my sense of direction

When I decided that I was going to post every week, I decided I was going to if I felt like I had something to say or not, just so that I would stay in the pattern and it would force me to be creative occasionally. Maybe. Yeah, nothing creative is really going to happen hear. Sorry kids!

Instead, you get to read the staff essay that I wrote for the travel magazine Stowaway that I am currently working with. It didn't get picked...and it uhh might not be very good, but I already wrote it, so it might as well be shared somewhere, right? I'll include pictures to make it more entertaining and link to a French sounding song for you to listen to, since the essay takes place in Paris after all. I will also own up to the fact that some slight details of the story were altered for the purposes of the magazine. 

      I've grown up traveling, so at times I might be overly confident in my ability to get around in a foreign country. But, I never realized until I was in a foreign county, by myself, and without cell phone use how heavily I rely on my GPS to get me where I need to go. This problem became very obvious to me during a semester a couple of years ago that I spent studying in Pairs. Getting lost seemed like a pretty much daily occasion for the first month (and honestly probably for the entire 3 months that I spent in Europe). On my first day in the city, my study abroad director took the group on a little tour, showing us where our classes would be, which metro station to get off for the building, where we would be going to church on Sundays, and how to get to some of the major sites in the city.

     The directions seemed simple enough. I paid close attention to where we were and how to navigate the streets to our classroom building just a few blocks away from the Pompidou Center, a modern art museum in Paris. Come Monday morning, I got all ready for my first day of classes in a foreign country, hoped on the train into the city, got off at the proper stop, and promptly found myself very lost and very without any clue as to where I should be going.

     Luckily, my French is good enough that I was able to ask for directions. Unluckily, the building my classes were in were on a small street unknown to everyone I asked. Rather than making it to class that Monday morning, I wandered the city aimlessly having no idea where I was going. Most people get frustrated by being lost, but me? I loved it. I may have been missing my first class, and I was slightly worried about what my director would think of this, but I was exploring this perfect city in a way that wouldn't have been possible if I had made it directly to my destination.

     I was discovering little side streets, beautiful buildings, and sites I may have missed had I known where I was going or had my face been glued to my phone to direct me. I was chastised slightly for my missed class, but on one of my first days I had encountered Paris in a way that mesmerized me. For the rest of my study abroad, I was never afraid to get lost. I let myself wander, discovered new districts, and ignored any sense of direction that I may have, because this is how I discovered Paris. My Paris. The rainy side streets and the sunny pathways. I fell more and more in love with the city every time I got lost and wandered somewhere new. Getting lost may have failed many times to get me where I wanted to go, but every time it got me exactly where I needed to be.

peace. love. and getting lost.

my gratitude

To start out with, I want you to watch this video. It's called The Science of Happiness-- An Experiment in Gratitude:

This video is from a site called SoulPancake. The site was created by Rainn Wilson, who you probably recognize as Dwight from the office, but it turns out this guy is a lot more than just odd ball jokes. I have been watching through a lot of the videos from SoulPancake recently, really just because I think that a lot of them have beautiful messages and give some really fascinating perspectives on life. (You probably remember the viral video Kid President also put out by them.)

Anyways, this video really got me thinking about gratitude, which is quite appropriate given that Thanksgiving is this week (one of my absolute favorite holidays!!). I think that writing is one of the most cathartic experiences you could possibly have and so it has recently become my goal to start journaling more. 

Over the past while, I have mostly used this blog as my journal, and this has been incredibly effective for me. I mostly use my personal journal for emotions and experiences that I don't feel comfortable sharing with a mass audience, which lets be honest are mostly when I am upset by something, hurt, or confused. So, if you read my journal, I probably wouldn't sound like the most positive person, and this is not what I want. In particular I like to write letters to people in my journal. Really this is the most effective way I have ever found to release emotions and deal with how I am feeling about someone. These letters are never meant to be delivered or read to the person, just to help me figure out how to deal with whatever I am dealing with. But, most of the time (...ok all the time) these letters are not to people because I am grateful for them, or proud of them, or happy to have them in my life, they are because I feel like they hurt me. So, the new goal, start writing letters to people not because I am upset with them, but because I am amazed by them. Because I am glad to be a part of their life. Because I am glad that they are a part of mine. I don't know if I would ever be bold enough to call someone and read my letter to them, but I'll be sure to start sneaking into conversation how much you all really mean to me. 

I thought a lot about including a letter to someone on my blog here, but I honestly couldn't pick just one person. There are too many people that I could talk about impacting my life. So, instead my shout out is to everyone who has ever cared about me enough to read my blog. When I started this, I had no idea where I was going, but I just started writing, and I started posting, and people started reading it, and that has meant more to me than you can ever imagine. I seriously have no idea how to react when people tell me that they read my blog, because I feel like sometimes I share some very personal things one here, but at the same time I want people to read what I am writing. I want to share with you, whether this is the first time you have ever opened my page or you are an every week reader, if you are my mom or someone totally random who has somehow found my blog, thank you for thinking that what I have to say means something. Everyone has an incredible and unique voice, and over the past few years this has been my way of sharing mine. I probably would have continued posting on my blog even if no one ever looked at it, no one ever commented, or no one ever told me hey I read your blog last night and I thought it was great. But, the fact that all of those things have happened, makes me excited to post on my blog every week and express myself in a way that I am not always able to do when I am just shooting words out of my mouth. The amount of support I have felt from the people around me in my adventures in blogging has impacted me in positive ways that I never could have imagined. So here's to you for taking the time to read my blog, and making me feel like my voice matters. Thank you. I am grateful for you in ways you would never expect. 

Happy Thanksgiving ya turkeys. Be sure to spread the gratitude and love and little extra this week. It will make you a happier person!

peace. love. and gratitude.

my rain or shine

So, I've been the worst blogger ever recently, but at least I've been thinking a lot about it because I am really excited about redesigning (I know I've been saying this for forever. uhg). I've also been trying to come up with some interesting ideas for posting (so if you have any PLEASE pass them along).

Seriously one of my greatest fears is being boring, so I never want to bore anyone with my posts. When I go back to school it's weird that my life kind of simultaneously picks up and slows down at the same time. All the sudden I become a lot more busy, but I'm not necessarily busy with the most interesting stuff (yeah no more packing up and jetting off to NY for a weekend). 

Unfortunately, I'm not feeling very interesting at the moment. So let me tell you about a few things that have been swirling around in my mind recently...

I have been feeling so peaceful recently.
I think it's because I can see the mountains from my window,and this makes me very happy. 

We've also had a beautiful mixture of

rain

and 

sunshine

recently and the wonder of what the sky will give me every morning when I wake up exhilarates me. 

Studying inside when it's raining is so soothing.

Thank you rain.

And studying outside when it's sunny is so rejuvenating.

Thank you sunshine. 

Hopefully, I will be able to start getting my homework done before Sunday's so that I can actually post at my regular time, 

and hopefully my blog never bores you,

and hopefully I will finish redesigning soon.

wait. also. my friends are cute. 

peace. love. and rain or shine. 

p.s. really I would love to get some feedback on what you think I should be blogging about. anything you've ever really liked? anything you ever hated? you all know where to reach me.

my course load

Maybe this interests you, maybe it doesn't, but I thought it could be fun to give you a run down of my course load for this semester.


Textbook Editing-- Whoa whoa, try not to get too excited about this one, I know it sounds thrilling. No, but really I think it will be a good class. The teacher seems great, and also seems very willing to link textbook editing to other realms of editing. I just really can't see myself editing textbooks, because I think experience has shown that I tend to get really sleepy and/or find myself on doing anything besides reading my textbook when I am supposed to be doing that.

Digital Culture--So excited about this class. This is literally a class where we blog. Stop it. Did they make this class for me? It's a bit of a secret dream of mine to be blog famous one day, so maybe this class will give me some useful skills to getting me a little closer. But, pretty much this class is exploring the digital age and what this does to/for the humanities. We exploring this through a mixture of reading Moby Dick, blogging, google+, and various other resources. (The group blog I am posting on is www.teamqueequeg.blogspot.com in case you are interested in hearing about my thoughts on Moby Dick and digital culture.)

American Literature from 1885-1914--Hi Mark Twain how's it going? This class will explore literature from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of WWI. This is the era of short stories and I love a good short story (plus it will be nice to have at least one class where I can focus on shorter pieces rather than novels so I hopefully don't get too reading overwhelmed).

Post Modern American Literature (1960-Present)--I have studied so many classics in classroom settings that I think it will be really interesting to study some modern works. We have a lot of novels to work out way through this semester, but ultimately I think it will be very rewarding.

Psychology 111--My very last GE! There are a lot of freshmen in that class, so I've kind of decided that it's probably most safe that I talk to no one in there in fear of accidentally getting asked out by a freshmen. Plus, if my Uncle Ken taught me anything when I came out to BYU, it was never meet a boy in a 100 level class. But, it will be a nice break to have this one class that is a departure from all my English and editing.


Well there it is. I for sure have a full load, but it's my senior year, I should be an expert at this college thing by now, right? RIGHT??? (goodness I hope so)


peace. love. and school work.

my other blogging

Some may know that the original reason that I started this blog was as an exercise in writing and in an effort to get a little more familiar with the world of online publishing. To further this interest of mine, last semester I became a bit more official in my blog writing. I have been working as a writer and editor on the blog for Brigham Young University's journal Stance for the Family. The articles are no hard hitting journalism. We publish recipes on Monday, activities around Provo on Wednesday, and editorials on Friday. Feel free to check some of the articles out that I wrote. I'll warn you though, the blog is still very new and as a blog team we are still figuring out how to run it, but it still has some cool stuff going on. You can also follow us on Facebook at BYU Stance or on Twitter @StanceBYU.

www.stanceforthefamily.byu.edu/

peace. love. and blogs. 

my 100th post

     I remember one time in kindergarten talking to some kids in the class, and in true child form all attempting to one up each other. We were talking about how many days we had been alive. Now since we were all about six we all would have been alive for about 2,190 days. This number as a six year old is practically unfathomable. We were all throwing out numbers like 80 because apparently that seemed much more reasonable to us. One kid ventured to say that he has been alive for 100 days. Impossible. I was actually certain that this was impossible. I clearly did not have a very accurate sense of time yet. 100 seemed like such a huge number and really it still does. That is why I am so proud to say that this is my 100th blog post. Impossible your six year old self says? Well it's not.
     This is really my 100th post on this blog!! I am amazed that I have kept up posting every week (shh shh, I know I'm late today). I have loved adventuring through the blog-o-sphere and coming up with posts for each week. Sometimes I know on Monday what I want to post about the next Sunday and I get really excited about writing it, and other times I have no idea and I have to think extra hard. But, that's what has been so fun about keeping this blog. I feel like I have learned a lot about myself, and I suppose anyone who ever reads my blog probably finds out more than they ever need to know haha.

Here's to another 100 posts. 

My sister pointed out that such an occasion deserved balloons. Since I received no real balloons for the occasion, here are some virtual ones. 

We can pretend like this massive balloon release was in my honor. 

peace. love. and 100.