time wasted.

My blog has sort of become my journal.

Not the kind of journal where you reveal every dark secret.  But the kind that gets left on the shelf and abandoned while your life races ahead, and where time falls through your hands and you forget that things happen that need to be recorded, and remembered.

Sunday brought a three hour church meeting, where we discussed the importance of time management.

I cried.

And cried and cried and cried.


I made an important realization.  I've let so much time go to waste, wasted on things I felt important, or not important at all yet just for the pure enjoyment of.  What I really should have done was made that time roll over, because I would cash it all in now.

Time has left me.

try to understand yourself.

I have severely neglected this sad, little blog of mine.  The more I push away nagging urges to write, the more I have felt myself disliking myself.  An odd correlation per se, so let me extrapolate a bit.

I have never been a strong public speaker, meaning conveying my thoughts through speaking to others. Clearly.  Otherwise I probably would not have this sort of blog (or a blog at all for that matter) and would be talking about politics or some other seemingly trivial matter that I don't have a care in the world for, at least for the time being.  I have always struggled with communicating all the words and ideas floating about in my mind to people without having first drafted those thoughts in ink.

example.
When I am approached by someone and asked my opinion, I usually walk away from my response frustrated, and mumbling to myself what I should have and very easily could have said with total disappointment in myself.  Sometimes I feel that I have portrayed myself as a less competent individual that I feel that I am.  Most times I just feel like an idiot for not stating exactly how I feel.
The worst times for me are when I am put on the spot and what I say actually holds significance, such as a recording for someone's personal use, taking a quote down for a school newspaper, or even worse; on TV.

So how does not writing on this blog, being a horrible public speaker, and disliking myself have anything to do with each other?

Because I really am such a horrible public speaker (really), the best way I can clearly convey my thoughts, ideas, and intentions are through writing.  Venting is probably the most effective way to explain how writing relieves my built up tension, worries, and stress.

So...

Because I have not written, I have bottled up everything inside me.  Every time I thought about writing this summer, it didn't ever appeal to me.  A downward spiral formed, and my actions started to reap consequences.  Consequences being that my self-esteem dropped, I felt negative about certain aspects of my life that I had never struggled with, and I felt truly stuck.  I didn't quite understand who I was.  Everyone sort of feels like this at times of their life, and I have been in this situation all too much.  But this time, it was a different kind of stuck, and I felt that there was something blockading my progression.

Tonight, I realized what stopped me, and that was the fact that I hadn't been writing.  I feel so much better now that I have let things loose, even left some loose ends untied and drifting in the wind, and maybe (just maybe) I have broken that temporary barrier.

And I think I know who I am now.

oh my lands, she posted pictures.

I decided I love photography.

Addison and I decided to have a play date at The Ranch. It was a day full of cowboy boots and starched hats.  Who wants to work when you can take pretty pictures?

it hasn't hit me yet.

It hasn't hit me yet.

I was waiting to write until it did-- but one week of not registering in my head (and more importantly my heart) has left me impatient.

Eight months ago I started an adventure.  I had no insight to what I could expect, only words of advice from what and who I already knew.  I reached out of my box.  My box that I haven't left for a very long time (my whole life, to be precise).  That box is entitled "Social Life; in Other Words, Education".  Leaving a 4A high school with 1400 kids to a charter school of 400 high schoolers totally flipped my world upside down.  If you've followed along over the past couple months you've seen what transpired.  I became a new person.  I think I like who I've become, but it's often disappointing to see that I've run a little bit further ahead of my friends, and I want them to catch up with me and see the world how I do.

I learned to love people no matter who they are, or who they are to someone else.  Be best friends with the kid who ruins the curve for the entire class because they know absolutely everything, yet are the ones who may not have as many friends as you do.  Sit next to people that might make you uncomfortable with their appearance, because quite frankly you have no one else to sit by.  Reach out.  Love unconditionally. Judge not.  Fear less.  Express thoughts.  Be genuine.  Break social barriers.  Have the reality of life start to creep into your life.  Move on.

It took me seven out of the eight months to love where I was, and to stop looking back at what could have been if I hadn't shifted my course, yet now I have begun to understand WHY I went and who I've started to become.  Recognizing who you are is essential, and a life changing understanding.  Everything starts to make sense, and you finally realize why God intervenes, why things don't happen the way you want, and why life isn't fair.  Questions about life are inexplicably answered.

But for reasons I will not explain here (another day, perhaps), public school became my decision for senior year.  Back to the graduating class I grew up with throughout the years, back to the school I have loved with all my heart, back to the social events (not that they matter dearly, but they do sometimes), and back to the old.  But with a new me.  We will see what next year has in store for me, but that is why you follow along with me, you want to know too, don't you?

And that is why last Monday should have been a very hard day for me.  Leaving all those individuals who changed my life (and they genuinely did, as explicitly stated above), not seeing most of them ever again most likely, should have left my mind muddled and my heart hurting.  But to come full-circle...it hasn't hit me yet.  

i have finally found the right words.

Maybe you've experienced this problem.  Perhaps, I have found the right words for you as well.

     I miss everything about writing.  Words used to flow through my mind; phrases, ideas, thoughts.  It only took my understanding of the English language to form those thoughts into a coherent passage.  But, like any old hobby kept out of practice, it slowly began to fade.  As soon as Time insisted on being in the hands of social media and the teenage lifestyle, my passion sank in priority.  Years of cultivating the art of writing suddenly seemed to vanish from my life.
     I had experienced this shutdown before, when Time once again took my love of reading.  Hundreds of books lined my shelves, proof of the numerous hours spent dedicated to literature.  Still now, they beckon me to retract from this period of abandonment I've found myself in.  And yet I am fearful, fearful to heed their call.  That if I were to open a novel, I wouldn't experience the same attachment that I had with books years ago.  That I wouldn't immediately seep into the pages, barely conscious of my own surroundings, and experience the story first hand, like I could make possible before.  I am afraid of disappointment.
     Of course, both reading and writing are extremely rewarding.  Perhaps not for every reader of my words, but for myself, and that kind of gratification creates a life-long impact, and an increasing determination to continue forward.  It's an addiction, to say the least.  Once begun, it becomes almost impossible to stop.

And the words have found their place, to truly justify how I feel.

heart strings pulled. painfully.

I never post about significant others.  Mostly because I don't enjoy reading other hopeless romantics' blog posts about their love life, so I don't bore you with mine.

But tonight was a hard night.

The only boy I have ever really loved with my whole heart, I loved for a long time.  I guess I still do, even though nothing can happen, or ever should.  Two whole years of my life spent with my energy focused on him, and I could never imagine anyone else in my life.  He was the one I would die for.  

He's finishing his last year of high school.  I always looked forward to the day where maybe, he would ask me to a dance.  Or if perhaps, I mustered up the courage to ask him.  We both wanted to go to one together.  He's never been to a girls choice dance.  I could be his first.

Finally, after miscommunication with previous dances throughout the year, prom season rolled around and I was dropping hints.  Hoping he would pick them up.  Unfortunately things just didn't come together like I had wanted.. I was banking on one dance.  Morp.  I was a little bit behind the curve and asked him today, excited.

He called me and asked if he could talk to me outside.  So I met him in the neighborhood like we used to often, and play in the rain.  

He had already been asked.  By a good friend, but still.  My heart dropped.  It sank to my feet, and fell through the ground I stood upon.  I knew something like this would happen.  The last dance of the year, HIS last dance of high school, and I couldn't share it with him.  

He offered to take me on a date to make it up to me.  But it isn't the same.  I walked back home not knowing how to react.  Silence muffled every footstep.

*It's hard seeing someone you loved so much, get up and move along from the life that you were a part of.  

prom #1

life has been busy.

event #1: prom with mr. tanner manscill :)

i've gotten real good at pinning those boutonnieres. 

it's alright that we don't match.. whatever, right? boys are just uncannily bad at understanding differences in color. ;)