Archive for January, 2009

Decisions To Make?!?!

{ January 23, 2009 @ 3:47 pm } · { college, future }
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I thought I had it all figured out. The college thing, I mean. I was expecting to move to New York City next year and go to Fordham University. I was excited.

And I can still do that. But now, I have options. Very tempting options. It suddenly became cheaper to move to Bremen, Germany and attend Jacobs University. Yeah. Germany. Moving to Europe. Something I’ve wanted to do for ages. An amazing opportunity that I can’t imagine passing up. 

I love both options. I love them so much that I don’t want to let go of either one. There are definite benefits to each one. I don’t know what to do. Somehow, my certainty and excitement have become paralyzing, exciting indecision.

the city

{ January 21, 2009 @ 2:56 pm } · { random, travel }
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This is just a bit of descriptive writing I did on a city a couple hours from where I live, a city I visit often. It’s transcribed from the journal entry of the last trip I took there. You can probably guess it, but I don’t want to tell you what it is, because you might have a different impression of it than I do, and I’m selfish; I want you to be immersed, for a few paragraphs, in the city I know. 

This is the only city I know where people buy and wear orange clothing in such large numbers. This is big orange country, where the entire population lives and breathes college sports. The businesses on the strip plaster their front windows in orange propaganda, and on game day, floods of people dressed in the color fill the streets. I love the energy in the air as people come from across several states to cheer on our team. The air is electric with hope, anticipation, and possibility. When you leave, that same air is filled with either disappointment or celebration, but, for a couple of hours, you’re holding your breath with twenty thousand strangers, uncertain as to which it will be.

The pollution leaked into the air taints every breath we take. We gasp at its beauty as it manifests itself as an orange glow (appropriate) over hazy purple mountains at sunset. Were we not breathless at the sight, the smog in the bitter cold air would be slowly killing us. 

The city sprawls out farther than is reasonable in every possible direction, lighting up the night sky. It is simultaneously crumbling, growing, and unchanging. There are abandoned warehouses, factories brought to life as restaurants on the river, a coffee plant whose huge sign drowns out anything else in that corner of the city, rusting railroad bridges, and new construction on the never-ending, always confusing, always changing reeways. It is expanding, decaying, and experiencing a rennaissance of sorts as it is rebuilt. That construction has been going on since before I was born. I stand high above the river, and the vastness of the city never fails to startle and amaze me. I can’t see the end of it.

idealism

{ January 19, 2009 @ 9:30 pm } · { random }
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Sometimes, I think that everything worth fighting for, every revolutionary and radical idea worth believing in, will always be seen as naive, idealistic, and unrealistic. 

That is all.

trust

{ January 19, 2009 @ 8:28 pm } · { random }
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We all need someone we can trust, no matter what. It’s good for us to talk about things freely, without watching our words, and for that, we need to trust people. 

The problem, however, is that once you’ve trusted too many people and had that trust betrayed, it’s difficult to completely trust new people. 

That’s the past at work on the present. No matter how hard we try to escape it, the past is always exerting its influence, good or bad, over the present.

Five Questions

{ January 15, 2009 @ 11:11 pm } · { meme }
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These questions were asked by Jordyn. 

The rules:

1. If you want to participate, leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.” (And your e-mail address, please.)
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

And now, the questions, with my answers:

1. What got you started blogging and why have you kept at it? I started because I am very opinionated! Book blogging, at least. I wanted an outlet to discuss all the books I read. As for personal blogging, I’ve tried over and over to keep journals, and failed, so I figured I might be more likely to keep writing about my thoughts and my life if there was some sort of accountability–people who expect me to keep posting. I’m not sure it’s worked; I’m not a particularly consistent blogger over here. 

2. What has been the hardest age for you? (And why, if you want to add that.) I’d say that twelve was probably my hardest age. There are a lot of reasons I don’t want to go into, but I will say that middle school was hard on me; there were a number of mean girls who used to be my friends and then completely ditched me for stupid middle school girl reasons. Middle school girls are vicious. I had no friends at all for about a year. 

3. Are you generally a positive or negative person? I think I’m relatively balanced, at least compared to how I have been in the past, but most other people might tell you I’m a negative person. I think that’s generally because when I’m happy, I don’t feel the need to talk about it, but when I’m unhappy, I need to talk about it and complain and vent. 

4. What is your earliest memory? When I was three, I got attacked by a goose in the park. I was just innocently feeding it bread crusts with my friend as our fathers looked on, and then it was biting me. It was terrifying, because the goose was probably bigger than I was. 

5. How did you choose your blogger or wordpress username? Depends on what exactly you’re talking about. Teen Book Review is just overly obvious and descriptive of what I do over there. Wordygirlj is the address for this blog, and is just an adaptation of a username I used to use a lot, wordychick, which is just because I like words. The title of the blog, ideas (thoughtful and less so) is just another, nicer way of saying random stuff.

Lost Possibilities

{ January 12, 2009 @ 4:45 pm } · { future }
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As I make important decisions about my future, I’m excited, but also sad about the doors that are closed once I choose one to go through. Before making a decision, it feels like there are infinite amazing possibilities out there. I can only choose one, and I’ve chosen what I think is the best compromise between what I want the most and what is most practical. 

However, as I make my plans, I am incredibly sad about the things I won’t be doing next year. All the things I’ve been able to dream about for the past few years are no longer in my realm of possibility. Things that I knew probably wouldn’t happen anyway, but I wanted them so badly. 

My excitement about the future is marred by this feeling that my dreams have come crashing down around me. I feel loss and grief mixed in with anticipation and excitement, and it’s a bizarre and uncomfortable feeling. In a way, I wish I’d never dreamed big. I always encourage other people to chase their craziest dreams (and, as a result, some of my friends’ parents are less than fond of my influence), but I am not choosing my craziest dream. I am not sacrificing everything to make it happen. I’m doing something that I’ll enjoy, but something that was always within reach, something that I never considered “crazy,” and as happy as I am about it, I’m also terribly disappointed. 

I don’t want to live life like this. I want to, at some point in my life, go after the crazy dreams. I want to do things that aren’t practical, things that I should consider impossible. I want to do the impossible. I’m telling myself that now isn’t the time….But how long will I tell myself that before it’s too late and it’ll never be my time to reach for what’s impossible?

Help Me Buy Books!

{ January 6, 2009 @ 7:44 pm } · { random }
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So, I work a few hours a week in hell (Kmart), and I babysit a bit, but I’m a poor student, and I need all the help I can get. I want to buy books, desperately want a new camera, and I’m also trying to save money for a trip this summer with my friends. And I could use your help! If you’re planning to buy something from Amazon, I’d love you forever if you’d click through one of my associate referral links (valid for 24 hours after you click through on anything you buy!). Just to get you started, why don’t you click through to Amazon’s Teen Books page?

chromatic aberration

{ January 2, 2009 @ 2:10 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Erin (of Miss Erin) and I have started a daily photo blog. Over the course of 2009, we will each take one picture every day, documenting one tiny slice of our lives. Why? Because it’s an experience. Follow us through 2009 at chromatic aberration.

independence

{ January 1, 2009 @ 2:09 am } · { college, family, future, random }
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I still haven’t figured out what independence means, entirely, but part of it is not living with my parents, and I can’t wait for that. 

I love my parents, of course. They’re my parents. But after I graduate, I NEVER want to speak to them on a daily basis. They are…our relationship is complicated. They seem to live to make me feel bad about myself, to insult me and attack me. If I try to start a reasonable discussion about something, they either laugh at me and mock my stupidity/naivety, or it turns into a malicious personal attack. Either way, I end up in tears. I’ve tried to talk to them about it, thinking maybe they don’t realize…and maybe they don’t, but that discussion ended up with me retreating in tears, too. 

But after I’m done with high school and off to college, I might be sort of financially dependent on them as they’re helping out with my college education, but I will not be day-to-day emotionally dependent on them. I can be free of them, and maybe I can finally be happy. I’ll be thrilled to see them at Christmas, but I’ll need the rest of the year to heal. It makes me sad just to think and talk about it, but that’s how it’ll be, and they’ll never have any idea how much it hurts.