Aug. 27, 2012

I have decided to keep notes about myself, mostly to reflect on my habits and personality. I am on a lifelong quest of self-improvement and I want to keep records of what needs to change and what I can improve. I'm on my way to becoming a social worker and hopefully, a counselor someday so I hope that this book will be a good way to increase my self-awareness and reflect on my life.

Since I had no internet at my house, I went to IHOP to use their free wi-fi. When I wanted to go home, it was heavily raining. I know that I should have called for a ride or just waited for the rain to stop, but somehow, I thought I could just run the short distance back to my house. It was a bad idea. I risked so much--soaking my papers and damaging my laptop due to water.

I'm not proud of this, but if I don't face up to the truth of who I am, then I'll never change. The thing is, I could have done a variety of things instead of running home in the rain. I could have waited for the rain to stop (the rain eventually did stop, half an hour after I got home). I could have called my landlord for a ride. He was home at the time and after he saw me come home soaking wet, he said that he would have picked me up if I had called him. I could have brought an umbrella--I will do so from now on, I've learned my lesson. In other words, I could have prevented a lot of stress on myself, but why didn't I? Was it because I was afraid of imposing? Was it because I thought no one would help me? Was it because I was afraid of wasting time if I just waited for the rain to stop?

All of the above. I didn't even bother to call for help. I didn't bother to wait for the rain to stop. Why? Why am I so reluctant to ask for help? Why am I so afraid of "wasting time"? It seems as if I always have to be doing something--never just taking a moment to relax and breathe. Whatever happened to stopping and smelling the roses? Whatever happened to taking things slow? Whatever happened to meditation and quiet time and living in the moment?  It was as if a voice in my head said right then, You don't have to live alone...

Is this where my fears of abandonment come from? Is this some deep-rooted insecurity that says: I'm going to be alone. No one is going to help me so I better go it alone? 

Well, guess what? A change is going to start today. Little by little, it'll happen. I may not change overnight, but I can change over a year, five years, ten years. Watch out world, a change is going to come and a new me is going to happen.

Of beautiful days and broken cameras

I was in the bank today when the teller mentioned that it was a beautiful day outside and how she wished she didn't have to be at work so she could enjoy it. I thought, Now would be a good time to take more pictures... It was 60 degrees and sunny outside, I had nothing else I had to do, and nature was waiting. I thanked the teller and when I went to buy milk at the pharmacy, I asked the cashier if she knew of any places that were good to take pictures. She recommended Jone's Gap, but only if someone was accompanying me.

"Girls get grabbed out there," she warned. She then recommended I go downtown to take pictures of the Reedy River. "Especially this tree with all these roots. Its roots go down like this," she said, gesturing with her hands. "My son took a picture of it and it was the..."
"Coolest thing ever?" I offered.
"Yes! It was the coolest picture."

By the time I arrived downtown, I found a two-hour parking space and spent the next twenty minutes trying to take old film out of the camera and put new film in. Inevitably, after twenty minutes of effort...I broke the camera. AND ruined the film. Great. Just like me. With nothing else for it, I ended up in the library all day.

On the other hand, the library was selling this book on cooking with cast iron skillets and I bought it for four bucks. Pretty nice deal, if you ask me.

Now all I have to do get Matt to help me out with the cooking. And tell him I broke his camera.

Magazine Articles that Changed My Life

I was in the doctor's office today reading a magazine when I stumbled upon an excerpt from the book Spontaneous Happiness. The excerpt dealt with the possibility that our "stone-age" brains were not meant for the modern, postindustrial era. Modern times have contributed to noise pollution, sedentary lifestyles, and a paradoxical cycle where the more we buy, the more depressed we are likely to become. Why is this? This made me rethink a lot of things, such as "Do I have too many things?" I probably did. In spite of my minimalist lifestyle, there are probably lots of things I could do without and other things which are just frivolous. I was also surrounded by too much noise--I listened to music to drown out the silence, I turned on the car radio when I went driving, and nights spent at my parents' house almost always involved television. Sure, there was nothing inherently wrong with these things, but I didn't really need them either. Moreover, I couldn't remember how many hours I wasted on the internet just because I was lonely and depressed and didn't want to face my life. (I mean, look at where I am now--on the internet). I did, however, hold to my New Year's Resolution to stop wasting time on the internet. Other than applying for graduate school, I've spent less than twenty minutes total checking email, on social networking sites, and watching YouTube videos of Phineas and Ferb. I'm proud of myself. Instead, I've spent more time reading, with real-life social groups, and just with quiet time to myself.

Another part of the same magazine listed three women whose lives have changed for the better because of the economic recession. They found that giving away free things helped lift their spirits or NOT spending money meant finding more creative ways to have fun. One woman who was laid off re-evaluated her life, finally married her fiance, and started a family. None of them liked the economic recession, but they did owe it a great deal for changing their lives for the better. That also re-evealute my mindset on things. What if I'm chasing after the wrong things in life? What am I being blinded by? There's nothing like bad times to really make people step back and look at things differently so maybe now's the time to do it.

The first thing I'm doing is getting rid of the things I don't need in my apartment, starting with my room. There are old pictures that just need to go and so many decorations that are just lying around doing nothing so I think I will get rid of those first. This new year, I'm setting up a new theme: simplicity.

Strange Winds

There was a strange wind today. It whipped about the road, thrashing the tops of trees, and ripping cabbage heads from their patches and sending them tumbling into the road. It violently tugged at the coattails of schoolchildren and gentlemen and almost toppled the pillbox hats of proper ladies strolling down the street.

A woman living in the Scottish countryside opened her door and immediately had to hold onto her veil. "A very strange wind this is," she muttered. "A very strange wind indeed." It almost peeled every petal off of the flowers in her window boxes and set to kicking about the produce in her vegetable garden. "I better phone Gardenia," she said, shaking her head and re-entering the house.

Oceans away, a magician named Gardenia steps outside of his study to measure the wind. "Forty leagues away and it still finds me," he says wryly, smiling. He steps back into his butter yellow house to look for some graph paper and a book on meteorology. A tap comes from his windowpane. "One moment, please," he calls to the entrance. The tap comes again. "I'm coming," he shouts back there. "Just one moment." The tap comes yet again, more insistent this time. "I said, one moment," he replies irritably. That's when he realizes that the tapping is not coming from where he is standing on the bottom floor, but from the upper floor of his manor. A tree branch, perhaps? He thought. But no. His spine and skull were tingling. This was something out of the ordinary. Dropping his books, he races up the spiral staircase to the upper floor, bursting into his library. There. The tapping WAS coming from the window, and it WAS a tree branch, but there was something else there too. Something small and soft and fragile. The magician cranked a lever to open the window and his jaw dropped at what he saw. A basket with a thin blanket was hooked onto the tree branch outside. The wind was indeed making the trees tilt and pitch violently, but it was the basket that was making the tapping noise. Gardenia lifted the basket off the branch and carefully maneuvered it inside. Whatever was inside the basket was magical, he could feel that, and it might react badly if accidentally bumped against any of the magical objects he had in his library. Unfortunately, in spite of the man's best efforts, the basket did bump into something, but it didn't explode or send off sparks. It cried instead. A baby? the magician thought. But it was a very strange cry. A plaintive mewing more than the wail of a human baby. Gardenia set it down upon his desk and then carefully unwrapped the blanket, praying to the gods for protection in case whatever it was attacked him. It WAS a baby. But not a human baby at all. It was a ferret. Whew, the magician thought, leaning against his desk and wiping off his brow from relief. He didn't know why this infant ferret had been brought to him, but he was sure the answer would reveal itself later. Closing the window, he took the basket downstairs and began research on how to take care of ferrets.

It was only too bad he didn't see who had snuck in through the window right before he closed it...

A Strange Wind

There was a strange wind blowing today. It made the treetops thrash about and whipped the dead autumn leaves into the air. The sky looks strange, too. It keeps alternating between being deceptively sunny and then suddenly overcast. When I went outside to observe the weather, the sky had two different tones to it. The horizon had large cumulus clouds wafting through it and pure blue sky in the distance. The middle of the sky, however, was completely covered by a dome of thick and heavy steel-grey clouds. It ran in arc-like streaks over the center of the atmosphere and appeared very foreboding indeed.

The original reason I came outside was because the wind was whipping about the windows of my parents' house even though it was pure sunlight streaming through the windows. Once I stepped outside, however, I caught the wind trying to make off with the trash can. It had whipped it out to the middle of the road and was dragging it pitifully across the cement.

"Oh crap, I better get that!" I quickly looked around for a pair of shoes. My father's loafers were nearby, but a spider had taken up residence in one of them. I opted for a pair of my brother's old Lacoste shoes instead. I raced outside to catch the trash can as it was skidding across the road. Then I replaced it behind the house, out of the wind's path. Oh dear. What now?

Actually, this kind of weather makes for a good story...

National Boxing Day

I never knew where this day came from, to be honest. I just associated it with the sport of boxing and I knew that it was a Canadian holiday so I thought that the Canadians must really like boxing to devote an entire day to it. Matt was the one who explained everything to me.
"Boxing was where you boxed up all the gifts you didn't want and return them."
"OH," I said. I had not thought of that.
"OR," he continued. "It's where you box up leftovers and give them to the homeless."
"That's very nice of them," I said, giving a smile.
"Yeah...I guess."
I laughed at that. " 'Yeah...I guess' " I said, imitating him.
"I think it all started with the rich. They were like, 'We have all this food left over...let's box it up and give it to the poor...I guess.' "

Well, to celebrate boxing day, I boxed up any leftover presents I still had to give people and left them in a pile in my room. I love seeing piles of presents; it just makes me so happy.

Also, I took a long drive with Craig and we went to the grocery store to buy cat food for Mogmi. That poor cat. The cat food ran out pretty early in the winter break and so, at the first available opportunity, we drove out the grocery store to get some more. I also picked up some ingredients to make cream cheese chewies. I don't really know what they are, but a friend of mine gifted me some baking utensils, the recipe for cream cheese chewies, and bag of something called "butter-me-up" mix. I hadn't had time to make them yet, so I thought I might as well make them today.

Of course, once I came home with the groceries, I read the ingredient list and realize that I didn't have powdered sugar. Well, I thought,it's a nice day outside so I take a walk to a nearby grocery store to buy powdered sugar. Once I get back home, I start to mix things together. Then I open the fridge to get some eggs and

"We don't have eggs, do we?" Well, by that time, the sun was going down and it's the middle of winter so I decide to drive to the grocery store this time and buy eggs. I also pick up milk for Matthew, just for good measure.

Once the baking's done, I try some cream cheese chewies and they're...they're pretty good. They taste like a mix between cheesecake and regular cake. Not spectacular or melt-in-your-mouth, but not bad either.

Anyway, it's 8:30 again and I'm sleepy so I go to bed just to be woken by Matthew calling me. He says that he's driving back from his family's house and that they bought me gifts. He wants me to come over to get them. And well...

Christmas Day 2011

This year's Christmas wasn't half-bad. It was kind of nice actually. I cooked breakfast for my parents and we watched The Nutcracker ballet on television. After church, my mother went to help with the Christmas party down in the church's gym so I spent the hour practicing piano in the now empty church. I had Coldplay's "The Scientist" stuck in my head so I played that one first.

A long while later, my former choir director came in to return the music sheet stand and she heard me playing. We had a short chat in which she asked when I was graduating college.
"Um," was all I said.
"Oh, so you've already graduated college?" she asked.
More "Um". I love non-committal responses.
"Well, Merry Christmas, and if I don't see you at New Year..."

We shared an awkward hug before she left; I went back to piano practice. My father came in shortly thereafter. Apparently, my parents had been looking for me for a while. My mother kept trying to call me (I took that moment as the perfect opportunity to tell them that I had left my phone at the house), and sure enough, when I arrived home, there were seven missed calls from my mother. I do have a habit of disappearing and not telling people where I am. I'll work on that as one of my new year's resolutions.

Anyway, my mother and I took a long drive that Christmas evening. She mostly wanted an excuse to talk and vent about her life. (My dad does this, too. Actually, most people do this to me.) So I was a bit sleepy and emotionally worn out by the time we drove back home. I went to bed at 8:30 and drifted in and out of sleep for hours. My brother, who is spending Christmas thousands of miles away with other relatives, sent me a text message four minutes before midnight. He was talking about some bells ringing or something. I hadn't completely fallen asleep the last three and a half hours I'd been in bed so I decided to get up and try out something I've been wanting to do for years.

Every holiday season, a few radio stations will start playing Christmas music starting in November and lasting all the way until Christmas Day. My question was, did the Christmas music stop at exactly midnight? Or did it stop a little earlier or a little later? Well, since my brother's text message woke up four minutes before Christmas ended, I snuck out to my car (my house does not have a radio, you see) to answer this question. I plugged in the car keys and turned them a notch, then I pressed the radio button. The station was just in the beginning bars of "Winter Wonderland." It wasn't really my favorite Christmas song or even my favorite version of this song, but I listened to the entire thing anyway. The song ended at 12:01 am, and I listened closely to what came next. Sure enough, after that song ended, the automatic radio host came on and he no longer said, "YOUR Christmas station" after his spiel. The next song to come on was Leona Lewis's "Better in time", most definitively NOT a Christmas song. I switched to another Christmas radio station to double-check. They were playing one of Pink's hard-rock-I'm bitter-and-resentful-because-of-my-crappy-life-and-my-unfortunate-childhood-so-I-wrote-a-song-to-whine-about-it-on-the-radio kind of songs. (As you can probably infer, I don't particularly like Pink. I like some bitter and resentful songs, but not so much the way Pink does them).

And that was it for me. That was how I knew Christmas was over (for another year, anyway)--the radio had stopped playing Christmas songs.