Wednesday, January 30, 2008

jobs, immobile necks, and medication

mmmm, it's been a while. been ridiculously busy...shuffling four jobs and an insane load of classes this semester....and to top it off my neck checked out today...woke up not being able to move...went to the doctor's (which is significant in itself, being that i never NEVER like to go to the doctor's and avoid it as much as possible), anyways...i have been lying here all day on meds that make me sleepy. oh well...what next is gonna hit me to make my life exciting?

Saturday, January 26, 2008

frustrations and blessings

well, it has been quite the week. with this new job it has definitely filled up my empty time. which is good...better that i be doing something (and something that makes me money) than sitting around doing nothing. i cannot wait to get paid.

it has been stressful too, this week. trying to get registered for next semester. while i am extremely great full for the amazing financial package we receive to come here...it is still not enough...and the amount we still have to owe is beyond my bank account or my parents too for that matter. so, i have just been stressing out this week about how we can solve this problem and solve it before it is too late.

i have begun to accept the inevitable though, the idea that i might have to take a semester off and just work. i honestly don't want to do that for various reasons. this would push my graduation date back another semester, which seems to constantly happen. i have already been at biola a year longer than i planned from when i transferred in. and then i found out that it would be another whole to actually finish up, so that put my graduation date at spring '09. that alone has been hard to deal with. now with all my closest friends done at biola and moved on, and me being 23, gonna be 24 this year...i just feel old here now and old for college, and just that i have been over the college days for a couple years now and has made this year and the idea of another whole year hard to deal with. and now, the fear that i might not get to be here this semester makes everything take even longer. i just want to be done and start pursuing a career and actually living my life. i have been in college since fall 2002 and transferred to biola after two years at the community college. i have been at biola for four years now and was expecting another whole year here...now this situation...ugh...i am just over it.

anyways, i have trying to start preparing for the idea i might not be here this semester and started looking for housing in the area. another i have to consider now is that i have no home to go to, with my parents in transition themselves...looking for a job and ministry and place to call home. so i have been looking for rooms/apartment to rent for the next several months, at least until next fall. (which i do plan to return at that time.) i have one place i am going to go check out this afternoon. plus i will have to job search because if i cannot stay as a student at biola, i loose all my on campus jobs, because i will not be a student anymore. so i need to job search for something so i can survive on. i got rent, food, gas and car issues, and bills to consider in that case. we will see, i guess.

anyways i have just been thinking about the future...what i want to do, where i want to live, and what i am going to be...and when all this is gonna ever happen for me. i feel stuck...frozen and imprisoned here in school and i feel like i can't live my life. there are plans i want to pursue and start building on, but i can't until i have my degree. so as much as i hate being in college, i want to just finish so i can have that degree. i just feel so frustrated and overwhelmed by this, i don't know what to do or so or feel.

it was good because last thursday night i went to church for worship practice and before we practiced we sat and shared our praises and concerns and then prayed about it. and it was awesome to hear our drummer share about God is teaching him joy and contentment and thankfulness in his life. and he said he has been spending time listing things, people, circumstances and situations in his life that has been a blessing. and just seeing the lists and how much there is to be thankful for. so despite all my frustration and concern about my situation i know that if i were to sit down and list the blessings in my life, it would be alot longer than my list of concerns and frustrations. who knows, maybe i will start listing those things...

be blessed.

Monday, January 21, 2008

mixed up

there are times when i just don't know. when a million different feelings seem like they just control me. all kinds of feelings: peace, fear, happiness, hope, sadness, contentment, anger, jealousy, discontentment, nervousness, anxiety, and so on...sometimes i want to feel one way, but another takes over me. how does one feel happy, yet sad; or hope, yet fear; or maybe peace, but there is still alot of anxiety? is that allowed? does that work? can you feel two very opposite feelings at the very same time? apparently you can, it seems to be the story of my life. each year of my life gets more and more complicated and mixed up. i wish i could just be ok, ok with my life and ok with what i am feeling. my problem is i am an over-analyzer. i over-analyze everything, including myself. then i end up not allowing myself any kind of feeling and spiraling back down into my negative black hole. i will never be able to explain what that hole is really like, and what i do to myself there...but it exists and i place myself there each time those millions of feelings creep up into my soul. then all i want is to be numb: numb from these confusing feelings, and numb from the black oblivion i put myself in. i find my numbness in not feeling any emotion, by ignoring the feelings and the situations that bring about those feelings and emotions, and by not allowing the tears to flow. i never let the tears come, because if i do then i am allowing one emotion to take over i don't know if that is ok. so i never let tears come. i make myself numb instead. then i punish myself for allowing feelings and emotions control my life, and all this time i haven't been allowing myself to fully feel and express these feelings and expressions. (see the irony of it? and see the repetitive and circular reasoning in it?) most of the time the strongest feeling i end up feeling is hatred, not necessarily toward others, but mostly to myself. so, i just don't know. it is in times like these that i find my solace in very few places, very few. do i dare admit to what that is, do i dare put it out in the open...because if i do, will reality hit and i come to realize that that too is just as fake?

there are certain notes/chords that when it is heard it seems to bring me out of my black hole of numbness and lets me feel a moment of...something...i don't know how to describe it...but it is there...a moment of something other than the numbing blackness...

then there is God, who, as i am told, loves and cares for me. and He is there when i am happy, and when i am sad, and when i am afraid...on and on...but sometimes it is hard, it is really hard to feel those holy arms around me...when i am in my black pit-alone and numb. sometimes it is just really, really hard to remember and know that He is there holding me and carrying me through. and to be honest, sometimes i don't remember that and i don't care. i rather sit in my hole and be numb and hate myself for my feelings and for who i am. i mean it is alot easier to do that then it is to remember that there is a God who is holding me with His invisible arms that i can't feel. again, i don't know.

so what i am i to do? do i dare let myself feel or sit in my comfortable black hole where i make myself numb? what should i feel? what should i do with my self-hatred? where do i find my peace?

for now...i will play myself a song that is carrying those notes/chords that bring me a moment of peace as it rings through my ears...then i will try to imagine those holy, invisible arms wrap around me (arms that i will not feel) and hold me...as i try to shed a tear that breaks the numbness that consumes my body and soul, and then sleep in peace.



psalms 4

Entry No. 7

so it has been a few days since i last posted. i will say i am very happy because i actually got up saturday morning and worked out for two hours. yes, i am very happy about that. as for the rest of the day on saturday i watched the last three discs of season 4 of friends. yes, i wasted a day on that.

yesterday was interesting. church was good, very good. i must say the worship each sunday this month has been just what i needed. although yesterday was very interesting, but yet good. apparently my pastor and another leader in the church had a vision and word about and for me. to be honest, i have never had that happen to me. i must say it was very helpful and encouraging.

after church we hit up wahoo's and had some tasty tacos then rented three movies, and then we watched all three of those, yes we watched three movies in a row yesterday. the cinema entertainment included, amistad (one which i have seen and love and insisted that they see it, it is a very inspiring movie), the heartbreak kid (eh, was so so), and eastern promises (russian mafia: very intense movie, but pretty good). i will be honest and say i am officially movied out.

as for today...got up at 11am, ate a bowl of cereal, went to work for an hour then came home, cleaned, and took a shower.

i am into some new music...i am loving the swell season (from the movie "once"), and the frames. i LOVE it! oh the movie "once" was amazing as well. everyone should go rent that.

have some deeper thoughts that maybe i will post later. maybe.

Friday, January 18, 2008

Entry No. 6

i am gonna start a new title series soon, the "entry no." deal is getting on my nerves. but i am one of those weird people that has to keep things in an order or something. i don't know how to explain it. i also have other weird quirks. i will enlighten you to a few...i have to clean things a certain way, and load the dishwasher in a certain way; i have to have the blankets perfectly even on all four sides of the bed when i go to bed; things have to be centered or balanced or straight; and tables have to be certain shapes...if they are this weird awkward shape...it drives me crazy.

ok, so my intentions of this post were not to list my ocd issues or weird quirks, but in fact create my "bucket list" or my list of things i wanna do before i get old so i can share all these crazy stories to my grandkids. you might be thinking "what the hell"...but last night i had a very exciting and enlightening conversation with a group of people about what we want to do that is crazy so we can tell our grandkids about it. does that make sense? (i believe that was a run on sentence but whatever). now we were all talking and we came up with some pretty good ones, and some pretty crazy ones. here is the list so far:
  • travel the world
  • go backpacking all over europe
  • go on a safari (and see the lions....yesssssss)
  • go to the arctic then go to the antarctic (there be penguins there =))
  • air gliding
  • skydiving (oh yes, after the air gliding we will see how that goes first)
  • road trip the USA and hit every state and their highlight
  • go to the equator
  • go to the amazon jungle
  • go to egypt and see the pyramids and the nile river
  • go to israel and see all the ancient ruins
that's just a start, but now it has got me thinking and i will be putting together a list and see how i can go about accomplishing these things. yessssssss.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Entry No. 5

so, i officially suck at working out in the morning. i had planned to get up on tuesday morning and this morning to go workout at the pool and swim some. failed both times. tuesday morning i woke up and then just fell back asleep. and this morning i didn't even wake up in time. so go me on working out in the morning.

well, i started my new job on tuesday afternoon. i must say, it is definitely not the most exciting job on the planet. all i do is stuff envelope after envelope, and on and on for what seems like forever. we affectionally call it the monkey job. why, because you could hire a monkey to do same thing and he could do it. so that was tuesday afternoon.

after that me and michaela chatted for a bit. again, we were supposed to go workout but we got caught up in our conversations that we missed out on that. it was a good time of discussion and processing and enlightenment. it was like talking about things that i realized i was saying them, that is what i needed to do for myself. things to think about and consider for when i want to spend time considering what my future could be and what i want it to be. things like, what does it mean to be who we are meant to be and do we about it; or what does it mean to be a woman to myslef and to God and eventually to a man; how to deal with conflict or unexpected hardships; school and work and housing; our parents influence on our lives and what it means for us now; what it means to be a christian and so much more. we finished our conversation off with a pizza and then she headed home for bed, while i watched some friends then went to bed.

yesterday i got ready for work and texted my mom happy birthday. went to work at the monkey job again, and stuffed another bazillion envelopes. dude, the job seriously makes me dizzy...it is kind of weird. i kill the time with my ipod and everything seems so much better that way. then i went home and made dinner and went to my other job to teach violin. last night we were supposed to meet up with our group of girls and talk and share about everything. we do this once i week it is kinda like an accountability group. we ususally meet at starbucks on wednesday evenings for a couple hours. well, half the group couldn't come so me and michaela decided to hit up Heroes, a great bar/restaurant. the food was great, the beer was great, and fellowship was great. it was a good way to end the evening. then i gave my mom a call to wish happy birthday and catch up with her. then i came home and crashed...messed around online for a bit watched the ending of friends. saw something that made me really sad on the computer so i shut off the tv and closed my computer and went to bed. i shed a few tears that never seemed to flow for years until about well, exactly a month ago. then i fell asleep.

well, maybe i will enlighten you about those tears on another post sometime in the future. yipee.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Entry No. 4

i think blogging should come back. i remember it was a huge crazy phase a few years ago, then it kinda died when myspace entered the world. you can blog on myspace, just not anything like you can on websites created just for blogging. anyways, nevermind.

so today went something like this...

-woke up and did the normal morning routine such as: eating a bowl of cereal and drinking a cup of tea, like i mentioned in the previous entry. then i got ready for work. i won't bore you with the details of these things.
-i received an email this morning stating that i would get a new roomate for next semester, and it just happened to be someone i know and definitely wouldn't mind living with, only to find out that that is probably a mistake and she has other housing plans. so it looks like i have the place to myself for the next five months. WOW!
-
i went to work at the pool. nothing too terribly exciting happened. all except for the record number of people for the month of January came today. a total of 11 people. (i told you it was exciting.)
-came home after work and found out that i did get that job i was hoping to get for the next couple of weeks. not exactly the most exciting of jobs. i hear this from previous employees of this job, and i also hear that it is best to go in with a charged ipod to kill the time much faster. basically i will be sorting and stuffing mucho envelopes. yipee. i go in tomorrow at 1:30pm. i do not exactly know when i get to get off, but i hear that is normal. basically he let's you decide when you need to leave....so i am going to assume and shoot for a 5pm departure. now that is exciting. haha, no i am glad i got it, i needed the extra hours and money for the next couple weeks. hopefully i can keep it for the spring semester for a couple hours a week for some extra dollars.
-following that i worked on some things online that i needed to take care of. called some local junior colleges for info on asl classes to fulfill my foreign language requirement on time so i can graduate when i plan to. i have a graduation goal and date written in stone that i must uphold to. so i am trying to make sure all goes well for that.
-after that exciting afternoon i left for work at the studio from 6-8pm. i had to do makeup lessons for my students. i had left for christmas vacation a week early, so i fulfilling my teaching duties this week. i also got payed tonight...which is amazingly good. otherwise i may not have been able to drive home after that. i seriously didnt have a dime in my purse or in my bank account, and i had about 10 miles left in my gas tank. thank God i got payed....and payed cash, so i was able to bring my gas tank up to half a tank with precious $3.06 gasoline. i also got some deodorant (that's another good thing), and soap, and orange juice. all very good necessary things. i am now broke again...money finally earned...is already gone. f*** money.

now i am home, catching up with friends and making plans for the rest of the week. i think i should go running tonight. i didn't get to last night, so i should definitely go tonight, but of course, now of all times i am feeling lazy and don't wanna. maybe by the time i finish this blog and wasting time on the internet i will want to go. but FRIENDS comes on at 11pm....hmmm....we will have to see how this works. tomorrow i plan to get up around 7am and go to the pool and workout/swim till 8am. we will see how this goes...but i am going. .then go to work at 1:30 and i assume get off at 5ish. oh and get to get some oranges at 5pm. a friend is bringing them by. workout and get buff with michaela at the fitness center at 6pm till 7pm. then grab some dinner (which i hear is going to be spam and rice, yum), then help move stuff for michaela (get even more buff...hehe). we will finish the day off with good beer and movie or an episode (or two, or a whole disc, haha) of FRIENDS.

ok, i suppose i should stop stalling and go run some calories off my body.

Entry No. 3

so the track was closed last night due to construction on it. i must say i was rather bummed about the closage of the track. last year i did a good job of somewhat consistently going to the fitness center or track to work out, i am trying to keep up that habit, and yet maybe be even more consistent. to be honest i do enjoy getting out and being active. go endorphins!!! i am going to start swimming again too. it is time to bring it all back again!

as of now, i just finished eating a bowl of cereal and drinking a cup of tea. gonna get ready for work (lifeguarding), then i have to go to work tonight to teach. i am making up for the week i missed before christmas. i am waiting to here back from the office on campus to see if i can get some hours from them and earn a bit more money. i had an interview with them last thursday and he told me he would let me know today. we will see.

so, the plan is to try to hit the track again tonight, it is supposedly supposed to open up again today. i sure hope so.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Entry No. 2

the nap was nice. hopefully i will be very productive this week. tomorrow i find out if i got the two week job of stuffing envelopes for extra cash. the semester starts in two week, and it is definitely going to whoop my booty. as for now, i just finished dinner and am wasting my time on the internet. i plan on going running in a little bit, after the food i just ate settles. i plan to run another mile, and do more if i can. i just hope my neck will just heal and won't hurt anymore.

mmhmm. ;)

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Entry No. 1

don't ask me why i did this. because to be honest, i do not know why. i used to have an account on here, but i never used it and i have no idea what my username and password is, so here is the new deal. for some reason i, one who never records my thoughts in words, find it easier to do so on the world wide web. i don't know how that makes me feel, exactly, but i guess i have come to the conclusion i don't give a damn anymore. i promise to try and keep it entertaining, but no guarantees on that. so then here goes my meaningless thoughts and ramblings. enjoy, and if you don't...well then i apologize.

PS. Happy 2008 everyone! Cheers!