A piece of Love

First off, let me address my rather abrupt, and unannounced absence from the blog. Life got going at a pace of over 100 MPH it feels like. School pace really started to pick up, my social life is expanding at a rapid pace pulling my attention in every direction possible. All good things to be busy with, but took a lot out of me. And if I'm being completely honest I got uninspired… Noting I started writing about I felt was goo enough to post. I have about ten posts started just sitting in my draft box that are less than inspiring in my opinion. I got into this funk where I believed what I wrote on here was kind of a waste of energy on my part…. I can't really explain why…

But today I decided to snap out of it. I write these blogs for nobodies approval, not because anybody told me to, but because I want to get what is in my head out somewhere, somewhere where I can remember it and look back at it. Plus some of my good friends like to read my random thoughts… So here I am again to write about anything and everything on my mind… Today's post is about one condition of love.

I think to love someone is to put yourself in the most vulnerable state any human being can be in. The definition of vulnerable is "susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm". To love someone is to unconditionally care about them and invest yourself in their life. That doesn't sound so bad - doable from any physical standpoint- except the only way to do that to a person is to get your heart, your soul, and your emotions involved. You have to be willing to get so close to them knowing that you could get hurt, that something could go cataclysmicly wrong and your heart could be shattered into a million pieces, and then still proceed to get that close… You have to be willing to be vulnerable. That is the ultimate form of vulnerability between any two people. To love someone, to have that unconditional trust between two people in this unexplainable non-physical form. This does not just apply to a couple who is dating or married. This goes for true friendships, sibling bonds, and parents and their children. We are creatures created to love. We crave love… We crave vulnerability. To me, that is the scariest piece of love, the craving we have for it. In no other scenario in life do we crave to be "susceptible to emotional attack or harm."

Does that piece of love stop me from loving my friends and family? Absolutely not…  It is the greatest connection we have to one another, and when you do love someone, the satisfaction of the craving is so much greater than trying to avoid the slight chance of hurt the vulnerability may bring you.

Facial Hair

I know this is strictly my opinion on the dead skin cells growing out of other humans face, but I'm going to give it anyway because being a girl, this is something I have created an opinion on. Collectively us girls have had extensive conversation about the opposite genders facial hair at some point, it is a natural topic of conversation for some strange reason. An aspect we find easy to critique probably because we don't have any (hopefully)…
I think scruff on a guy is fine! It shows he cares about grooming himself but also that he is a man and can actually grow a beard. It is also very dependent on the guy. For most guys, scruff or what some call stubble makes them look older and more defined. But for some it turns into the is awkward patchy mess that adds only sadness and confusion to his facial features. I think the real winners are the ones that can pull off a clean shave and then rock the stubble one week later, able to interchangeably do those looks. Then there is the long outlandish bead the length of my forearm. That curls and hangs there on the guys chin and cheeks overtaking any other physical feature the decent guy might have. As you can tell I'm not such a fan. Nobody displays the unattractiveness that long beards can bring to a man like the Seattle Mariners' Dustin Ackley… He was a very attractive his first season, then took on this beast of a beard that makes him look sad, dirty, and frankly careless. Go look it up, I'm not exaggerating! (showing my bias maybe… but not exaggerating) And nobody displays the attractiveness of the "stubble look" like my amazing boyfriend… Just saying :) (there I go showing my bias again)
But to be totally honest I don't want to critique any guy on his facial hair. It is his face, he can do with it what he wants. It has no determination on his personality, his success in life or anything like that. Girls should not be placing so much worth on the guy's facial hair if they don't want guys placing so much worth in the size of their chest! Cause we all know that is the male equivalent of what us females do.
Now that No Shave November is over I felt I could share my opinion because I have seen enough guys on campus attempting beards for the special fall occasion!

Christmas Tree Hunting

For the first time in my life today I went to a real christmas tree farm and picked out a real tree to put in my aunt and uncle's house! Some of you may gasp at the thought of me going nineteen years without such an experience, but my whole life my parents have done the "fake tree" thing for various reasons. So when the opportunity arose for me to go with my aunt and uncle to a real christmas tree farm I took it!
I have to say, it was almost exactly like picking a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch! We walked up and down the muddy rows of trees inspecting each one, the same way you wander the rows of orange pumpkins in the fall. We marked about three trees we really liked and then decided on one that pleased everyone except my four year old cousin… cause she changed her mind on which tree she liked every two minutes… as to be expected. My uncle got down on his hands and knees and sawed the truck right apart. I followed behind them as they dragged the tree to the barn to pay for it. It was all very "stereotypical" of what I had seen on TV of tree hunting! They even sang christmas carols as they carried the tree! It was very exciting to say I was a part of it! We got the tree shaken of all the dead needles and promptly stuffed in in the back of their truck. With our cold muddy boots on and the tree snug in the back, we piled into the truck and headed off to get cheese burgers (from Five Guys… best burger place ever) and go home!
It was a great way to kick off the christmas season!

Final Projects

It has been a while since I've posted anything because my firsts semester here at college is coming to a close, and final projects and assignments are popping up everywhere! Leaving little time for any outside of school brain activity.
But I wanted to quickly share one thing about final projects that I have encountered before, and am in the middle of right now. I have a terrible tendency to scheme up these grand, creative, and unique project concepts whenever I am assigned a final project sort of thing. I constantly want to do something that the teacher doesn't suggest, that my classmates wouldn't think of. My whole K-12 school career I have constantly dreamed up these grand project or poster ideas, and they generally only work out half the time. Some of them are easy to execute, and meet the standards of my OCD brain. They take a fair amount of effort, and anytime a problem comes up I easily come up with a compromise and quickly adjust the project. The outcome is just how I imagined it and results in an outstanding effort grade. Then the other half of the time I try to make my idea come to life and it is as if all the supplies are working against me. The concept doesn't come together and the product looks like a kindergardener did it. Usually resulting in me in tears at 1 am trying to salvage whatever I was trying to do.
I have been assigned a final project to show how the corse communication concepts are applied in my life. The rubric is rather open ended, frankly giving me more freedom than I know what to do with, all I need are pictures and words in some form that communicate the concepts in my life. So leaving me with this vastly open ended rubric, I scheme up this grand showcase idea to make a pop-up shadow box with 3-D pics of my life and put it in a shoe box people can open and shut. It will be pretty cool! Except it is turning out to be one of those projects where I bit off more than I can chew. I am dedicating way more hours to this project than my peers. There is a small voice in my head that keeps saying "why didn't you just do an iMovie like everyone else!?" Some of my pictures won't stay up, I can't close the box all the way, and the tape isn't holding anywhere on the project. But I am in to deep now, I can't change it! The project must go on even at the expense of my sanity!

When will I ever learn!?….

Backspace

I found myself rescently reading through my past blog posts, and have come across a couple that I wanted to delete. Particularly one from over the summer. Not because the facts in it were wrong, not because I hate the person or anything. I just realized my view of the situation has changed, I can see looking back on the experience now that I was naive in my thoughts and selfish to the situation, as if I had blinders on my eyes and couldn't see beyond the here and now I was experiencing. I was admittedly also a little overly dramatic in said post. 

I still want to delete the post from my blog. I feel as though it is not relevant anymore, that person is no longer in my life and not for better or worse, no hard feelings, they just aren't and I have changed so much since then.

So why haven't I deleted it yet? 

That action kinda goes against my own philosophy... If I deleted that post it would be as if it were never part of my blog, as if it never happened. When in actuality it did happen. Deleting it from my blog will not delete it from my life. I can't just delete parts of my past or rewrite them with the perspective I have on the situation now. And since I can't do that in real life I won't do that on my blog. It will sit there and serve as a reminder to that moment in time during my life. I learned something from that experience, as I do every experience I write about. It can't be changed, so I will not change it from my blog. 

I want this blog to be as constantly changing, growing, and evolving as I am, and that entails leaving the unchangable experiences of the past right where they are, reflecting on them like I am doing now, and moving on from them like I will do as soon as I hit the little orange "publish" button on this post. 

Unnatural Human Tendency

I think humans are the only creatures on the planet who are stupid enough to willingly place a burning hot flat iron just centimeters from one of the most vital and vulnerable body parts (their neck) multiple times in order to apply outward beauty…. By that I mean we straighten our hair, at least us girls do. And when you really think about it that is all straightening your hair is! Frying your dead skin cells that make up your hair and repeatedly placing a boiling hot slab of metal next to your neck…
Just a random thought I had as I was shamelessly straightening my hair this morning! :)

One Thing Hollywood Got Right

I've gotta say, one stereotype California's Hollywood got right was that of the typical greek row on Halloween. We've all probably seen a number of movies that have the crazy parties in greek row, with the skimpily (to put it nicely) dressed girls running from fraternity to fraternity, groups of guys ascending upon the fraternity doors as if it was their lives mission to get to those previously mentioned girls, and the neighborhood streets littered with red solo cups and broken remains of girl's various costumes.
After experiencing my first Halloween here at a major college I am here to tell you that stereotype is completely true! I had the luxury of walking around and observing greek row with a very good friend and while we were both completely sober, I might add. We passed multiple groups of girls dressed in every costume imaginable, as long as it barely covered their butts and showed enough cleavage to leave nothing to the imagination. I believe those were the only standards. I counted over 20 "playboy bunny" costumes throughout the night. The worst I saw was a girl walking in stiletto heels, a black spandex-underwear-like thing on her bottom half, and a santa top JUST like the one in the movie Elf that Buddy picks out for his dad (If you don't understand that reference you need a reality check) Behind every swarm of girls closely followed a drunk group of guys wearing half hearted costumes. Cause lets be honest, what guys wear on Halloween doesn't matter as much as what girls wear… At least not on greek row. The streets were loud, people drunkenly shouting to their friends down the street, people walking down the street and cars honking. There was a lot of various trash on the ground, a LOT of red solo cups. The occasional siren would go off, but because of the sheer volume of people out, I kind of assumed the polices efforts were all for not that night.
I was more mesmarised by the scene of greek row on Halloween then anything on television that night. People watching at its finest.
This occurred all week long I might add, since Halloween was on a thursday, people went out on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It is commonly referred to here as HalloWeek.
That is definitely not my scene, it is all to much for me, but it was fun to walk around and gain some serious perspective. And they were all so wrapped up in where they were going, or maybe just to drunk to notice my friend and I just walking around fully clothed up and down the streets.
Interesting Halloween to say the least.