Life as of Lately: Week ???

Happy fall, y’all!!

Jeez, it’s been entirely way too long.  I’m slowly starting to understand/realize how fast time goes, and that even though I think I have a tonne of it, it’s gone way before I anticipate it to be.  It also makes me realize how QUICKLY things can change.

Let’s do it!

[Reading]  A book called Biological Rhythms, Sleep, and Hypnosis by Simon Green.  Sounds weird, I know, but I have to give a speech in my communications class about any topic, and my first week here, we went to a hypnotist show and my orientation guide guy got hypnotized onstage, so I figured I’d research it deeper and then give my informative speech on the cool features of hypnosis. It’s a great little compact book, written like the “For Dummies” series, very relevant and easy to understand.  I highly recommend it, whether you’re interested in the topic or you’re just looking for something cool to read (:

[Writing] ON THIS BLOG FINALLY 😀

…And more articles as well! Just gonna link up the more recent ones I’ve put out! (I’m also both jumping for joy and dying inside at my deadline for article submissions, which instead of on midnight on Sunday, has been changed to 6pm >.< ( no more procrastination for Stephanie).

• Mascara to Mustaches: Beauty as a State of Mind
• Dear Dininghallers
• I Don’t Want To Like Your Pictures
• Why The PSL is The Perfect Metaphor For Life
• The Classroom Inventors

[Learning] That I need to get OUT of my dorm to study.  Being too comfy with so many distractions surrounding me has not had the best effect on some things, so I’m heading out to the library or our building’s sketchy study basement much more often.

[Doing] NEW THINGS 😀 Like rock climbing, trying to get back into a running groove, exploring campus, live streaming! Also just on a side note I’m going with my youth group to a corn maize (heh get it) this Saturday. And I’m also trying to switch my current job position from general dining hall to the cafe down at the university recreation center.  They didn’t need me to fill a spot in the dining hall last night for my shift, but another girl called out at the URec cafe, so I was sent over there… and though I was thrown into things suddenly and I barely had an idea of what I was doing, I fell right into place, and clicked with everyone there, and made the decision to leave the dining hall for this tight-knit version of a Robeks/Tropical Smoothie Cafe/Smoothie King-Chipotle hybrid place.  I am. So excited.
Oh, and homework.  I’m doing lots of homework.

[Eating] LOTS OF CANDY.  Somehow my suitemates ended up with like, an endless supply of Snickers bars, and boy are they dangerous.  I’m also eating waffles, tacos, pineapple, and spinach every chance I get. 

[Drinking] Milk (as always) and coffee (because what else can ya do about only 5 hours of sleep the night before?)  But I’m also trying to drink a lot more water, gonna try to lay off the caffeine for a bit, because this week has been like, GO GO GO and I need to stop and make it be a little more like slow, slow, slow.  

[Seeing] My fave parts of the fall season show up (,:

[Listening] To ALL OF THIS.  (“Fall Jamz” Playlist)

[Laughing] About how my Art History Professor basically gave us the study guide as the midterm. Hopefully I passed, then.

[Thinking] about what I want to do with my life, how it isn’t always as bad as it seems, and how friendship is SO DARN IMPORTANT.

[Hoping] That I can transfer jobs as quickly and smoothly as possible, that I can set aside time to organize my life and my schedule for next semester, and that I can sleep later this afternoon XD

[Loving] this weather.  My suitemates.  My newfound love for rockclimbing. The new orange lights we got for our common room.  My college.  God.  MY NEW COMPUTER/TABLET HYBRID THAT I GOT FOR A STEAL!!

[Praying] that my dad can find another job, that I can invest myself fully and deeply in these blooming friendships and older ones, that one of my friends newly shipped to Sacremento for AmeriCorps can serve others safely,  that all of the fear and frustration and prejudice can somehow melt away to common sense before November rolls around…

How are y’all holding up?

xx

Climbing Walls

If there’s anything I’m constantly learning here in college, it’s that opportunities and connections are endless, and failure, while imminent, is not completely inhibiting.

Monday was an example of this.  It was a typical day of classes, and I had stopped for lunch, prepared to eat alone and by the windows (because I have a window fetish, every time I eat or study in a building, or even when I’m riding in vehicles, I’ve gotta be near a window) to the lull of classical music and the stimulation of a thick art history textbook.  I was about to sit down when I heard someone call my name.  I turned around to see one of my friends from governor’s school, specifically the French academy. She had a girl with her and they were about to sit to eat, and she asked me if I wanted to join her. Some people don’t know that, though I appear extroverted, I am very socially awkward and introverted at times… So I was a bit skeptical about sitting with a) a person I only really know through language, and 2) a complete stranger.  But I told myself that this was something I should do, took the leap and said yes.

We ended up introducing ourselves all over, and two hours passed easily full of rich conversation about life, friends, politics (blech), family, and goals. Not once did I reach for myself. {NOTE: I’m trying to accumulate as many “I’m here, I’m present, I’m engaging in what it means to be human” moments as possible, so this felt like a personal win}.  I ended up clicking very well with the new girl, and I found out she lived right next door in the dorm next to me.  We walked back from lunch together, and on the way she described her love for rock climbing.  I told her I’d never been before, and then she offered to take me to the university rec center to try it out.  Just like that, I had a date with my long overdue friend Fitness on the side of a cliff.
(Just kidding.  It was an indoor climbing wall.)

I learned many new things that night, like the command-based conversation for when you’re about to start climbing:
Me: “On belay!”
Belayer: “Belay on.”
Me: “Climbing!”
Belayer: “Climb on”
*time passes and in theory I make it to the top and then after a bit I’m ready to come down*
Me: “Falling!”
Belayer: “OKIE DOKIE!”

Or something like that.
But as I was getting in the harness and chalking up, I saw one of my peers from high school.  She approached me and we did our friendly hellos, and then she asked me
“What are you doing here?” And her curt question made me confused and taken aback for a second…  It’s a rock climbing gym.  There’s a wall…and I’m going to climb it. 
“I’m gonna climb this wall, what about you?”
Sure, it was my first time.
Sure, I was shorter than like, 98% of the people in the room.
Sure, at times I had no idea what I was doing… and maybe this is me taking a little bit too much offense to that question or reading into it a bit too much, but let me tell you, I was suddenly filled with a lot of motivation to make it to the top.

“On belay!”
Belay on.
“Climging!”
Climb on.

And I climbed.
As someone who climbed over everything in sight as a younger child, it felt oddly familiar (and somewhat comfortable!) to be climbing vertically, looking for handholds and seeking the next foothold.  Some paths didn’t work out, some things were *just* out of reach,, and some moments of losing balance and falling back into the harness made my heart skip a few beats.
But like with a LOT of things in life, looking forward and stretching out, shoving your fists in cracks and pressing on leads you to the top.
I wish I could have stayed at the top of the rock wall a bit longer, but other people were waiting below.

It just made me feel this small sense of accomplishment, in the face of all the work I had still yet to do, in the face of all the negativity floating around rooted in bias and prejudice of current issues.  And it made me think, what if everyone could climb a rock wall? If not a physical one, then a figurative or theoretical one? My arms were sore the next morning, and like a lot of other things, you don’t gain an accurate appreciation for something until you’ve tried it or struggled through it.

Let’s try climbing all of our own walls, rock or otherwise, this week, eh?

~
xoxo