Hello, My Name's Inspired

I met someone today.

And I have to tell you that I've lied to you just now. I've actually known him for a while, but today we spent an hour outside the Clyde, just talking. And I think he actually changed my life. He truly, actually did. Here's the story:

Physical Science is not the most interesting class in the world. I think it could be, if I paid attention and decided to believe all the watered-down nonsense they try to sell us. But I don't, so it's not. I sit by a friend from high school every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I also "people watch" every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. One day, I pointed to a guy across the lecture hall.
"You see that guy over there? Leaning forward? Army green jacket and a cool hair cut?"
"Yeah?"
"That's Timothy."
Tim is in my Physical Science Lab every Wednesday. I would see him there, watch him interact with people. I came to know him even before I ever opened my mouth to speak to him. I knew the basics: Lived in Germany, had a cool accent, dressed very Euro-stylish... Ok, maybe I didn't KNOW him, know him. But I knew him. Enough to strike up a conversation with him one day when I was feeling extra friendly on the way out of lab.
Right here, I'd like to put in some dialogue. But I honestly can't remember what I said to him. I remember we talked about our tests, how we did, about clothes, and then he asked me if I'd like to join him for dinner before I went to my work shift.
Dinner.
We talked about the language differences, and how "dinner" was the English "lunch." And I bought some fry bread from the Native Americans, and he bought a sandwich from the Bookstore. We sat and talked and ate. Boom. Friendship established.
Then I invited him to sit by me and high school friend Becca during lecture. He agreed.
He's been sitting by us ever since.
Today was a normal day. I stayed at school after dance class so I am all nappy and whatever for the rest of the day. I kind of like it that way. Not trying to be anything, not trying to look nice. I'm just comfortable being comfortable.
Neither Tim nor I had a class after Physical Science. Becca talked for a little while then had to go to class. So Tim and I stood there, talking on the sidewalk. And really, it was weird at first. It's weird because it's the first time you break the acquaintance barrier. It's the time you step through, "Hey, how are you?" into, well, the conversation I had with him.
And I'm not going to give a dialogue, or any super specific details. I just have to say that now I want to try to cook with Lavender. He inspired me. That's the word! He changed my life. People don't do that to me often. So this is why he is noteworthy.

I had forgotten what I wanted to do. I had forgotten that I had goals beyond just getting to BYU. More, even, than just auditioning for the Music Dance Theatre program, but maybe even auditioning again, even if it meant I was in school for 7 years. Or going to France to teach French children English. Talking to him reminded me how rich I want my life to be, full of people and experiences that actually mean something. Full of chocolate with sea salt and chili powder, full of weird necklaces and boots, and hair styles that make me happy. Life isn't just for living, it's for going outside of yourself to find things you never even realized existed; in the world, and about yourself. Life is for meeting Tim, who inspires you to be the person you always thought you were.

I came to BYU and lost myself in the drudgery of trying to balance school with social life. Filling my time with the meaningless antics of Facebook-users and silly things that aren't going to matter in ten years, ten months, or even ten days from now. It's amazing what life looks like outside of a computer screen. But that's not what this is about. This is about Tim, and how he'll never truly know how he renewed my sense of self and purpose. Trying to write it almost steals the magic away from my inspiration. But either way, it's overcast and I am happy.

I think I really met Tim today. And he reintroduced me to myself.
And I don't think I could thank him enough.

SO MUCH Love In You

Shame.

When you know you haven't done something you were supposed to do.
Like blog once a week about helping people.
Oops?
No, not oops. I purposefully forgot about it. In Psychology they tell you about this problem where people, SUBCONSCIOUSLY, PURPOSEFULLY, forget the things they don't want to do. There's a name for it but I really can't remember right now ANYWAY

I think that going away to college was the most normal thing I could have possibly done. And everyone is always like, "I learned SO MUCH when I moved away" blah blah blah.
Sad day: it's true.
But it wasn't what I thought it would be.
I would hear people say that and I would think, Oh. That's because they didn't know how to do laundry before they left their house. Ha.
And for some people, that's true.
But maybe what they're really talking about is how they learned SO MUCH that they aren't invincible. Or that they do actually need people in their lives. Or that maybe they are more desperate for a relationship than they originally had thought. Or that everyone is really on the same playing field, spiritually, even if we have different positions on that field. And how you can get brought down so easily, and life can bite you on your ear and make you sore in places you didn't even know existed.
College has taught me SO MUCH. And now I'm just like everybody else because I've learned SO MUCH.
Blah blah.
So helping people. That's where you learn how nothing you are.
This post is a LITTLE BIT sounding like I have no self-esteem. That's not the case at all. I just have been metaphorically slammed in the face with a huge dose of HUMBLE STINKIN PIE.
And now I'm swimming in the filling. Like, how do you get out of this stuff?
Really, though. How do you start feeling on top 'o da world again? Because right now I just feel like,
"La dee da. College is kicking my trash. I thought everything was dandy but only some things are dandy. Woo hooooooo."
I almost feel like I should delete half of this post. No I won't. Here's how life really is for me right now:
I love my family
I love my school
I love my life choices
I love my boots that I bought this week
I love my friends
Especially my Ashley
I love puppies
I love pumpkin pie
I love food
Especially potatoes
I love my roommates
I love that Amber and Rachel are my newest best friends
I love that Rachel Schlappi is engaged (HOLLER-LUJAH)
I love that Becca Hitchcock is engaged (HOLLER ALSO)
I love that I am a part of the newly-thought-of Face-to-Facebook (copyright Rachel Weiler)
I love that as soon as I started doing this, a bunch of things came to mind.

I love my life. It loves me. Sometimes it shows it in weird ways, but I know it does. We make a great team, my life and I. And really, college has taught me SO MUCH.

NEW TEST (a ment)

So for New Testament class here at BYU (yay!!!!) part of my semester-long project is that I am supposed to blog about the opportunities I've had to help people throughout the week. (Note: I structured this project myself. So I have to listen to church music in the mornings as I get ready as part of it, and the other part is learning to follow promptings and looking to find ways to help people. Then I'll blog once a week about it.)
Last week I forgot to blog. Here is that one:

I learned that I am bad at this. I learned that if I don't keep up a constant mental effort to look for opportunities to help, I'll miss them. This week I felt like a failure because I didn't think I did anything. But towards the end of it, I realized that I was able to help out a friend that was going through some hard times just by discussing things with her. It's amazing how much you can start to love someone when you connect on a spiritual level.

This weeks:

Once again, I felt like I came up short. But I'm realizing offering your company to a friend is giving of your time (and sometimes your sleep). And that counts. I'm starting to see that it's about the interaction. The time spent listening and conversing sometimes is the best thing you could do for someone. I realized I smile at people, I make people laugh, and I compliment them. That comes naturally, but maybe that is service, too, in a small way.

Ok. So now that that's over, today I made fry bread. #yumimissmyfamily. It was delicious and I got to share it with a few of my friends here at the Colony. I realized I love making food and sharing it with people. Chol and I do it a lot, and the inner Scrooge will always rear his head for a second and say NOO! YOUR HARD-EARNED MONEY! and then the baker inside of my slaps him and throws him in a Harry Potter closet. Because it's fun to get people together to eat stuff that is filling and yummy. College kids don't eat good food lots of the time, so they always appreciate it. And it makes me feel good.
Hey. Maybe that's another way I helped out this week. Food. I get that from my dad, I think. He loves giving away our food. As a little kid I was always like, NOOO THE ROOTBEER! DONT GIVE THAT TO GRANDPA! But now I see why he did it. We don't have much, but it's just natural to share what we have.
Anyway, that's all for now. My feet are freezing.

SUSHI O TABE TA YO

I'M HERE!!!!

And I'm so excited. It's just so cool. Literally. Today's high was 97. Eh. That's like 10AM in AZ. It's OK, though, because after eating one of THESE

(The ones on the left. Raw salmon. Um what?)

and walking out of Yamato with my japanese relatives and my cousin who is going to serve his mish in Sendai, Japan, (spell check that name AND this run-on sentence) IT ACTUALLY FELT COOL OUTSIDE!!! WHAT!?! BRILLIANT!

So my room is pretty small. Rach and I are coping, though. Space is limited but brotherly love is not. So we're ok. 

And we have some pretty rockin roommates. 

So you could say I'm happy.

And you could also say I ATE SOME FLIPPIN SALMON! LITERALLY! STILL FLIPPING THATS HOW RAW IT WAS.

:) I feel accomplished. My tummy feels weird. And the weather feels perfect. A-MEN.

The Final Countdown

I realized something today while I was sitting on the toilet in my Japanese aunt's house.

Ending things isn't really the end of things.

As long as I'm still living, things don't end. (And even, the gospel tells us otherwise :))
What I mean, is, that life is life. I might be living at home, I might be moving into an apartment tomorrow at 10. (AHHHHHHHH!!!!! LESS THAN 12 HOURSSSS!! :D) I might be a junior in high school, I might be a sophomore in college. Things change, but they don't necessarily end.

Let's see if I can explain this better. ....
Maybe I can't.

This is what I get for thinking while sitting on the toilet. Not much time to marinate on ideas. Anyway.

I AM SO EXCITED TO MOVE!!!

It's been soooo weird because it hasn't really hit me yet. I think I've been suppressing my excitement while I'm around everyone I am leaving behind. But now... I'm staying at my aunt and uncles house, with all my life packed away in the back of our suburban. I'm gonna go to sleep, wake up, and drive over there. Ah. Oh man.
What is this feeling. (cue Wicked soundtrack.)

Really I'm just like deering in the headlights.

Battery is low cuz the rents have been using my comp like allll day. :) Gotta love them.
Really.

I love them.

:( :) :? I dunno. The end.

My Winter Song To You

I blogged about ending things once. It really wasn't that long ago, and now I'm coming to the end of something again.

Goodbye, best job I've ever had.

Goodbye, amazing people I never would have met.

Goodbye, opportunity to talk to Rachel on gchat all day long.

But really. I love this job as much as I love my new Pocahontas boots. A lot.

Last night I had a dream that some freaky counselor dude from ASU met with me and was like trying SO HARD to get me to stay. Was almost like threatening me. And I had to defend BYU and my decision to go there. I felt uncomfortable and indignant.

Saying goodbye to ASU will be easier in real life than in that dream. I think I said goodbye to that place the first day I stepped foot on campus.

Saying goodbye to people will be hard. Like my ward. I love those guys. :/

Saying goodbye to my family will be one of the hardest. Either we will all joke and pretend we're happy about it, OR I'll be sobbing. We'll see what really happens when the time comes.

Saying goodbye to mom cooking my food. Ouch. My life. It's hard now.

I've had a few hard things happen to me in my life, i don't think I've ever had to actually DO a hard thing,though. Why would I WANT to do a hard thing? Psychopath self....

Here's what I ate for lunch, surprisingly not a gross thing:

fiber plus. yummmm.

goodbye fiber plus. I ate you all gone.

Saying goodbye in other languages is wonderful, because you don't actually say goodbye.
For instance,

French, Adieu, > "To God" or Au revoir > "To the Next Seeing"

So it's about the equivalent of "Til we meeeeEEEE EEEEET!"

So maybe I'll just say Au revoir to all these things and let it be.
Cuz I've found myself in times of trouble....

Black and Yellow

Everyone knows I am obsessed with weddings. I love to think about that sappy crappy stuff, obsess over it, really. So here is what my obsession has decided to focus on. (It thinks and breathes for itself. Amazing, my wedding obsession.)

mmmmm

For my current dream spring wedding, these would somewhat be the colors. Minus the "baby-ness" of the blue, mine would be more dusty. And, I'd also have grey accents with it. For a more classy touch. Yeah??
I mean, look how happy that bride is! Prolly because her wedding colors are so great.

And then....



OBSESSED!

 Ok. Honestly this is PROBABLY gonna be what I choose, no matter what the season. This has evolved from my deep red and chocolate brown phase, into this. Holy cow, I've never loved colors so much in my life. This is just amazing, AND these colors would look good on any bridesmaid of any skin color. BUT this is totes my favorite so don't take it. K awesome. I feel like an idiot. Whatever.

Ok really, lets gush over that color combo just a little more... WITH A STINKIN YUMMY DESSERT!

aaaaahhhhh

Holy yumfest. PS all these pics are from good ol' google. I have no right to put them here. Alright. On to the next PHOTOOOO (Oh also, these collage photos can be found at another blog that is more wedding crazed than I am, http://www.weddingfanatic.com/southern-charm/ )

What speaks to me about this one is that my house has this same rustic charm. If I were to receptionize myself in my backyard, or anyone's backyard, really, I would maybe think about going this direction. Something speaks to me about the classy casual ness of it all, and once again, we see the yellow and dusty blue shout out here. And sunflowers can't be that expensive, can they?

On to something extremely fantastic. This lady's wedding was featured in Martha Stewart, and man alive, I love her hair and I LOVE her sweet reception dress. TOO AWESOME.

That. Is just beautiful. I find myself, mouth agape, in awe of the beauty radiating from this girl right now.
Her hair is something that I also just adore. Yes.

Like seriously? Never seen a girl so gorgeous. Go here to see it all > http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/photogallery/devon-and-dan

Sorry for the ranting and raving, I just have no other words to describe this strange fascination other than OBSESSED. I am obsessed. And I love it.

One last...

Something so snazzy, so charming, so subtle about the grey and yellow. Yes please.

Man I can't wait. :D

Despicable Me

I just read an article about being vulnerable and showing people who you are, and how it can enrich your life.

HA! I laughed at that! I just read it and thought, yep. I know all of this.

Because I had to make a decision years ago about how I was gonna live my life.

When things stress me out, I get rid of them. When I was a little seventh grader I realized "image" stressed me out. And so I made a conscious decision to be O.K. with who I was. And it wasn't something that changed overnight. It took a while. It took determination, branching out, consciously dealing with embarrassment, and a lot of pretending not to care.

The more I put myself out there, landed myself in awkward situations, and swam around in the aftermath, the more comfortable I became in my own pale-white skin. It was a mental exertion, I had to purposely think to myself, yes. My face is getting red right now. Don't run away. Don't be embarrassed about being embarrassed. It's OK. It's funny. Smile.

And then, after months and years and YEARS of practice, I finally found myself really just content. I had finally whittled away all of the pretension that naturally cakes our personalities. It was a raw me, one that everyone could see, and everyone could see right through me. And I was OK with that, so long as I knew my motives were right. I felt, that as long as I knew everything I did was good and right and true to my own personality, I would never have anything to hide from anyone.

Right?

Well, now I am who I am. I know there are people who think I am full of myself. That's OK, because I probably seem that way to them. And who am I to disagree with their perception on the world? And what would I say? "No, I totes am not stuck up, you're stuck up, you big, stuck up idiot!!"
Haha, I think that sometimes people confuse confidence with pride. And I know I am not proud, I am very aware of my faults, the confidence comes from being able to let people see those faults. That's not pride, that's honesty. I can be confident in my faults because I am wanting to improve on them. We run into trouble when we try to justify. Mostly I've had to work on saying "Yes, OK." Instead of, "Yeah I know but..." No justification. Just accept it, let the statement lie as it may, and then work on it. Boom! Easiest recipe to make yourself eat some humble pie. It doesn't always taste the best, but lemme tell you, it's so worth it in the end. It helps to build your confidence muscles. It tones your mental body. It's great.

Cool thing is, is that you never stop working on it. Always there is more to be comfortable with, there is more to fix about yourself. It's a refining process, and the end results, I hear, are perfect.

Watching Airplanes

Every New Year's Eve I get really sad. Something about saying goodbye to a year makes me upset. I mean, who knows how many times I sat and wrote "2010" on papers and things. It's personal, the year I live in. And knowing that there never will be a 2010 ever again makes me sad. It's just gone. I guess I get sad when things are gone.

What about periods of your life? Like actual times, instead of dates, experiences, instead of seconds? The things that can't be quantitively measured. "High school," not as the years 2007-2010, but as the time when I learned I could sing. "College," as the time when I discovered independence, learned to love, made new friends. I realized, that if you measure life by these experiences, you never lose them. 2010 ended, 2011 will, too. But because experiences define who you are, they never really leave you.

I think that's why it's hard to let people go. When they are so much a part of your life for so long, and suddenly their physical presence is taken from you, you are left with the half that haunts, the half that lingers in your brain and in your heart. That's hard to deal with. So how do we?

I know what I do.

Hopefully I would never actually associate with someone who pairs hot pink with red, but this is an accurate, and figurative, representation of what I do.
I kick people out.
Gone.
Boom.
See ya.
Peacey-P.

...It's terrible. I know that this makes me seem like a jerk to people. I know it does. But I'm terrible at holding on to people who are away from me.
And then there was one time that I didn't kick someone out. And that memory literally STUCK in my brain and has subconsciously HAUNTED me ever since.
Most annoying thing ever.
And if they come back, it's just like it used to be. But different. Like coming home and another family has been living in your house. Everything's the same, but it doesn't smell like your house. It smells like DIFFERENT. Not bad. JUST NOT THE SAME.
But what if it smelled like that other family for forever? Would it bug you? Would you hate it?
Would you get used to it?
Would you even start to attribute it to home?

Would you be ok?
Yes, probably. But do you want to?
You have a choice! You have lots of choices!
Lysol, Febreeze, PLUG IT IN PLUG IT IN!



mmm apple cinnamon

Or you could leave. Relationships stink like other people's houses sometimes. That's hard to deal with. Especially for me. Because I notice smells. And not like my house smells like the best thing ever, but change is difficult.
Leaving years is difficult. BEING ATTATCHED IS DIFFICULT!
Welcome to real life, Lynz. Yep.