More proof that I take myself far too seriously.

oh my. WARNING: I am ridiculously intense lately. My whole life plans are semi once again in shambles and so I feel every emotion to the upteenth degree, good or bad.

………

I’ve spent the better part of an hour now, eating carrots and grapes, discussing canning and cookbooks on beans (!!), reading “ten stupid things women do to mess up their lives”, and not coming back to this blog post. Shall I be ultra dramatic about  ohhhh, how my world is shattered, ohhhh, and I don’t feel like a whole person anymore, and explain that this is precisely the reason I am so intense, yet so paralyzed? I mull it over between tart bites.

Shall I explore the depth of the reasons why I am still overflowing, but now inexplicably, how I just want to shout everything and how I bawl every time I try to practice for voice lessons because it’s hard and I don’t know how to fix and because classical music makes me slightly sick so I have to spend half my time singing the way my soul feels to and the other half trying to do the opposite? I chomp on a carrot stick.

Shall I try to explain my Self, once more, to my dear, dear readers, some of whom know me well, some of whom I’ve never met? To YOU, I wish you’d kindly drop out of my life. To you, I wish you’d get back into it. To you, I wish you’d try to understand. To all of you, I don’t know whether I’d wish you’d read or skip, but I find I have less control every day so I guess whatever.

This baby carrot tastes funny. Shall I apologize profusely for my uneducated opinions, for my biases stemming from some unknown source, for my imperfections and my not-totally-grown-out blonde streak? I throw the empty bag away.

I thought I didn’t believe in any of that stuff. I thought I believed in being who I was, so strongly that I was willing to give up sleep and food and slice off years of my life to live it the way I want. I still am. But the who I am part seems suddenly chaotic beyond repair, strewn across miles of years and with the volume turned all the way up. Shouting, shouting into the braindead megaphone.

So, the point is, I’m intense, more than I’ve ever been.

I’m not really sure exactly why. I’ll let you know when I know, with more impassioned torrents of madness and chaos.

A terrifying, incoherent rant for your disagreeing pleasure

Found this rant from a while back and thought I’d share. I’ve been sucked back into the vortex since this point, so if you don’t agree, no need to worry because I’ve given in, too.

So, lately I’ve been attempting to unplug my life. I’ve gotten fed up with facebook and other things of the like, the dependence of seemingly everyone in the college realm on these things. Anyway, apparently my endeavors may be unfruitful after all: I, as an average American, view 400-600 ads per day.

Is it inescapable? Is it impossible to live a life without demoralizing, time-squandering media and relentless attempts to get me to buy, attempt, or simply believe? I’m not seeking hermitism here. I just want simplicity. Most of all I want reality. I’m through with airbrushed, Photoshopped, consumable people in magazines and on billboards. I’m done with exploitation of the entire human population, through every last element of popular culture.

But apparently this decision is not mine to make. I can’t simply throw up my hands and say “Enough!” and have every tv commercial pulled, every advertising guru unemployed. How can we reverse decades of permeation and infiltration of these hoards of unrealistic sleazeballs being chucked in our faces left and right? How can I force Americans to wake up and become alive again, when “waking up” is what we claim to be trying to do and when we have equated pleasure with “the good life” for so long? We’re trying to educate people, we’re trying to make them more open-minded. We’re going to offer courses in pornography and degrees in gay-lesbian studies so we can be aware. This isn’t life. It’s not reality.

The life I believe in doesn’t consist of this. It is filled with so much more! I dream of impossible things, of people helping each other and taking risks by going out on a limb to connect, not to gain some sort of sick control or pleasure. I believe, alright. In our ability to connect, to be exquisitely creative and wonderful without ulterior motives. Why don’t we channel our immeasurable capabilities to the common good?? Then it wouldn’t be whoever CEO trying to help out starving children in Africa to promote his company, he’d be doing it for them. And he could even do it for himself; he could do it for the challenge, for the sense of fulfillment and satisfaction that can’t come any other way. You’re not going to fall into bed joyfully exhausted when you’ve spent all day researching how to make your audience addicted to your product so you can get more money to spend on your expensive bed.

Why don’t we get to believe in the common good anymore? We have to, instead, be swarmed by thousands of creepsters showing us evidence that we are clearly not inherently good, that the cycle is unbreakable and we can’t and don’t want to be, so why would we even begin to try? We should give up, give in, addict, get addicted, buy, sell, trade. It’s our souls, anyway.

(in) FLATED.

AAAAAANNNNND!

BALLOONS, real ones. with this note attached:

 

We think you’re the greatest! Don’t let The Man crush your soul.

Love,

Your adoring family

Mom, Dad, Garrett, Cameron, Eric, & Brennon

Thanks, Mom. You know how to love me best of anyone in the history of ever.

Building up from seven inches high

from brooke beecher <brookebee@gmail.com>
to Paul Broomhead <paul_broomhead@byu.edu>,
Jean_Applonie@byu.edu

dateWed, Jul 22, 2009 at 3:15 PM
subjectThank you
mailed-bygmail.com

hide details Jul 22 (5 days ago) Reply

Dear Dr. Broomhead and Dr. Applonie,

I want to thank you both for taking the time to interview me today.
I was flabbergasted to learn that I missed the audition, albeit through miscommunication. I know you are both extremely busy, especially in this time, but I would like to see if there is any way I can schedule a live audition. I understand if this is not possible at this point, but I want to make sure I have exhausted all possible avenues before I give up and leave my acceptance to chance. I am also willing to gather the letter of recommendation, the aural skills test score, and any other materials needed if you are willing to accept those.

Again, thank you for your time today and for considering me for the program.
Sincerely,
Brooke Beecher

 

fromPaul Broomhead <paul_broomhead@byu.edu>
reply-toPaul Broomhead <paul_broomhead@byu.edu>

tobrooke beecher <brookebee@gmail.com>

dateMon, Jul 27, 2009 at 12:20 PM
subjectRe: Thank you
mailed-bybyu.edu

hide details 12:20 PM (21 hours ago) Reply

 

Brooke,

We have made our decisions regarding admission to the Music Ed Program and you were not one of the 5 who were selected at this time. I know this is not pleasant news to you. I’m writing you personally because I anticipate that you may think, “But I didn’t get to do the singing audition.” I wanted to personally assure you that the audition would not have made a difference. Indeed we were looking at you on a level field with the assumption that you would pass the audition—and still your qualifications did not quite get you in the top 5.

Brooke, I wrote the above for the sake of clarity and it came out sounding quite negative. So, now I want to tell you that we were actually quite impressed with you and believe you will succeed well—perhaps even in music education. You have many strengths that we recognize, and I would personally enjoy working with you some day.

All the best,

Dr. Broomhead

 

from brooke beecher <brookebee@gmail.com>
to Paul Broomhead <paul_broomhead@byu.edu>

date Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 1:54 PM
subject Re: Thank you
mailed-bygmail.com

hide details 1:54 PM (19 hours ago) Reply

 

Dr. Broomhead,

Thank you again for considering me and for writing personally. I appreciate your honesty and timely response.
I have learned much in this round of the application process, and look forward to this upcoming January for another shot. I would be interested in meeting with you soon to discuss how I can improve myself as a candidate, as well as exactly how I should go about the application this next time so I can eliminate any further miscommunication.
Please let me know when you will have time in the next few weeks to meet with me--and again, thank you for your help and consideration thus far.

Sincerely,
Brooke Beecher

 

………

No toil nor labor fear

but with joy

wend your way.

…

I feel seven inches high.

But I feel good, now.

Feeling good is a good spot from which to build from seven inches

high, a good space from which to fill pages. Not only are you spared

salty water smudges but a view of this thing through red, puffy

eyes and smeared makeup. I can polish now, I can accept, and I can

be serene.

…

Food still tastes like sawdust, and I am somehow not quite as much

of the same vivacious, bubbly girl so aware of her own heartbeat. I

am deflated Mylar, heaped-but still steady, ready to blow air

back in slow, refined pace. I can no longer afford a bulletin board

dream-this is an aspiration worthy of all the work I can muster out

of myself, all the oxygen I can blow into my balloon, for the picture on

my desktop to become my reality.

…

I would personally enjoy working with you some day, All the best, he signs.

You BEST be enjoyin, Dr. B, because I be workin my butt off.

……………….

The day after my interview, after being discouraged and wondering if I’d been wrong all along about this path being The One for me, I was reading and stumbled upon this accidentally.

"The dreamers are the saviors of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers. Humanity cannot forget its dreamers; it cannot let their ideals fade and die; it lives in them; it knows them as the realities which it shall one day see and know.

Composer, sculptor, painter, prophet, poet, sage—these are the makers of the after-world, the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful because they have lived. Without them, laboring humanity would perish.

Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts. For out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.”

James Allen, As A Man Thinketh

…

I have not been wrong all along.

‘Tis not so, all is right.

midsentence

I am waking well before my alarm lately. Perhaps due to the turbo speed my dial of life is perpetually set to. Wake up. Shower. Sigh.

No pity here. Just truth, of things that have passed that I cannot change--be it to correct, alter, or eliminate. There is a drop of cherry juice on my white dress. My hair is unwashed. I missed the audition.

No pity. Truth. Reality. I feel anxious and then eased, not ever comfortable--just the measure of more or less tense. I babble all day long about this dream of mine and how I'm working toward it, and fill scripts with words I could have said to make the work move along.

I have fought and am still fighting. I have accepted that my life will never be one of rest. Seeds are planted in me that I have chosen to nurture. I have chosen this path for myself.

I cannot turn around. There is not a fork in my sight, not an option any longer for retreat to ease or quick fix, or even any other path of equal difficulty. My emotions fizz and bubble and surge me forward, hurling me at turbo speed down this path I have wanted, well before my alarm rings.

My fitful sleeping dreams are filled with men writing me off and labeling me arrogant in their minds, women with turquoise spectacles and bright red hair being polite and contradictory. I do not know how they feel about me really. Are they testing me? The harshness and the stark, seeming distaste just makes me cry.
Am I all alone in my dream, I wonder. My alive, awake dream. Why doesn't anyone believe in this stuff; it is just as real as going flat and forgetting words and miscommunication and lower-than-expected GPAs.

I tried hard not to regret. I made a list of blessings and smelled the air and looked at the majestic panoramic of the sky. I am so blessed, I remind myself through red eyes--just red from confusion, that's all.

There have been times of discouragement, but never of uncertainty, I wrote. Still true. There have been times of being unfair and snippy and of oversight, but never of failure, I should rephrase.
I didn't even think I would get this chance now. I didn't even think I'd be in the practice rooms of the HFAC imitating opera on my lunch breaks. I do not doubt the possibility that it is still going to happen now for me.
In the blank after GUT FEELING, I think she put a Y. I think he put a question mark. Perhaps that is too generous, perhaps me and my non-mold-fitting ways are too cocky to realize truth.

I have had frustration, not fear. I have had uncertainty in circumstance, but surety of outcome. I know what I have learned. And it is not to never trust anyone, or to fight people when it's your word against theirs. It is that I might never wake up to my alarm again. That I feel too much to be still in fitful dreams of



......

I left this post in midsentence, anxious to get home to bffls and boyfriends and pink plastic tablecloths for utensil-less spaghetti. I left my overspoken dream hovering in midsentence, cursor blinking, mascara smudged off. Days have passed--whatever pressing insight might have finished that sentence is lost in translation of all the discoveries and events and more FEELINGS...but not a minute goes by that I don't think about my stupid powerLESS heels, aural skills, smiling compliments of the best essays ever read punctured by after-questioning do-I-have-a-practical-side.

Okay, I just backspaced the start of a torrent of smart aleck comments. Backspace again. Blinking cursor again.
Starting and stopping, again--stopping, for now.

Power heels, comma, BOP

My power shoes are a little squeaky and I wonder absently if "Dr. B" will notice that I wore them the last time we met. He won't.

I've had nothing but happiness and strength today--the butterflies that choked my words and stifled my courage last night have laid down to let me fly in their place today.
I'll accept that they'll come back on the walk up four flights of stairs, power shoes clicking away. I'll pause outside the office, take a deep breath, smooth my skirt. My mind will be clear but not blank, still buzzing. I'll remember mom's voicemail and Garrett's text and Claire's reassuring shouts this morning. (Who knew shouts could be reassuring? We yell everything lately. It makes all things we say BETTER. SEE?!)

After the rating scales of teaching personality and musicality/background, there is a space for "GUT FEELING."

"YES! YES! YESSSS!!" I SHOUTED into the empty office this morning.

Gut feeling.

......

In other news, Jared Schultz.

He is continuously, incessantly, literally always bopping around in my brain matter.
((a note to the Scattergories Authority: "bop" absolutely IS a legitimate way to travel--please see above example.))

And I can't stop the boppage, although I do not know why I would want to, considering the silly grin said boppage plasters on my face as I float around all day. I don't let you in on this ridiculousness usually, because usually, when people talk about this stuff, I find it ultra lame and boring and ultra all-the-same.
But JARED SCHULTZ, ahhhhh!! I am a very huge fan of exceptions when this creature is involved. I am the person I never planned on being, and somehow I am perfectly okay with it. Except for the times when I shout at him that he's ruining all my plans and why does he have to be so wonderful. He shrugs and says sorry, which makes me fall into a fit of giggles and I am okay with being Giggly Girl oogling at Boyfriend once again.

"hey girlfriend. you're like the soy sauce to my sushi." YEAH I am.

iiiiiiiii liiiiiiiiiike hiiiiiiiim.

note: i still do not understand/adore the other members of the male class. you are still on probation with me for a little while longer. purely informational.

tumbleweed

I despise the word ‘network’ as a

verb.

Since when did people become

something to procedure as computers.

With computers.

…

I love this font.

…

I despise flakes and flecks and specks of things getting on my white shorts.

…

I love/despise BYU magazine:; love for all the

inspiring things people do, despise for the ridiculous

things people can accomplish and why the heck

haven’t I done such things, I am older than the girl

from Finland who moved out at 14 to live on her

own to be closer to her violin teacher so she could win bajillions of awards and prizes. ALSO, what

is this about some girl getting ORCA grants for her

research about steak browning?? Despise on this one.

…

I love running in the morning in summer alongside a

couple of the best creatures ever created.

……

I despise things that smell bad: today, the office

of computer dudes next door.

…

My life is uncomplicated, really.

An explanation of jubilee

this is kendra. she is practically perfect.


"You look happy," Bishop said to me yesterday, after we talked about the temple and he signed a new recommend for me. I love this man.

"I am." My response was automatic, but real.

"It's a good feeling." We smile kind of knowingly at each other, and all I can do is nod.

The best feeling, my constant glee.
So I need you to know that it is possible. It isn't too much to handle. I still feel everything else. Just in this frame of incessant joy that does not go away, because it is in direct proportion to how close I let myself get to the author of all happiness.
He is as real as these feelings. Nothing will make me stop knowing that; I will not apologize for that.
I will not try to paint a picture of my life as perfection--I think you already know about the non-perfection too much to gloss it over enough, anyway.
This joy of mine is not based on ignorance, but instead on new understanding.

Happiness does not arrive, but evolves and changes with us; it is not dependent on our circumstance, but on the state of our insides.

And we read these ideas and skim these how-to books and don't believe any of it, because that's not real life; it's a scam. Those fairytale feel-good movies just suck our money and our time, because we know how it really is. We live our lives in it. In the muck and the grime and the grit and the logistics of the world that is a couple parts good but overwhelmingly more parts awful. To be dealt with and hid from and endured.

No. We choose. We chose to be here. We choose how we become while we're here. We choose where we're going.

"They themselves are makers of themselves, by virtue of the thoughts they choose and encourage; that mind is the master-weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance, and that, as they may have hitherto woven in ignorance and pain they may now weave in enlightenment and happiness."

-James Allen, As A Man Thinketh ((MACY! I am ADORING this book!!))

No, no no: read that quote again.
Think about it again.

This is what makes reality. I choose to be close to the God I love, who loves me when I am undeserving; I choose to be close to the God who "knows all the thoughts and intents of the heart; for by his hand [was I] created from the beginning." (Alma 18: 32)
In turn, I choose to be happy.

Because I know Him, I know my life isn't some pointless array of random acts that have no lasting effect, that I will be together forever with those I love and that my life will mean something, even after it is over.
Knowing this, I can wake up smiling.

This is who I am. This is who I am discovering I can be. And this is how my life course will run.
I will not apologize for that.

the reason why i have been a nutcase for a while now

Portfolio: check.
sigh.
this thing has been sucking all my time and vitality, in a mostly good but really suction-sucking way, for a while now. I can't believe it's done.
I pause to look at it sitting next to me, with sewn pockets for dvds and four rings binding the top--what IS this thing. my whole life, basically. trying to convince paul broomhead that my life course should be allowed to run the way i want.

but i already know he is going to leap for joy when he sees this thing of beauty and wonder. he is going to not just pat me on the back, but, perhaps, take me in a full bear hug because he is so refreshed by my creativity and charm and he will say, "gosh, brooke, i don't even think you NEED to go through the program. here is a diploma, and you can go teach at ron clark and bell and ride off into the sunset of blissful happiness. go ahead, congratulations."

the weight of trying to make my biggest dreams in the world happen in a few short weeks has been...crushing. crushing like pressed flowers, when you get something concentrated and new and beautiful...


SO ANYWAY. I'm done. And you can read my first essay today, if you want. They told me analyze your motivation to teach, tell us when you decided to teach, and hey, how committed are you to this career. Pmff. I wanted to refer them to this blog like seventeen times. I will probably post the second one as well, but for now, here is the first. quite fitting that my 100th post is about being a music teacher.



HERE IT IS!!

I love soul music. I can be found rolling out of bed to Aretha Franklin wailing “Respect,” blow drying my hair to her gospel croons of “Can I get a witness?”, and dancing all over campus to “What a Friend We Have In Jesus” with my hand as a microphone. I’ve always been adamant that music isn’t music without soul; without feeling. It is this element that has molded my own soul, and planted in me the desire to have a hand in sculpting others.

I want to shape souls, human ones; through my own passion, my feeling, my music. There is no more direct avenue to this end than teaching music in public school.

Public school music gave me a great experience. I felt the mysterious magic of music and knew I wanted it all my life, and choir was enjoyable and enlarging. But I never pictured myself ending up as a public school music teacher until I was at a choir concert after my first year of college, with a lot of experiences to fuel the musical fire but no major to claim. I had tentatively decided to major in music, but there were still doubts—especially about teaching—that ate my deep desire and digested it to disdain. The fear that paralyzed me: what did I have to offer students more than someone else?

But as I sat there at that choir concert after a year of constant struggle to figure out who I wanted to be and how my dreams fit in with reality, something happened. I sat there with my mouth unhinged, paralyzed, and the chills would not stop. It was then that I first said to myself, “this is what you’ve got to do. Nothing else is going to cut it—you have felt the joy and wonder of music all your life, but you’ve tasted this feeling now, this feeling that is somehow different. You are a teacher, and you are enough. You will bring things to the table that nobody else in the world can, and those are your passion, your deep spiritual connection to this medium, your vision and devotion--these feelings you have right now. And there is no turning back. Your heart has been given away to this—you’ve got to be a music teacher, and that’s that.”

It hit me then, that teaching music was all I had ever actually wanted to do and I had been fighting it because I was afraid. Afraid of the failure; of the success, too. I tried not to be a music geek—talking about music all the time and thinking about music all the time and being like, "Music is my life blah blah” all the time—but, I had to confess: I was a music geek. To the core. Music is such an incredibly basic part of my makeup, like water and oxygen; it is intertwined and woven and stitched in me so deeply that it can't be separated from the intangible qualities of Brooke Beecher and I've got to shout about it!!

So teaching gives me a podium from which to shout; not a podium for preaching or my own accolade, but one that gives a standing point from which to see change in people over time. As a ward choir director while still in high school, I got a first glimpse of the change I could facilitate. Under my direction, choir members learned music as something that made them better people, as an avenue for finding Christ. I saw their faces light up as they grasped the concepts, and I heard them sing differently with faces newly alight. I got to see faces light up again as a Relief Society teacher; we discussed the gospel, we “[understood] one another, and both [were] edified and rejoice[d] together” (D&C 50:22). I began to see the parallels between teaching the gospel and teaching music, experiencing the same edifying and rejoicing—these added drops to the bucket of my desire to teach music.

The tipping point came when I was given a rowdy six-year-old Primary class. Under my tutelage, I watched them go from flying limbs and all manner of screaming, wailing, and whining to arms folded and minds affixed. I sat back in awe, realizing that the expectations and love that had come naturally to me, coupled with hard work, had actually facilitated change. The outcome left me in awe because the process was almost imperceptible, changing from moment to moment—a process alive to me in a way no other endeavor ever has been. I began to realize the greatest joy I found was in setting high expectations for these children, and being the person who saw their potential and pushed them with love and patience. It was this experience that was the epiphany for the niche I have discovered as a music teacher in inner city schools. The lack of discipline and stimulation from the arts found in these schools touches a deep desire inside of me to love people in a way that helps them see the world in a new light; this light is the joy and capacity of music to lift the human spirit and take us to greater heights—not just as musicians—but as human beings.

And so you see, I’m not just a singer; I am a teacher. The seeds of both are planted in me, to work together and bring forth something uniquely me—to make some girl from a small town in Utah into a teacher in urban schools, who molds souls and minds. This process, however difficult, is the path most congruent with my life goals: to change people for the better and to guide others in their spiritual and emotional journeys to find themselves and Christ. Because I have found Christ so beautifully through music, it is the lens through which I can help others see Him with the most clarity. Music fills me. It fills me to overflowing, so that I have to share it; body and spirit, music is magic. I want to be an instrument of that magic in another’s life.

I want to shape souls, human ones—with my soul. This can be done most directly through the medium of music that has shaped my soul so poignantly. My vision of being a music teacher who does this is too clear to be clouded by doubt any longer; I am fiercely committed to making this vision reality.
“Can I get a witness?”

The Seed (Part 2)

remember my seed exam? my marriage that i have loved and nurtured so faithfully? the seed i wrapped in saran wrap and a kitchen towel to keep it warm, and put under the table lamp every single day to watch it sprout? these have been the results.







well, i should be honest and tell you it's dead now. but it was a good run, seed. i loved you a lot. i still love you, dead as you are. i will forever remember you this way, with leaves and pretty purple blossoms.
good thing this isn't a type of things to come in the marriage department, riiiiggght!

bonkers.nuts.psycho.crazy.insane.ridiculous. above and beyond and around and under all those things.

i know they have to accept me when i am doing things like this. they have no other choice.
but seriously.


i felt like this ^^^^^

this weekend was NUTS, i tell you. in wonderful ways and ways i'd rather not return to and ways i was completely not expecting and in ways i am totally unsure how to feel about and all very exhausting, but very magnificent.

and then i felt like this, five seconds later.

hobo

Yesterday's list:

1. felt like a hobo because i snagged like, six, perhaps seven, packets of saltines from L&T...and then at them noisily and messily in my oh-so-sophisticated meeting with intelliworks.

a. the brown of my shoes matched the brown of the table leg exactly, which made me feel a little bad because they were church tables from probably the seventies.

I met a man named Brooks which always weirds me out and I knew he was the presentation guy when I saw him outside my office way before the meeting, because he was dressed well and looked like corporate America.
Shawn O'Neal kept looking over at me quizzically, as if to ask what the heck I was doing there. Old men looked at my curled hair and wanted to ask, "you in the right room, honey?"
I am young. I am too young to wear powersuits and attend meetings and pay attention to them for two hours and twelve minutes. I am 19. They think I do not know anything, although I am the student they are trying to serve and reach and market and sell with this fancy software package. I am young, and I hate corporate America. I hate the overcomplication of absolutely EVERYthing, how the presenters are always magnetic but inaccessible. How people expect to be lied to a little bit.

People are leaving the meeting, but I stay, smacking my brown shoe against the brown of the table leg, to show Shawn I am credible and have a brain.

2. I felt like wonderful because we went to the temple and I needed it, and Macy was there and I loved it. After waiting for something, anything, I read about how there will be the most magnificent music in heaven and lost it--well, losing it in that way that makes you feel so inexplicably found.

3. I felt like wonderful again sitting in a restaurant with delicious food and my four best friends in the whole of the universe and thought over and over again how blessed I am to have found them, how rare it is and how much I've learned from each of them. How I think about that all the time but realize it anew in moments like those. I couldn't stop grinning as we discussed how our husbands will be best friends and we'll all live next door and our kids will play together and perhaps my children and Claire's will learn to play video games at Katie and Kaylie's...

4. I felt grateful for people like Macy Sorensen. I felt grateful to and for Macy Sorensen. Macy who is so giving, so humble and magnificent and ready to learn, so interested in my life and me and LOVING. I was grateful for her tears and her presence and her spirit is always able to speak so deeply to mine.

5. I felt tense, then reassured.

6. I felt content and exhausted and happy.

7. I feel that way now. Waking up happy is on my favorite things in the world list.

clueless

WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW WHAT I REALLY DESPISE AT THIS MOMENT?
WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR WHY I AM WRITING IN ALL CAPS ALL ANGRY LIKE?
WOULD YOU LIKE TO PARTICIPATE IN AN ONSLAUGHT OF POSSIBLY INNACURATE BUT MORE LIKELY REAL OCCURENCES THAT MAY OR MAY NOT TERRIBLY OFFEND YOU?

THIS IS WHO I REALLY DO NOT CARE FOR RIGHT NOW.

males.
yes, you: all of you. you do not understand how to live sometimes. you do not get the natural flow of the way life is supposed to work.
especially in your relations with females.
you are insensitive and selfish sometimes, and don't pick up on the obvious, obvious, obvious. you are rough and falsely intimate when you claim to be gentle and real, and i am sorry that i am making all these sweeping generalizations but they are sometimes true and i am not quite sure how you at times fail miserably to realize this. you only talk about blowing things up or fighting people down or trite things of the like and let me guess your true passion in life is sports? i try to be patient with you, but i know you are brilliant, and you seem to be wasting it on stupid crap that does not matter one lick so let's talk about your that instead of hot girls or cars. sometimes i am sick with you, you make me feel to vomit because you are so clueless and so unaware and seems you do not care about people but only what they can be consumed for, how they can serve your purposes.

so unless you are related to me or your name is jared schultz please do not come near me. i guess also i should mention if your name is jared schultz and you are my boyfriend. probably there are more jared schultzes in the world guilty of these hideous offenses that my jaredschultz is not.

back to all you other males that are wrong-doers: i said do not come near me, and i mean do not come near me at least until i admit my wrongness in faulting all of you for things only a few are guilty of, but for now i am frustrated and you get to hear about it that is all thank you.

apology from an insomniac

i look at this blog and frown, because i don't have time.
warning
hi, it's me again, talking about music education again, again.

i only have time to be a restless insomniac for the prospect of ten days.

my pillow doesn't knock me out like usual, and my stomach is churning. my body is pancaked against the mattress but my head is reeling out the window with no screen to the warm july air that screams freedom...

and now just screams an insurmountable task that i fear i cannot do.

but i can, and am, at three in the morning when i spring from my mattress to gather my pile and perch to scribble, scribble. i get a lot out, feel like i've popped a pinhole in a lead balloon. relief of sorts. time, i have time, i am not tired, i am wandering back upstairs, into my bed and under one sheet, kicking off covers and worries and counting slowly, inhaling deeply.

my stomach is still whirling and head is hurling too quickly to relax. counted sheep sing mary had a little lamb and baaa baa black sheep in four part harmony. I splat ideas in the dark all over lined pages, barely coherent and in big, obnoxious handwriting; I am not wanting to turn on a light and also I am not wanting to lose the light that's just flashed in my mind.

like a blinking circus, they open and close off again, on again, and i have to work fast--no, there is still no room for sleep in this bed.
to-do lists and ideas to try for creativity and originality they've never before seen--i guess i talked about all this stuff enough to actually start caring about it, in the middle of the night. it's such a big deal to me.

people are like, "oh cool, music ed. i hear that's hard to get into."

and i want to be like, "yeah, it's cool, because this is my whole life and i am about to fall off a cliff if i don't get into this program this instant."

"yeah, that's sweet that you sing."
and that's it.

the circus finally relents and i drift off, waking to the giggles of a few of my favorites and runnning in the breathtaking morning. my life is good, i remind myself. it is better than good and i want this more than anything, and they will see that.

i thought about apologizing just now, that this music ed hullabaloo is such a big deal to me.

i will try a different apology, something like sorry if you don't know how wonderful it is or why it's such a big deal to me or if you don't care. sorry, yeah, i apologize.
...and i want this more than anything, you know.

WHINEy.

"I know I'm an emotional person. I get it. But this is getting a little ridiculous, self. You need to cool the jets.

I'm at the end of my rope some days. (By some days I mean these last several in a row.)

I'm tired of being up and down and whipped and whirled, swirled and swished. I'm tired of swimming without deep breaths-just gasps enough to go back under and tread in the torrent. Because I am tired I am impatient. I want to rest.


And somehow I'm too embarassed to post this."


I have no idea why I was too embarassed to post this on March 18th, 2009. This is how I was feeling then, I guess. Maybe I've just grown less cautious, or sommsing.



This is how I'm feeling today:





whiney.
want to know why? when this picture was taken, it was because i was studying for finals and i had to have that fatty book in my lap.
now it is because i have to MAKE A BOOK like that to have in the music education department's lap. called a portfolio. in sixteen days.

i'll be done now. i do apologize.

Optional is an excellent option

"i wish going to the bathroom were optional." -becki

sigh.
i feeeel you.

things i really hate in regard to bathrooms:

+one ply anything
(recently claire and i purchased some very thick, very quilted 2-ply t.p. MAN we are livin large.)

+paper towels that are far too small to accomplish anything (AND ALSO, ONE-PLY)
(when i have to get four or even five of those tree corpses, i turn mean, and wish for the blow dryer contraptions)
-double hate if they are scratchy, which, all over campus, they invariably are. where is my tuition GOING?? we can't even afford some decent bathroom accessories in this joint?

+the stench of public restrooms, particularly the one closest to my office

+the inconvenience of traveling from my office to a semi-decent smelling restroom

+the awkwardness of public restrooms, semi-decent smelling or no

+the people who want to make awkward conversation stall-to-stall
(aren't you busy over there?)

+the lounge area in luxurious bathrooms
(you mean you want to study in a place where people...er, nevermind)

+alright, public restrooms in general

+alright, having to interrupt my daily activities to go to any bathroom at any time. I've waxed far too busy for these kinds of activities. i mean really.

nast.