Here's To The Night

I've always loved Sundays. Sunday is the day that you get to go to church, and as corny as it might sound, by the end of the week I seriously need three hours of spiritual upliftment. Being a college student is hard. You wake up early and go to school, then spend way more time than is healthy cooped up in some dingy corner in the library trying to cram as much information as possible into your brain (people sometimes call this studying), and then you go home and go to bed and do it all over again the next day.

When I was in high school I used to look forward to the weekends, but I've noticed that in college the things you are always focusing the most on is when your next test is and when in the world you are going to find time to study for it. In General Conference this year Elder Uchtdorf (who knows how you spell this name) spoke on how today everyone is always so busy. "We are always rushing from one impossible deadline to the next," he said, and then he encouraged us to slow down a little. "It is not requisite that we run faster than we have strength."

So I started thinking of things that I could do to make my life less hectic, less busy, and I realized that it really just comes down to what your priorities are. I know school is supposed to be the most important thing in my life right now, but sometimes I'd really just rather slow down for a while and enjoy my life!

Last night my roommates and I dressed up in warm clothes and drove around shooting water balloons out of the back of a pickup with a water balloon launcher and I had such a good time! It was the night before Halloween, and since Halloween was on a Sunday this year, everyone celebrated it on Saturday night, and as we were driving I couldn't help but wonder how many people were wasting their night getting wasted at some lame party, while me and my friends were having the time of our lives doing something we would actually remember the next morning. Come to think of it, maybe that's why they say people who are drinking are getting "wasted"...because they are wasting their time doing something that 90% of the time they either won't remember, or will end up regretting.

Anyways, it was raining pretty hard last night, and since Erin was worried about getting arrested at one point she made all of us that were in the back "lay low" while she drove us to a spot where we could launch some more balloons. So there I was, laying in the back of a pickup with a cold wind blowing up my pant legs and getting soaked from the rain and all I could think about was how I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment than where I was. True, it would've been smarter to get inside the pickup, but it's times like those that I will never forget.

When I look back at college, I'm not going to be able to tell you whether Staphylococcus aureus is gram positive or gram negative, or what the origins and insertions of the muscles in your body are, but I will be able to tell that for about a month, I went to the pool every single day with Kimber and learned all about her life. I'll remember accidentely launching a water balloon into the cab of a pickup, and trying to hit signs with balloons with rain drops hitting me in the eyes so hard I couldn't see. I'll remember sitting at my desk and talking to Genniel through the wall without even having to raise my voice, and how we never practiced the guitar and our teacher thought we were idiots.

I'll remember sitting around telling stories and laughing for hours, and I'll even remember the times when we weren't doing anything at all. When we would just sit on the couch or lie on somebody's bed and talk about how our day had gone and what we had learned at school. I know I'm supposed to be focusing on getting into the Nursing program right now so I can graduate in four years and go out into the real world and work for the rest of my life, but to be honest, that really doesn't seem as important to me right now as making memories does, because eventually there will come a time when I do have to go to work every day and I won't have the luxury of spending time with good friends whenever I want to.

Life is short, I've always been extremely aware of this fact, and my biggest fear has always been that one day I'll find myself laying on my death bed regretting all of the wasted time. So even though I should be focusing on school more than anything, my main focus is really to just be happy and live the best life I can. One of my favorite songs has always been "Here's To The Night" by Eve 6, so in honor of that great song, "Here's to the nights we felt alive!" Thank you to those people that have always been there to help me celebrate that great event we call life, and to those that remind me on a daily basis how important it is to make the most of it.

Who You'd Be Today

I was on Facebook tonight while I was putting off doing homework, a common practice of mine, and one of my friends had put the song "Who You'd Be Today" by Kenny Chesney as her status. Normally I wouldn't listen to songs that people post as their status, but tonight I decided I would give this song a listen.
This song is really about people who have lost somebody they love, and they are pondering on the times that they got to spend with those people and wondering who they would be if they were still alive today. But for some reason all I could think of when I was listening to this song was all of the people that made me who I am today. This might be kind of a deep topic for only my second blog post, but I would feel so ungrateful if I didn't recognize the important people in my life. 

The first group of people I want to talk about are my roommates. Just for the record, college is nothing like I imagined it would be when I was in high school. I was convinced that I would move out of the house, have the best roommates ever and instantly become life-long friends with them, and have unforgettable adventures every single night. This did NOT happen. I moved out of my parents house, lost track of the fun, bubbly girl I had been in high school, and spent an entire year trying to find out who I wanted to be. This was not an easy task, especially since my roommates last year were not...ideal.

So after watching me struggle more than I ever had struggled before in my entire life, God decided to cut me a break this year. Somehow I got lucky enough to live in an apartment with five girls that I can honestly say I will remember for the rest of my life. Every single one of them is the kind of person that I want to be someday. Shay is one of the smartest people I've ever met. Tori is like the very definition of humility (in a good way) and is one of the least judgmental people I know. Erin is extremely considerate and would bend over backwards to help somebody, even if she doesn't know them very well. Kimber is a witch. Ha ha and anybody who doesn't live in our apartment would think that sounds horrible, and it kind of does, but in all seriousness Kimber is probably the most thoughtful person I know. She leaves notes all over the apartment for all of us and every time I come into my room to find a note on the door it makes my whole day. And Genniel is one of the hardest workers I think I will ever meet. She works hard at everything she does. Which is probably why she's so good at everything. 

Obviously there is much more to each one of these girls than the things I've said here, because every one of them is an absolutely amazing person and I feel priveledged to get to live with them.  They are so much more than just roommates, they are friends, and I'm sure I'll spend the rest of my life trying to figure out what I ever did to get so lucky.

The next group of people I want to talk about are my friends from high school. High school is a time when you are supposed to do stupid things so you have stories to tell when you get to college and when you have kids of your own, and I have more stories from one year of high school than most people have from high school and college combined. 

There was a group of us that dedicated one whole year to making memories and having a good time, and it was probably one of the best years of my life. I wish I could go through and write all of the great things about the four of them, but I couldn't make a list that long, and even if I could it wouldn't do them justice. They're the kind of friends that you can be away from for months at a time and never grow distant from them. Even now when we get together our friendship is just as strong as it was when we were with each other every day. The only difference is that now we have different stories to tell.  Not many people can say that about their long-distance friendships.

The last group of people I want to talk about is my family. I heard a quote once that said, "Friends are God's way of apologizing to us for not letting us choose our family members," Every single one of my family members is stubborn, overly competitive, loud and obnoxious, jokes about things that really aren't funny, and are the people I love more than anything else in the whole wide world! There's not one of them that wouldn't do anything and everything for me if I needed something.

They were there through the good, the bad, the awkward, the embarrassing, the sad, the happy, and every other time in my life. I don't believe that I didn't get to choose my family members. I think that when I was up in heaven God pulled me over and let me look out over all of the spirits in heaven and told me to pick anyone I wanted, and I picked the five best sisters, the one best brother, and the two best parents I could see in that crowd of people.

So when I see a song with the title "Who You'd Be Today," I can't help but think about all of the amazing people in my life that have helped make me who I am today. It makes me wonder who I'd be if I wouldn't have know these people, and even though I'm not perfect and probably never will be, I know that because of the good people I have in my life it would be impossible for me to end up being anything but wonderful, just like they are:)

Welcome To My Life

      Blogging is kind of a weird thing to do. It's like writing a journal online for everyone's viewing and reading pleasure, which is something I definitely never had any interest in doing until a few weeks ago. I used to be so good at keeping in touch with friends and family members. It used to be so easy for me to just call someone up on the phone or send a text message and start some intriguing conversation about life, but now I do good to talk to somebody on the phone once a month, and most of the time that doesn't even happen!

     

So why am I blogging? 1.) Because over the last two years I've managed to morph into a horrible communicator and this is my way of letting those who care know what's going on in my life. 

2.) I've always liked writing. In my high school year book from senior year my English teacher wrote, "You must continue to WRITE!" And he wrote it just like that, except it was in cursive, and he wrote it over the top of all the other teachers' pictures in the yearbook which makes that note a pain in the butt to read...poor guy was a hippie and probably burnt out the reasoning portion of his brain at Woodstock, which is probably why he was my favorite teacher. So I'm following the advice of John Paul Abbott and am continuing to write, even though I'm pretty sure this isn't quite what he had in mind. 

3.) I have discovered that my favorite thing to talk about is....myself! I'm taking an institute class this year called Dating and Courtship (feel free to make fun of me, because it really is pretty ridiculous that at one point I actually thought that class might actually be normal. Normal? No. Amusing? Absolutely!) and in one of my lessons I learned that there are actually people in the world that either have a hard time talking about themselves, or that just don't like to talk about themselves. This came as quite a shock to me as I could probably talk about myself constantly as long as there were people around who were interested in listening to me. 

Anyways, we had to do this "exercise" where we got paired up with a member of the opposite sex (naturally...this IS a dating class) and had to talk about ourselves for one minute without interruption from our partner. My partner went first, and I'm not sure if it was harder for him to talk for a minute or for me to go a whole minute without interrupting! After telling me his name and how many people are in his family he ended up talking for 45 seconds about how the sky is blue and how the chairs in our classroom are hard and he thinks they should be more colorful (in case anyone missed it, the point of the exercise was to talk about OURSELVES for one minute...poor boy just couldn't do it.) When it was my turn I don't think I even made it to my name before the minute was over. Pretty pathetic, I know.

Something else I've learned from that institute class: I am a bad listener. I guess when people are talking I'm supposed to be doing this thing called listening, which involves actively thinking about the things people are telling me and not just sitting there being quiet and going to Catherine land. This is something I am bad at, but working on. I just have a bad habit of sitting there with an inquisitive look on my face (this tricks people into thinking I'm listening) and nodding every once in awhile when really I'm just thinking about myself. This is not listening. I could tell you what else is involved in listening too but after my teacher said that first thing about actively listening and not just sitting there being quiet, well...I just kind of stopped listening and started thinking about myself some more! 

So those are the main reasons why I am writing a blog, not to mention I think I've had at least 10 people tell me over the course of my lifetime that they would really love spending a day inside my head so they could see what goes on in there, so hopefully this is entertaining for them. So aside from the part about me loving to talk about myself, this blog really is kind of unselfish, because I'm doing it for all those poor souls who try as they might, just cannot understand what goes on in my head. Plus, when you aren't around somebody everyday (and even sometimes when you are) you tend to forget or just miss out on the person they really are or maybe you just take it for granted. 

I'm pretty sure I change on a daily basis, and I'm sure there are good friends and possibly even family members that miss out on the person I am becoming everyday, and I would hate for the people I love most to not know who I really am. So...friends, family, and people I don't really know but who don't have anything better to do but read my blog, welcome to my life. This should be an interesting experience...