Things I Actually Write About in a Journal.

Here we go. If you were ever wondering what it is that I write about in my journal that I carry around with me, pretty much everywhere I go, this is an ideal time to look into it. Most people assume that with me, it's more like a diary and probably filled with a lot of "Dear Diary, today was a banner day, not once did I have bad thoughts..." or whatever you would think is "girly." Instead I generally opt for the fleshing out of ideas and the relating of what I think on certain topics. Yes, there is also the thinking too much about things that people say and do to me, but for the most part, my favorite journal entries go into what I'm thinking about on things that are around me.

So here it goes, this was actually written in a journal of mine, and it's worthy of blogging. I hope someone will read this and either open a debate with me about it or have something to say about it. I think that's one of the reasons that I generally would rather journal, because most of the time when I would like feedback on a blog I've posted, I don't get it. So my theory is that I'd rather just keep my thoughts to myself since no one is responding.

Ok start now.

I was talking to a couple of friends the other day about relationships and it got me to thinking about what a blessing it is that I've never been in one myself (as much as I've complained about it in the past). I've gotten to observe all the messed up things that women do when they're in one and also the jacked up things that guys do. Don't get me wrong there's also a fair share of sweet and totally romantic things that I've witnessed also, but this is the exception not the rule.

When it comes to relationships it truly seems like everyone is fighting to have the upper hand and from what I've seen they're all just jacking themselves up further. I used to think that if I were just in a relationship, then I'd be happy; if I just had someone to cuddle up and watch movies on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I'd be happy; but after years of watching girls define themselves (and consequently lose themselves) by the relationships they're in I finally came to a FULL understanding of the fact that NO relationship - platonic or otherwise can ever really define you, or better, help you find out who you really are. I've watched friends of mine who entered into relationships and changed who they were and what they did for the guy, and they disappeared, rarely to be seen or heard from. The first time it happened I was livid, now it just seems like that's what happens. Why does it seem like we have to lose ourselves to be in a relationship? I understand compromise but giving up something you love because the other person doesn't enjoy it as much as you do? I think that's utterly ridiculous.

My theory then is this: If you go into a relationship not knowing who you are on your own - out of the relationship - chances are you are going to wind up defining yourself by that relationship, and then if/when that relationship ends, you'll lose yourself.

This is why I'm so grateful for the time I've got to observe and the time I've had to observe the relationships around me. I know who I am and what I want in a relationship. Granted the independence I've found during this time could be detrimental to a relationship but my hope would be understanding through communication. In any relationship it's important, but especially if you're feeling smothered or neglected - and other varying less extreme emotions that can cause frustration in a relationship. I guess that's all that you can really hope for though - someone who can understand where it is that you're coming from and understand and know enough when to ask questions if they perceive something is wrong. Know you don't know everything and always remember the subtle signals NEVER work or are ever going to get someone's attention or alert them. You either tell them exactly the problem, or live with it.

I would love to put my theory about me knowing who I am and what I want in a relationship to a test, but that would mean actually being IN a relationship, and why mess with a good thing when it's going? I'm finally at a comfortable place where I've got boys to flirt with that I don't have feelings for, and not a single man on the horizon worth the time and effort of starting a relationship. Being single, I am happy and thriving, I mean I can spend hours by myself either doing something or nothing and I'm fine. Of course I still love being around a ton of people, because I'm a social animal and thrive off of human interaction and watching human interaction (who doesn't love going somewhere and people watching?!), but I revel in my alone time when I get it too.

I'm glad that right now, with the promise I made myself and a few other people about not dating this year, that I've got the time to get to know myself better and just really question where it is that I'm going. I have vague ideas of what I WANT my life to look like, but I don't have any plans in place to get to that place. For the last seven years, since I started working at CVS basically, my life has felt like it's been in the same stasis, despite most of the time being in school, or working two jobs. I feel like right now, this year, something has to change there or I'm just going to stay put forever, and for me that is NOT an option. I was thinking this morning about actors, writers, musicians, singers, etc. people who have a passion for what they do, and I was thinking how amazing it must feel to wake up in the morning and go do something you love to do, instead of waking up and doing something you are either just good at, or something you have to do. I want to do something I love for the rest of my life. I love people and I love helping people, I want to find a job helping people, problem is there aren't many of those out there. I think what I'd really love however is collaborating with someone on ideas to start a charity or just how to give back to people who really need it. I was telling a friend about how my dream if I had a million dollars would be to invest my money wisely, pay off all debt, sell the unnecessary items that are clogging up my life, and live and work in a place where my work helps, even if I have to move around like a gypsy. I just want to use my life to make a difference, and working for almost a decade at a drugstore in suburban California, is NOT the way to do it. My ideas are so much bigger than the footprint my life is leaving at the moment, and I want my life to look more like my ideas than what it is at the moment.

Ninety

I've lost 90 pounds.

I'VE LOST NINETY POUNDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy freakin' crap!!! Literally guys, that's like losing Nicole Ritchie or Ashely Olsen... Off your body. Wow.

I feel great! I feel different. I feel like there's something that's going to change in an instant and I'll be right back where I was a year ago. I won't let that happen though. I'm going to work my ass off if I have to to keep the weight off. I've never felt this good in my entire life. I mean my whole life I was the chubby girl (and to own it, I still mentally feel like the chubby girl, I don't think I'll ever feel skinny). I know people look at me differently, I can see it, I'm not that oblivious. Whether or not they know that they're treating me differently is one thing, the fact that they do, just pisses me off. What, you couldn't be nice to me when I was fat? Example A: The girl who I knew in high school that didn't really like me all that much. She came up to me one day while I was at work and out of NO WHERE gives me a hug. Um, thanks that's nice, I hope you feel good about yourself now. I guess that just shows you who your true friends are, and luckily I've surrounded myself with people who look at me the same way and only have good things to say about who I was and who I am now. I feel like I've got some quality people on my team.

All that matters to me at this moment in time however is finding a pair of jeans that I can dance in that won't slide off my butt. Let me just say that dancing and having to hold my jeans up was not a very comfortable thing to do last night. So now I'm off to go find me some jeans, I need my arse to look good, there's supposedly going to be actual cowboys at cowboy country this weekend! ;)

Ideas..................

Here I am sitting at the computer while it's pouring cats and dogs outside. It's insane. Anywho, last night saw me sitting in church mulling a bunch of ideas around in my head. About my writing about where to go from here, about what to do with my freaking life. And all I want to to is crawl back into bed and just pretend that none of these things are going on in my life.

I feel like my subconscious is playing tricks on me, I keep having these unwelcome dreams that are floating topics of conversations that I've had earlier in the day. I just don't like it.

Sometimes I want to settle down, and others I want to roam around... both would be nice, but I think I'll never fully be able to decide. If I chose one I'll always wonder what the other may have held.

Dying of Coughter

So tonight was my dad and step-mom's anniversary dinner, we went to The Fish Company in Los Alamitos, really good food people! I hate fish, so I got steak, and man was it yummy! Generally not the case when you go to a fish place right?

So we're sitting at dinner, and talking and my sister starts talking about a situation that I was in that I hadn't actually disclosed to my step-mom (luckily my dad was at the opposite end of the table at this point in the evening, because had he been sitting there he would have craped his pants about this situation) and she looks at me with these big eyes and is all shocked. My sister keeps going on and exaggerating the situation a bit, so that the way she's saying it, it just sounds so much worse than it actually is. I'm laughing my butt off, because our friend of the family is sitting right there and he's shocked too and putting his two cents in, and me I'm just shaking my head not able to fully explain the situation, because I'm basically just trying not to die from this laugh/cough thing I've got going on. Hearing this situation come out of my sisters mouth into my step-mom's relatively innocent ears is maybe the highlight of my week. Luckily, I know my step-mom isn't going to tell my dad about this situation, because I asked her to keep it hush hush... she knows that my dad would flip out. My life is so interesting.

So now I'm going to go clean my room to the point that it's safe to go to sleep (aka: take the crap that I just brought home from my mom's house off my bed and re-make my bed) take some nyquil cough, put on my jammies and hit the sack, a lot of thinking to do tomorrow! More than I'd like to think about at the moment.

Random Things I Hate

I'm going to go on a little rant here and talk about a few things that I hate.

People not telling me if something I'm doing is bugging them. I would rather have you tell me "hey Lily, when you do (insert action here) it (insert adjective) me. Can you please stop?" than have you just keep it to yourself until your so angry that you blow up in my face. If you've got an issue with me freaking tell me!!! Idiots!

I also HATE it when normally nice people suddenly turn into jerks for no reason. Like for example if you're teasing someone, there is a fine line between teasing and being a jerk, and maybe they just don't know where that line is, but all of a sudden you're wondering why they're saying this ridiculous thing to you.

I HATE that I'm questioning my faith right now. For a long time I thought my faith was pretty strong that I was rolling with the punches, and God was taking care of me... Now I just feel like He abandoned ship, and left me to sink... Maybe I'm crazy here, or maybe I've just been trying to control things too much. I just know that at life group tonight I didn't feel like I was all there, like there's just too much that I'm missing right now. I felt like "Debbie Downer" because nothing seems to be going right in my life... Oh yeah, I've got a GAZILLION little things to be thankful for, but the big things in my life that are going wrong make those great little things seem like chocolate chips when all you want is a giant Hershey's bar...

I hate that it's a continual battle for me to stay happy sometimes... Because sometimes I just want to sit in the corner and be left alone and others I NEED to be the center of attention. If you know me, you'll notice that the times when I NEED to be the center of attention is when something drastic happens and I start talking about it all the time, or making little things big that are really nothing... Or I go and do something like chop all my hair off or dye it blonde after 7 years......... Not that doing those things makes me the center of attention, but a lot of attention generally gets diverted my way... for a bit, and then I have to go and do something out of character or outrageous to get my "fix" again. Call it "only child syndrome" if you will... Heck I do...

I hate that most of the time when I say I don't want to date, I'm secretly concocting a plan to find a date, or hoping that by saying I don't want to date, magically someone will come out of the woodwork who wants to date me... Not that any of my plans work, they're mostly crack pot plans that don't have a shot in hell of ever working, nor are they anything but a day dream... I guess it's just me being bitter that it's never me that is the object of someone's affection... As lame and pathetic as I know that sounds... I always think of that old country song about wishing on someone else's star, and how it has always seemed to apply to me...

I hate that the most random and minor things like a black Nissan Altima driving next to me on my way home tonight reminds me of the guy I had a thing for in College... or how I really want to text him and be like "eat it sucker! look at me now!"

I hate that I want to tell off every guy who I've ever had a crush on because for whatever reason, again, if I like a guy it's inevitable that they will never feel anything towards me... Yeah, I'm gonna be pretty self centered here for a second and say they don't know what the hell they're missing out on. Maybe it's the hormones raging through my body that are putting me in this FAN-FREAKIN-TASTIC mood, but seriously they haven't got a flipping clue... And the great thing is that none of them are going to get clues any time soon, but maybe one day it'll hit them like a hockey puck in the nose... Or not, I am me, and most people can't stand me... let me rephrase that, most people can't take me (I'm a lot to handle), they can stand me, but they can't stand my brutal honesty, and when I'm not brutally honest with someone, I just feel fake, and that friendship just feels off...

Obviously I'm not good at hiding my emotions, and that's another thing I hate... because people can just read it...

Whatever, I am what I am. Who needs them?

Adventures in Color

So I've done the bald thing, I was a bald baby girl for the first year of my life, my parents ruthlessly defending my femininity by placing bows of pink ribbons on my head... I was adorable.

When I finally got some hair it was blonde, like cute little girl on Easter with blonde hair and blue eyes blonde... I was the epitome of childhood cuteness.

My hair got darker as I got older, but was still in the family of blonde... most would call it dirty blonde. Then came the fateful day: 8th grade graduation. For some reason, my step mom and I got it in our heads to highlight my hair... with even blonder streaks, and STREAKS they were. My aunt saw me, and said, what the HELL did you do to your hair? Promptly set up an appointment with my mom and me to come and correct my woops. Since then, around the tender age of 13 I've been dying my hair.

I've gone almost every color... even to almost black at one point. I've loved every color. But since I turned 20 I've always been dying my hair darker, I feel like it's time to go back to what MIGHT be normal for my hair color.

I like to change things up a bit, and while I love being a red head, and the color looks good, I feel like I want to see just how much fun blondes have... So I've been thinking about it for a while, and tomorrow starts the process of going blonde. I don't want to fry my hair, so my cousin has warned me before hand that it's going to take a bit of time to actually achieve a look that I want. But I'm okay with that, as far as I'm concerned it'll be like going from winter to spring to summer with my hair color!!

So I'm jumping off the edge of this one, hopefully I won't hate what it looks like, I doubt I will, my cousin is an amazing colorist, if you ever want someone, let me know!

Conflict and Resolution

I find it utterly amazing that I can feel three completely separate, conflicting, yet totally connected emotions at once. I feel like Bella in Breaking Dawn, just after she becomes a vampire, and she realizes that she can carry on a conversation with someone, and think about three other things at the same time.

The main emotion I THINK I'm experiencing is regret, which is a new one for me. I tend to take the things life sends my way and look at them as lessons, not things to regret. Why regret? Mainly because I regret hoping that something could work out for me, in more capacities than matters of the heart. My life just seems to ebb and flow between a relatively normal stasis that changes, oh, never, and an upheaval that causes me to spend more money than I have. I have no idea how I'm going to afford a new car. My heart also, it can't take what it's going through. I know that I only have myself to blame, and the first sign that I might even like a guy is the first sign that he'll never be interested in me. Maybe that sounds self defeating, but it seems to be the lot I've got in life. I'm not going to be bitter about it, it is what it is. Accept it and move on.

I promised myself I wouldn't date this year anyways, so being upset is an interesting emotion to have right now for me. I feel like I have to cut myself off like I did when I was in school and focus on things that matter. However denying yourself the one thing you've wanted for so long can often result in hoping for something, and there in lies my problem. I hope too much. I have the audacity to hope my someday will come. I have faith that someday will come. My someday isn't any day soon though. I won't let it happen. I can't let it happen.

I'm also happy. Strangely. The only thing I can think of is that I've got some pretty amazing friends & family. I've made some new friends in the last year that I just can't help but be happy about. Even the last few weeks, mere acquaintances have become better friends, and that makes me really happy. I thrive on being around people and the more people I have on my side the better. I think the thing I'd want all them to know is that I'm on their side too... fiercely loyal, till the end.

I guess I'll leave you with this: Everyone tells me that things happen when you least expect them to. How that is possible for me? I don't know. I'm the kind of person who lives day to day and breath to breath, and when a situation comes up, I take it head on. Why plan for a future that you're not really sure will happen? If I live by faith and not by sight it's a lot easier sometimes, but it's also a lot harder because you don't know what's coming, kind of like walking in the dark through my house, you never know if you're going to cut your toe on a sawzall or trip over a screwdriver into a saw horse... But it has it's benefits, you can start to feel your way around and once your eyes (or heart) adjust you can sort of start to see the picture before your eyes. There's benefits to having a rough idea of what is coming, and I've got that. I only sort of know what is going to happen this week... next week is kind of blurry. Knowing I don't know is hard, but I'm willing to take it one day at a time and learn from my actions, and my dashed hopes.

It's like my very very good friend Diana says: "Wait for the guy that treats you like a princess." However, I'm slightly convinced that there are no more princes left in this world. Here you go God, prove me wrong. I challenge you to that.

Yes, I just challenged God, what's He gonna do? The only thing He can do... Prove me wrong.

Purple Mascara & Gold eyeshadow.

I'm going to switch it up... maybe...

I've got the tools to change it up, but the question is do I use them? I should just use them.

I've decided if my car gets totaled that I'm going to look into moving to DC. It just seems like a good decision to make, I'd probably be able to find a job rather quickly there... I think... but then again, you never know.

Inconvienient

My life seems to do this cycle thing, where one month, the outlook is good, and then the next month, it's tragically different. I can't tell you why this happens or even how for that matter, but the truth of it is that I try to get ahead, and then it just doesn't work. Take for instance last month... I worked my butt off at two jobs, and didn't have a day off from November 24th to December 24th. I was EXHAUSTED! Now I'm back to just working one job, and I don't know what to do with myself in my "free time."

My father informed me last night that, while I have this whole economic crisis to give me some sort of "excuse" it might start looking soon as though I'm unmotivated to get a job in the field that I got my degree in, as I haven't found a job in political science yet. This information was from our lovely city clerk, who my dad is friends with, and has been kind enough to send some job leads my way. The only thing that I can gather from this is that I have to start donning my best "I give a damn" face and start hitting up the political social circuit again. Not really a fan of that as most of the people that attend these "mixers" are cougars and men who just frankly don't care what women have to say about the "issues of the day." I am not a fake person and having to hang around fake people is not something that I look forward to, but I guess if I want to get ahead in the world of politics, I either have to, or I can just fly by and let it all come crashing down around me.

Of course the problem of relevance and what might be perceived as unmotivated stasis, could have been prevented if my dad hadn't issued a ban on me going back to school. I find it hilarious that had my dad allowed me to start my Masters last year, A) I wouldn't be having the problems I'm having financially, B) I'd be half done, and C) I'd probably be able to start as a substitute teacher as soon as next fall and looking for a job as a teacher soon after. But how do you completely counter someone who on one hand is right (I should get a "normal" full time job before I start my MA) but on the other hand is completely wrong, but has been kind and generous enough to let me live with him... rent free!

I'm so grateful for what I have, and I'm blessed really but I just need to get my head on straight and hit the ground walking... How's that song go? "These boots were made for walking..."

And that's just what I should do, I just need the right opportunity to come along for me to walk to.

Inspired

So it's been too dang long since I actually posted something on a blog or kept up a blog. Back in 2004 (cause that feels like a freakin' lifetime ago) I used to keep up a blog fairly regularly... even if I just went on to post that I was annoyed at work. It was my life and I wrote about it.

Then I started getting chastised that I wrote too much, gave away too many of my emotions and no one really wanted to hear about how I was lonely. So I retreated to the comfort of not posting online and actually scrawling out what I felt on paper, while it's nice to go back and read those times now, I feel like something was lost there... Like I had something going that could have been great, but was cut short due to criticism.

So here I go again... gonna do this... basically inspired by a friend...

This year, I'm hoping it's a helluva lot different from last year, I'm hoping that the changes from last year continue and hold. So far this year has been INTERESTING to say the least...

New Years weekend was amazing, I celebrated my year of dancing at Cowboy Country, and had a blast doing it!!! Then Sunday night came crashing down in an accident... on PCH car came out of nowhere... I'm dealing with this one... I'll let you know how it goes.