Growing up

So I have suddenly come to the realization that I am growing up. Yes, I've known it for a long time, I am 23, I've seen it coming, I've seen it slowly happen, but just lately I have really realized it. The shock of graduating with two degrees still hasn't quite sunken in and I'm really not sure it ever will. I used to think that I could never do grad school, I wanted to be done with school as soon as possible and done for good, but ending things isn't as easy as it seems. I think I could go on to be a student forever; I used to think Karen was just nuts, but now I totally understand what she's doing. There will be no grad school for me, since what I want to do doesn't take a masters, just special training in the field, though I have to admit the thought of getting a masters in psychology crosses my mind more than once a month. But anyway, that was a tangent, point being, I realized that I am growing up, not only realized it but have been acting on it. I recently thanked my mother for everything she has done for me, I know she has always been concerned that she babied me too much since she would break down and do things for me, like filling out my financial aid applications, calling people for me to get things done etc. In high school I used to be afraid to call and order pizza and refused to talk to anyone I didn't know. I freaked out at the sight of big paperwork with questions I didn't want to understand.

My mom told me that people used to get on her case about how she was ruining me by doing things for me and not forcing me to do them myself. But I disagree, I think everyone comes out of their shell at different times and I think she has always made the right choices with me, most people don't understand me, I'm a different kind of kid. With all her help she has made transitions for me much more gradual and in doses I can handle emotionally. I have now gotten to the point where I want to do things on my own, I want to fill out the big scary paperwork, I want to talk to people who can help me with going to school. Sure, I still get freaked out because the big picture can all be so overwhelming, but I don't let the fear take a hold of me and I venture on and just concentrate on the small things one at a time because I know it will all add up in the end and I can get everything done if I apply myself (bit of self talk there). Over the last several years I've learned how to order pizza over the phone, how to call the bank or electric company when they screw something up, take care of my own finances and other responsibilities, and now I have the opportunity to take care of my own school needs.

Moving across the country will be an amazing experience and I do feel like I'm finally ready, or if not quite yet I will be in five months. Emotional preparation is everything to me, once I can get my emotions in order, everything else seems to follow nicely. I do want to be a grown up, I will never lose my child mentality or love and joy of life, probably never lose my gullibility, but that's what makes me fun! But I am ready to hold my own hand and make a stand by myself. I will never stop needing the love and support from my parents and I will always appreciate everything they do for me, but support constantly changes its definition throughout a child's life I think and figuring out the definition is the hard part sometimes if it doesn't come naturally right away or if it is deadened by strict deadlines people give in life. There are no lines in life that make things come to a strict end, everything takes a transition and everything is gradual, sometimes you just have to let the transition go by itself and not try to force it to end just because you set a deadline in your own head. No one has that kind of control. So yes, I am growing up, I feel it, I see it, I know it, I accept it, I am living it.

Mommy and me

Jammin

Daddy and me

Editorial Cartoon May 2007

Haha

What color of crayon are you?

Okay so this is kind of fun. I was inspired when I was asked the question “What color of crayon are you?” Well, there are so many colors of crayons and it changes from day to day or mood to mood. But I had to find out more about the colors of crayons and I found this wonderful site that names all the crayon colors and shows the colors and then when you click on them it gives you the personality traits of the hue, the hue’s facts, the family it belongs to, the year it was introduced, the box it was introduced into and then shares a “Colorful story” about the hue. So I highly encourage you to go to the site (linked at the bottom of this entry), pick a color that is appealing to you, then read all about that color and see how it fits into your life/current mood. The psychology of colors is a fascinating topic indeed, very insightful.

Today for some reason I picked chestnut, here are my results!

Crayola Crayon - chestnut

Personality Traits for this hue: *earthy* *not at all frivolous* *dislikes showiness* *dependable* *comfortable*

Hue Family: Brown
Year Introduced: 1999
Box Introduced Into: Box of 120

Colorful stories:
I love the autumn weather and brown just seems to state that time of year along with oranges, yellows and deep reds, but you only asked for three of my favorites so I had to leave the others out!
Chestnut, a brown above all browns is beautiful and unique, a way to let people know how you feel. Love is inside of chestnut, and I want to be able to share it! This crayon makes it possible!


Haha, hours of amusement, I’m telling you! I wonder what that says about me... I'll keep sharing my color of the day.

http://www.crayola.com/colorcensus/history/current_120_colors.cfm

P.S. Karen, remember when I texted you and said I was "mountain medow" that day? You should read the profile of mountain medow and then read the text I sent you, I thought it was funny how it reflected the personality traits of that color haha, I love this stuff!

No penny's for this thought

I sit here wondering, pondering, everything that is going on in my life right now. I can see a noticeable change in myself over the last eight months. It’s a drastic, scary, incomprehensible change. I feel like everything I’ve known has come crashing down, all the walls are falling over as I realize not everything I believe is real, or what I thought I believed. That there are some things in life that I’ve held on strong to that just don’t exist, or I’ve reshaped and created into something that I’ve held true but was a fathom of the truth. I found an old diary/journal of mine from 8th/9th grade. I don’t even remember ever keeping a diary or journal. I sat down and read the few pages that were in there and I was opened up to a world I had completely forgotten. Certain memories I’ve gone over in my own head so many times they’ve become more like fantasies than realities. I don’t know how my perspective of my past became so skewed.

But it’s something else that has made me realize that things may not be what they appear, that if your intuition tells you differently than your head, than your intuition is probably right. I’ve done things I never thought I’d do because I felt like they would be too terrible and I found out nothing bad happened, and I was confused. I almost feel like you don’t really know what’s real until you’ve experienced it. It’s odd, I don’t even know how to express myself, which usually isn’t a problem for me at all. I guess this is part of life, part of growing up. I am finally reaching stages that I knew most people reached but never thought I would, like packing up the old stuffed animals and “growing up” some more.

I know I am an extremely aware person, but I do wonder if other people notice these stages when they happen or if they just go through life living and changing and never stop to notice until they look back and reflect and say “oh yea, I went through that.” Sometimes I wish I was that way. Sometimes I wish I didn’t notice things as much and I could just silently walk through life and experience things and not over think and question everything. But alluding to Karen’s blog about not feeling things, what would that make life like, bland? I guess I’d rather have a little spice, especially if that means I can at least experience the good along with the bad. No wonder I continue to put myself out there, no matter my fears, I keep going and I keep being disappointed, but I know that can’t last forever and how will I ever find that good if I don’t go searching. Keep the hope alive I suppose. Keep the hope alive.

A Society of Fear

"Protect yourself and your identity!

This one is definitely worth passing along! Please take the time to watch.

This is a 3 1/2 minute video produced by the Broward
County, FL Sheriff's Office. Identity thieves are at it again, this
time targeting people at gas stations. This sort of crime never
occurred to me, especially since many of us never leave the side of our
car when pumping gas anymore. That has apparently not improved our
safety, especially for women who carry purses--- The footage of the
actual crime being committed is shocking in how easy it is to pull off.
Please take heed and pass it along to friends, families and coworkers."

http://www.sheriff.org/videos/psa_cartheft.html


I got this link in this email warning people to be more cautious because there is a new trend of theft going on at gas stations where the thief pulls up alongside a car and opens the passenger, takes a purse off the passenger seat and drives away. So it shows two of these incidents caught on tape and then gives you tips on how to better prepare yourself to avoid this situation. As I was watching it, it reminded me of all those other safety videos that have been produced and how it seems more and more continue to come out as more dangerous situations are created. They always show you what to do to protect yourself, lock your doors, secure your purse, make sure to take your keys out of your car, always be aware of your surroundings (all these things beautifully acted out by an actor/actress showing you exactly how to do them).

Watching this made me realize how much we have turned into a society of fear. All the extra precautions we take to keep ourselves safe, protected. You see it everywhere in society. I notice the changes when I hear my parents and my grandparents say the cliché "In my day" phrase that ends in how they used to be able to walk to school for three miles without fear of being kidnapped, or how my mother would walk to the grocery store all by herself to buy her mother milk when she was six. I even start to see it in myself when I think to myself how when I was little I rode my bike to the park six blocks away or to the nearest elementary school to play on the playground by myself or with a friend. No one ever bothered me, I never feared for my safety. I was instructed not to talk to strangers or take things from strangers or give out my information, but I never felt the fear. But fear is such a dangerous reaction and it seems to be so innate. Someone walks in and says "My car was just broken into in such and such parking lot" and everyone who parks there has an initial reaction of fear "Oh, I hope my car is okay" and for the next few days many of those people will be extra cautious about what they leave on their seats and be thinking about whether or not when they go back to their car later in the day if the window will be in a million pieces.

The same tactic works on the masses as well, which is especially prevalent in politics. How fearful we have become of terrorism and how much the government has played on the fears of its people to gain support without thought. "If we don't invade Iraq they are going to help the terrorists and come destroy America." This seems to be the message we've been fed for so many years now in one way or another. It all goes back to our personal safety as a country and it is amazing the reactions that occur when mass fear is produced. Basic instincts of survival kick in and rational thought ceases to exist. This may have worked well for human kind in the beginning, but it doesn’t seem to be serving us well as of late. I saw the Dalai Lama speak last fall and I remember something he said when asked about war. He said war used to be necessary, it was a way to establish boundaries and power in order to establish societies and civilizations. He said that in the world we live in today where all the boundaries have been set and people, for the most part, are not trying to conquer each other, war is now out of fashion. There is no need to fight. If only we could convince everyone of this. I just think that living in fear is too dangerous, it consumes people, it provokes anger and hatred and stifles life. I think there is so much to learn from each other in this world. I would just love to immerse myself in the many different cultures of this world and soak up as much as possible. The more I learn about other people and their ways of life the richer I feel. I wish everyone could experience the joy I do when I learn about new things. It scares me to see how we live in a society of fear, how ironic is that. But I realize the difference is I make a conscious choice not to let fear guide my choices in life.

Scientific Brain Wave Reading Toys?

So here is the article about the new toy they are trying to produce that reads brain waves that I promised I'd post.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070430/D8OQTFP00.html

I am still not quite sure what to think about this one. I think it's very interesting and I am amazed at how Back to the Future seems to become more real every day. I remember watching that movie as a kid and being amazed that people could create all those things and suddenly here we are, on our merry way to doing so. Anyway, so the article talks about using this as a tool to help behavior disordered children. That's interesting. I'm not truly convinced that putting a brain wave reading toy on a kids head and telling him he has to calm down in order to make the car go faster will work. It just kind of seems to me that if a kid has attention problems having him sit in front of the TV and try to concentrate on a game will not improve much, most likely the child will get frustrated or lose the attention and give up on the game and move on to something else, that's sort of the problem in the first place, no attention span. If they can't stay engaged in regular activities why would they want to try extra hard at playing a video game that actually requires you to think? Now, I personally think playing a game like that would be fun, it's very relative to mindfulness. I know there is already a computer game out there, I don't remember the name of it, that you hook up to your finger and it reads your pulse or something like that and you have to do activities by controlling your thoughts and feelings. You make balls rise into the air by maintaining a state of pure calm, or you have to start a fire by becoming more excited. It was very interesting to play and took an immense amount of concentration, something I don't think would go over well with many people who are not willing to become focused. It can be very frustrating when you feel like you're as calm as can be and the stupid ball won't go into the air. I have a relatively good attention span and I can only stand trying to do something like that for so long, I couldn't imagine someone with attention deficit disorder liking or even wanting to play a game like that. The other uses of the device are interesting too though, such as the part about training for sports. I think that could be an excellent tool for that. I do think it's interesting though, because the entire point of the invention, it seems, is the exact point of what Zen Buddhists are doing with their meditation practices. Leave it to western life to have to technify it. As a culture we seem too absorbed in this technology thing. I wonder when we will start to go back in the other direction and get back into natural life. It always seems like that is the general trend of everything in life. The world seems to go from one extreme to the next, obviously very slowly. I am just waiting for America to fall on its ass. But that's another story. However, in the end, and I think this is what it comes down to, if there was a Darth Vadar costume with a thingie in it that would allow me to use my mind to light up a light saber, I am so there. Who could pass up a light saber that lights up on your command??? That is pure genius. From the Wii to brain active toys. What ever could be next.

Perfection rears its ugly head

"An impatient spirit can be a veil to hide the reality of what we are. It is often manifested to indicate importance or busyness. It frequently appears as a mark of zeal or dedication. But to be easily irritated, to frown readily, or reply sharply is a form of pride usually used to cover insecurity or a deep sense of inferiority. A self-justifying habit reveals something similar. Those people who can't stand to be misunderstood but are forever explaining their actions are really saying, "I want you to think I'm perfect. Of course, I know that the present situation does not let me appear so, but if you will just let me explain..."


Okay, so we all know I am a perfectionist and an overachiever. Or maybe you don't know, and if you didn't now you do. My friend shared this quote with me and I thought it was interesting. I actually had to read it two or three times there is so much meaning in it. It hit home with me though and it is something I have become increasingly aware of and have been working on to improve. The second half especially made me realize, about the people who can't stand to be misunderstood are always trying to explain there actions. That is me in a nutshell. I absolutely hate being misunderstood, or I used to absolutely hate it, now I am starting to accept it. I have just always wanted people to understand where I am coming from, what I am thinking, why I am thinking in such ways. So when I do something that in my perception is of a not so perfect nature I automatically begin to explain myself to people and tend to tense up and freak out a bit. I get anxious and over bearing trying to explain how this one imperfection truly isn’t an imperfection because I have a wonderful explanation for why I did it. How silly it seems to say it out loud like that, but that is what it is. I love the last sentence "I want you to think I'm perfect. Of course, I know that the present situation does not let me appear so, but if you will just let me explain...". How wonderfully said. That is my inner dialogue on so many occasions, when I really wish instead I could just let go and allow myself to not be perfect or to change my perception on what is perfect and see a mistake as an experience, a learning process and not feel like it matters if everyone is judging me, because only my own judgments should matter and in essence I should not be judging myself. So why I wonder, do I always feel the need to explain myself? I know it is a lack of confidence, that sometimes I have a hard time being that person who says or does something and says "I said it, I did it, get used to it" (That was for you Diana). But seriously, be able to stand next to all my decisions, the good ones and the bad. To be able to recognize the "bad" ones and be okay with them. Maybe not that I did them if they were 'wrong' (I hate using right and wrong) but at least accept that that was my decision and move forward and learn from it.

I almost start to think that no one can ever really know what is right or wrong until they experience it themselves. I never really have thought of myself as someone who has to experience things for myself to understand them. I am such a naturally empathetic person, I can feel other's pain I can imagine being in their situations and know the heartache. I can imagine what physical pain would feel like, but I don't really know. I have enough sense to say "I don't want to shoot myself in the foot that would hurt" and I can start to imagine what that would feel like and I can get to the point where my foot will begin to hurt, but I can't say I really know what it feels like until it happens. As much as I have experienced in my life, I have experienced more through others, watching, understanding, feeling, and I have realized how much I haven't truly experienced myself. Suddenly I want to experience things, both the good and the bad. I have been so scared to put myself out there and experience bad things that I think I may have missed out on the good. Feeling comfortable in life is a ruse. It is a false sense of security. It is almost a neutral feeling or a numbness. I always argue with people about how a person can't gage a feeling without knowing it's opposite. I feel that the more sadness you've felt the more happiness you can feel. For how does anyone know what happiness is if they don't know what it is to be sad? The extremes balance each other out, the further one side of the line goes away from the middle point, the further it allows the other side to grow. I see it as a mathematical line with the center at 0 and the negatives and the positives going in opposite directions. Everybody's line is a different length, but I feel they are always equal. Even if a person is lost in a depression that makes the negative side of their line grow long, they have opened up the opportunity to experience a higher state of happiness because as the negative side grows so does the positive always in equal distance from their originating point. I think the same goes the other way, the happier a person feels in life and the longer the positive side grows the negative side continues with it, giving them the opportunity to experience a greater sadness. I see this in all feelings in life, all opposites sit on this line for me. But of course, maybe that is why I have such a problem with extremes.

Oh all the connections start to make my brain hurt! Not to mention, how does one really measure those emotions? It's all subjective and it‘s all about perspective. Some people may be perfectly satisfied with their lines only going to -5 and 5, while others may feel like they've reached -100 and 100, while others probably don‘t even think about lines or measurements or anything else and just walk along singing their happy or unhappy little tunes. Who knows?! I know that I feel like my lines are very short because I have stayed in my comfort zone too long and I want to lengthen those lines and experience more. For the first time I am almost excited to experience the bad because I know it will make the good that much better. I think I am finally coming to accept the bad things in life, where before I always lived my life trying to avoid those things because I didn't want to experience them, I was happier not knowing because I felt like I had such a good idea. Ideas are great and let you understand a bit of life but experiences let you live life and nothing teaches more understanding than living it. So the next time I jump to feeling like I have to explain myself in certain situations, I think I will stop myself and allow whatever happens to happen. Sometimes just doing what I do is a good enough justification.

"You make yourself perfect. Whatever you define as perfect is perfect. If you define perfect as yourself then you are perfect. Don’t define perfect using a definition from an external source; you can never achieve perfection by using someone else’s perception."

Science's New Take on Death

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18368186/site/newsweek?GT1=9951

I think this article is extremely intriguing. I always sort of wondered about something like this because you can save organs and donate organs that will work in other people's bodies. The cells aren't dead, so what makes someone dead? Now, I am no doctor and I usually have quite a distaste for science, so I won't even pretend I know what I'm talking about, but it was always just a curious thought on my mind. Death is such an interesting topic, as is life. We have such extreme arguments for when life truly starts with issues like abortion, I'm surprised we don't have more arguments about death. I think people tend to think death is more of something we do not have control over, even though saving lives is a daily phenomenon and something people innately try to do in one way or another, by that I mean if you are a doctor and saving a life or if you are a random person who witnesses someone in danger and tries to help. I think it is interesting how humans have an instinct to stay alive, but we also have the instinct to save others. I think most people would risk their own lives to save another in need without thinking of themselves, though there is that theory, every man for himself. I wonder then, is that more of a conditioned action or a natural one? Does it come from personality or the way in which someone was raised? And that of course all goes back to nurture vs. nature, one of my absolutely favorite debates. I know that I would automatically risk my life for someone else. But I wonder, are there people out there who are too selfish, or scared, or whatever it may be that they would let another person die when there may be something they could do to help? And then it makes me think about times of mass crisis, like war, and terrorism. What about places who are stricken with constant violence, where you can't even go to the market place without hearing gun shots. Do those people who live in constant terror and violence give a second thought to saving other people or have they been conditioned to accept death surrounding them and have been forced to just pray it doesn't happen to them and their families. These are things I would love to actually be able to research but instead will probably only get to theorize. Anyway, I strayed away from the initial article, but do read it, it isn't very long, I'd be interested to hear what other people may have to say.