I have fasted from all matter of things:  solid food, TV, the internet (before Facebook), all social media (after Facebook), video games, worldly music, and  a few things I've forgotten. I usually decide on something I feel takes up too much of my time as of late. This year is no different and though I have cut back severally on my social media consumption, I still feel like I spend too much time doing no profit things. Some of these things would be any amount of time spent on Reddit, Tumblr, and Steam.

Before you vote me off the fangirl island, think about what you get in return for the time you spend on these websites. I might learn a few facts, feel like I'm part of group who "gets it", but usually I have no return on my time investment. I'm no closer to finishing any of the novels stuck in my head, no new creative ideas have formed, and no relationships have been fostered. This week, I'll be off those sites in an attempt to set myself up to use my time more wisely this year. I hope to have an outline of at least one of my novels by year's end if not more.

In addition to this, and fasting from TV consumption, cause I hardly watch TV on a TV anymore, I've taken up the 30 Day No Sugar Challenge. I was shocked to learned, after noticing how tight my clothes had gotten, that over the last six months I'd gained twenty pounds. I wasn't surprised because I'd picked up my bad fast food habit again before The Holidays started. In order to finally get back into some kind of shape, I joined a gym and decided to do this challenge. There aren't too many rules, but the ones I've set for myself go as follow:
1. Nothing with sugar as one of the first three ingredients
2. No sweets (So no dessert but fruit is okay)
3. Only one fast food meal a week
4. Only one dining meal a week
5. No alcohol

2014, let's get this thing going.

Two thousand thirteen

I first started to compose this post while I was in the shower. And like all my post that I start else where, only half of it remains now that I am able to type it out. It's very near the end of 2013, a year that seemed for the first time in a long time to take its full chronology to pass. Maybe it's my romance with nostalgia or all the Best Of post I've been reading on Buzzfeed, but this year seemed especially full. I wouldn't cheapen it by trying to say nothing important happened this year. I changed careers, became  certified teacher (in two content areas), say goodbye to some very good friends, said hello to others. I fulfilled a life long ambition to travel the world and returned home not so much whole as overwhelmed, full and more determined to achieve those "Before I turn 35" goals I wrote down so long ago.

I grew spiritually, something I don't talk a lot about because I want it to be evident not by my words but by my actions. I lead a small group at my church and out of all the teachery things I do, I think this one has never made me more happy and closer to God. Every time we meet, I am glad and excited I woke up and came to small group. Something else I fully embraced this year was drinking. I wouldn't have called myself a drinker before this year. Someone who enjoyed a drink every know and again, or did actually drink, yes, but not a drinker per se. I accepted that part of me and what I thought I would feel (shame, disappointment) wasn't actually what I felt. Relief was the first, strongest emotion, followed by happiness and boldness. I was glad to identify as one of those people who frequents a bar enough to know the staff by name and have a "regular" drink. I felt a settling deep inside me like my foundation, the very core of who I am, was being set. It felt great and only helped to make me feel like I am becoming who I should be.

I've never been a person who wanted a do-over in life. Mostly because I believe in learning from life and moving on but also because I don't like to live in the past. Looking back too much can stop you from living your future or even more dangerous, not living in the present. If I had the opportunity to life this year over again, I don't think I would change any decisions I made. I might have stayed in London an extra day, I might have taken that extra road trip to Austin or Oklahoma, but for the most part I would have lived life the same.

I thank God for giving me such an amazing year. It was fantastic and you know what? So was I.  

Very Early Morning To You

After having a very nice lunch with my friend Pearlie, recording a new episode of Gramblings with Mattie & Lewis, and creating a metric ton of inside jokes at Karla's going away shindig, I came home to edit audio and get a nights rest. It is currently 4:24 AM and I have yet to be asleep or really be tired. I'm unsure if  it is the excitement of starting a new job tomorrow, the joy and sorrow of being creative again and bidding farewell to a friend, or just the allure of the internet to keep me from my bed. Here I am writing, what I am sure is nonsense, at half past four in the morning.

Why am I writing? Mostly because I haven't in months. I could say I have been busy, which would be an honest excuse, but mostly because I didn't feel like expressing my feelings from this side of a keyboard. For the first time in a number of years, I didn't have to write a paper or critique or lesson plan or anything. And so I didn't. I traveled, read books, watch TV, saw movies. Talked with people, face to face. I met people from other countries. I ate food I've never had. I shared insights and gained knowledge and lived.

I wouldn't say I wasn't living life before this summer. It was a different type of living, the kind that wears you down, breaks you of your weaknesses and makes you strong because you refuse to give in or give up. For the past two months, I've been living the type of life that fills ever cell of your body with a radiance so bright and full, it won't stay inside you. People notice it on your face, in your speech, in your walk. I've loved every moment of it and hope the rest of this year and the next are very much like it.

I went to the UK in the past two months, you can read about that here.

Won't do for myself

I feel like I never write any more. My thoughts are cluttered in one small space in my head, fading away to nothingness because I don't give them a voice. My musings, atrophied and weak, stop demanding my attention after awhile and the writing I want to do never happens.

I do write, everyday usually. These words are academic and sterile, explaining the learning process or how to teach children a better way to remember vocabulary words. These words have perpetual shotgun in my brain, always feed first, always written down. They aren't inspiring or beautiful or even pretty but they are what my words are sacrificed for.

Of Gingers & Restlessness

My sleep was fairly restless last night. I wasn't particularly tired but as morning comes and so does work, night is for sleeping. So I laid down and dreamt about a man I've never met. Honestly, will never meet if truth be told. I was on a trip to England, a study abroad trip. I was in a pub by myself having a drink. I saw him walk in, a tall thin man with brilliantly red hair and so much arrogance I swear I could smell it on him. I caught his gaze as he strolled pass my table. He winked at me. I ignored him. I was in a fowl mood and sulking, about what I can't remember.

I finished my drink and stood to leave. As I turned, I found him standing in my way, his hands in his coat pockets. I found this odd, an Englishman who didn't take off his coat when he came in a building. I excused my way around him, he called out something about needing the code to my door. I didn't know what he was talking about so I kept walking. He followed me out. For some reason this didn't affect the way I thought it would. I wasn't afraid of him so much as I irritated by him. I didn't want to be bothered.

He chatted at me as I walked. Sometime I would look at him and that was all the encouragement he needed. He would talk more, make sly comments about 'Us' like we were an item. As if somehow I'd forgotten we were a couple. Thought I wasn't afraid of this man, I knew better then to walk to my place so I just walked around well lit areas hoping he wouldn't notice I wasn't going in any particular direction. After walking for an hour, he finally asked when we could stop walking and actually go to my flat. I noticed in all his chatting he's not English but Scottish.

The dream then cuts to a rather compromising scene of the two of us together, our limbs intertwined, our skin in sharp contrast against one another. The dream then cuts again, to a tan girl, her face freckled, her hair a wild nest of red curls. This girl is obviously our daughter, her face very similar to mine, her eyes and height belonging to her father. She stands on a hill looking into the distance. What she is looking at I do not know nor can I see it.

This is the entirety of my dream, it's ending sharp and sudden. Perhaps this is how all dreams are supposed to end. It's finale a rushing crash of consciousness.