It's the Magical, Mystery Kind

I'm trying out a new life motto. It's kind of crazy. Or, at least, it goes against parts of my Sunday School teachings. I also stole it from a really good movie. The thing is... I think it's a good one. One worth keeping in my back pocket, pulling out for inspiration, tacking up on the inner walls of my mind. The other thing is I think it's one that'll be hard to shake free. I say that because it's one I sort of live by already and have heard in different forms before. We met in the middle, me and this motto.

The motto: We are entitled to happiness and we will be happiest in that happiness when we show gratitude for it. We are entitled to as much happiness as we can handle. If I am not happy, I have the right to seek it... To search around every corner of the earth and in every heart I encounter -- I am entitled to do these things to find my sweet happiness. I have to stop only when I die. And, at that point, I will look back upon my life and smile from happiness about the happiness I was lucky enough to have. I will always throw my arms up and around someone or whatever and express my undying gratitude for my happiness.

While this sounds self-serving and selfish and other scary words with "self" in it, I don't worry about that. I know that I am my most genuine, my kindest, my most generous and charitable, my smartest and sweetest form of myself when I am at my happiest.

Portait Project Phase II

Photography Class Adventures 1

We had a photography project to make a comic story out of two images.
Here is my final result:

"Adventures of Jane the Hungry College Student"

Wait.... What?

I keep ending up at this "new post" page without a clue of what to write about. It's weird because I have had plenty of ideas. However, they all seem to leave me stranded right when I need them. I'm serious -- I imagine myself in my mind of a room looking around confused because, all of a sudden, it's empty and I'm quite alone. My stomach eats itself for a second when I imagine doing this on an essay test. Ew ew ew essay tests... My worst nightmare. Why am I talking about this? I have one coming up. In a long time though. I can't help but feel like these past one hundred-and-eleven words pretty accurately allude to how I've been feeling this past week or so: frazzled, jumbled, slightly dazed. I pity the persons who have to converse with me these days.

Me being frazzled in the library.

Portrait Project Phase I

You think you know them. And you do. Or, at least, you feel as if you're grasping an idea of them. I returned here this January for another new semester but under completely different terms than the last time I came here for a new semester. I had friends this time, familiars -- what a vastly huge difference. And now, I am doing a photography project to mark my idea of the people I've come to know. I've attempted to capture how I view them at this moment. It might change as things do, but at least I'll have these ideas, images, moments recorded. Here is the first round...

Trenton

Murphy

Mary

Sadie

Luke

No, I'm Not

Two Roommates "Happy Holidays"

Midnight City

I'm sitting in the blattic (it's the attic of the dorm across from mine. Doesn't it look like the kind of place people go to die?) and it conveniently has no windows. I don't know how late it is (it's 8:36 actually), so I can't decide if I should be tired or not.

There's about no one on campus. It's really weird.

Sometimes I forget it's not always like this. I have to remind myself that what's normal is people I know and love walking around and being loud and studying and doing young people things.

Lately, I've also forgotten what it feels like not to be sick. I have a gross cold! But, it's getting better.

I just laughed out loud at the memory of Taylor Robinson falling up the stairs junior year!

My stomach kind of hurts and I like math, but I don't really feel like doing any more problems.

I am excited to go home the day after tomorrow. I really hope the sun is shining in Houston because it forgot to in Austin today.

Maybe it's time for me to skidaddle outta here... Writing this makes me feel like I've been isolated in a far-off place or in a submarine or something, and I'm sending out messages to people back home. Maybe that's a sign that finals should be over now.

Blah.

let's all go to sleep
get some shut-eye
and return home
to hang up our shoes by their laces
pause and notice how they're more worn than the last time we were here
pause and let our brains push energy through the pathways
down the axons the electricity sparkles
reenergizing
pause for a long moment
turn the long moment into a nap
we are tired
and happy to be going home

We're Only Here to Find the (HAPPY) That Lingers After

This past semester I've taken to doing things that people happen to think have a high risk of failure. It really doesn't matter whether there is actually a high risk, or less of a risk than society thinks, or more of a risk than I think. This is about people and their perceptions and how it affects their actions.

I think it scares people when someone beats the odds -- it holds them accountable. When someone beats the odds, it makes others feel guilty (if that's the right word) for not taking chances themselves. It completely derails statistics and diminishes our comfort in them.

Why are we so afraid of failure? I was afraid of failure. Am I still afraid of failure? Of course I am. But it's different now, I suppose. Well. I know that if I'd listened to statistics and "people" and my knees that shook in the face of these high risks of failure, I wouldn't have the rewarding life I love thus far. I wouldn't have this lovely greek-less, writing major, texting filled, burnt orange etc etc life.

Nelson's Way

"There is nothing like returning to a place unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."

~Nelson Mandela

Well. True dat, homes.

Only been home for 12 hours and here are the ways I've noticed in which I've altered.

1. I eat twice as much.

2. I swear twice as much.

3. I can run on half as much sleep.

4. (This one makes no sense) I offer people random food items of mine that they would never want. I was drinking from a plastic cup of water and asked my friend mid-sentence if she wanted some. I was eating a Cliff bar and mid-bite asked my friend she wanted a bite. What is this? 

5. My appreciation for good, delicious food has sky-rocketed.

6. My hair is infinitely more messy.

More to come...

Burn Brighter

"People tend to judge based on appearances and give value to looks, whereas the true value is in the meaning of what those surface images reveal."
-Trenton's essay (he doesn't know I did this...)


I like this because it doesn't discredit looks and appearance. I personally can't discredit those things. It is an unrealistic and frustrating thing to attempt. I like this because it defines the true value in looks appearance.

I Can Feel The Static

I wear clothing like costumes. What I'm wearing reflects the particular persona I want to take on on that day, in that minute, that moment. If I'm upset about what I'm wearing, it's not because I'm self conscious about what someone's thinking. I mean, I really don't give a frick. I'm upset because I'm wearing someone else, and not what I'm feeling. I never managed to teach myself to "fake it" (which sounds like it'd make me genuine, but really it means I'm moody), so wearing the wrong thing can certainly be a frustrating thing. On that note, I'm getting up from my desk and changing out of this adorable dress and into my slouchy, lazy Nike shorts and a t-shirt.

Won't You Shine, Shine On

Let's take a little break from the intense and the depressing 

and talk about happy things. 

You know what makes me happy?

this song:

Zorbing by Stornoway

and this song:
5 Years Time by Noah and the Whale

Instagram

Glittery Eye Shadow and Dazzling Role Models

Perfect Weather

Spider House Coffee and Thoughtful Decor

(My new form of meditation) Live Music

Treats With the Sweetness of a 1000 Smiles

Mother Falcon

Studying Amidst the Sun and Grass (photo by Murphy Carter)

Statement Pieces and Expressive Fashion

Cookies and Livers

Everybody's Feeling Warm and Bright

I have trouble equating pain and happiness. They aren't two extremes on the same scale. A human being is not a scale to begin with. Oh, God, no. Pain and Happiness -- and anger and giddiness and sadness and all the other things we go through for that matter -- equate only as different states of consciousness. They encompass you, bleeding into your thoughts and your heart. What's funny about Pain and Happiness is the difference in how conscious you are of the other's existence while in one of the two states. When you are happy and life is swell, there is always some part of you (or maybe this is just me) worrying about a change into sadness or another negative emotion. Even if it's small, there is a piece of my consciousness refusing to take it for granted, because it is so worried for the moment when another emotion becomes more prominent. In Happiness, we can still remember so clearly Pain. However, Pain is often associated with hopelessness. I mean, hopelessness is never founded. I swear to you, things will always get better. And yet, when we are suffering, we forget the warmth that is Happiness. It can be unimaginable. I hope that someone in pain reads this and takes my word for it: Happiness, like it always does, will come around. We are beings of adjustment and peace, so things will naturally fall together or apart until you reach peace again.

Look With Your Eyes Open

When it comes to my post titles, I choose the song lyric in which its correlation to the post content is clear to me and not at all to the reader. I have a purpose behind this madness, albeit a rather selfish and strange one. Paradoxical as it is, it's to maintain a little bit of "personal" in my here posts. As in, you can have my thoughts and discoveries, but a small part of it -- how that piece of song relates to that thought or discovery in posts-- is still completely mine. This is dumb. It's a blog. It's why I created said blog. Duh, the point is to launch my thoughts and discoveries into the world. It's my choice. But still. In the ways of my eloquent and impressive lexicon, "IDK. Whate'er."

All that hullaballoo being said, let's get down to business. Post title: "Look With Your Eyes Open." Despite all that I just rambled upon, this one actually has a meaning for you to understand. Allow me to explain. Last Wednesday was a beautiful day, and I was on a beautiful walk to class... Not that I noticed. Why? Because I am always locked up in the theater of my mind's eye. As some of you know, I am an extremely visual person, but only in the sense that I see what my mind is thinking, and not so much what my eyes are seeing. What a tragedy! (Not to mention a safety hazard.) I am surrounded by nature's finest and I don't even notice. Even as I was walking and thinking this, I had my head down watching my mind's eye's images of what was surrounding me as I was being surrounded by it. It was bizarre and I felt like a crazy person as I constantly had to remind myself to look up at the beautiful around me.

Your surroundings are as beautiful as you notice. Look up and breathe it in; let it run through your system and make you More.

All Safe and Sound

Being indispensable. That, my tired and worn brothers and sisters, is what we're all worried about. Hot damn. No wonder we're all a mess with our mirrors and grades and socializing beyond human capacity. We want to be wanted and missed and needed. We want to know that if we were to disappear, it would matter.

Well. On that note, you should probably tell the people that are indispensable to you that they are indispensable to you. A lot of people don't know that about themselves. Isn't that sad?

Oh, and chances are, you're a lot more indispensable than you think.

Have a freakin' unforgettable day.

Down To The Station Where You Live

you make your own happiness

Alabama, Arkansas

Sometimes, When Sailors Are Sailing

"Children never forgive injustice. They forgive heaps of things grown-up people mind; but that sin is the unpardonable sin."
-Virginia Woolf

I don't know what to think

For Every Life

I'm in the library. I'm in the library as my friends study around me and it's quiet and we're doing our thing and I can't help but feel like I'm a part of something.

We are beings of community, aren't we? Beings of belonging and knowing that we matter and are important enough to be included. We need it, I think, although I'm not sure why. I just know that we do. I know it makes us feel warm. That's the word for it, I'd say, warm. Not in the cheesy way, but in the peaceful way. I'm not alone. I. am. not. alone. What a comforting, peaceful, warm thing that is.