The new year!

Every year around this time I wake up in a cold sweat and say okay, what are your goals this year? What are you going to do to further your dreams and create some more adventure? What can I do to make myself happy again? Not that I am not happy, but usually the holidays send a bit of sadness and a whole lot of anxiety my way. So with the big boom of the fireworks lighting up the sky I think of all the things I want to accomplish that year. Then I force them back down and tell myself its so stupid to write these things down, I just need to live my life. But as I said before I find myself days later waking up in a cold sweat, mind wandering across the universe, with a pad of paper and a pen shooting sparks out of the end as I write down everything on my mind.

But this year there was no cold sweat, no aching hands from frantically writing, no tear stained cheeks from realizing everything that went wrong the year before, nothing.

I realized that I already made my New Year's resolutions. That I already had a plan to improve my life and to create a better future for myself. I found myself being overwhelmingly proud of how far I had come in just a year. I am really pursuing my dreams and running at the chance to make something of myself. I cant tell you how ecstatic it makes me feel that I know where my life is going, well as of now. So my advice to everyone out there is to skip the wake up calls in the middle of the nights with the same questions that I ask myself every year.

Instead get up every day with the feeling like it is a new year, and your resolutions must be met. I believe that the key to success is pursue a dream like its the one thing that will make your resolutions come true.

Don't ever stop thinking that your life can be improved, spend every day making an effort to withstand the dumps that life puts us in, and create a memory for every moment you live.

1st WEEK OF COLLGE

This week was my first week of college and already I feel as if I am home again.
I walk to my classes like and it feel like I have been doing this all my life, I sit and listen to lecture and I know that somehow I have heard them before. College feels comfortable to me. It feel like I belong somewhere. Although I don't have a lot of friends yet, I already know that I am going to be successful in college. Its been an amazing week. I have gotten so much accomplished in my classes and am starting to form good routines for studying and getting things done. I'm excited to see what this year will do for me and what I can do for Dixie State College. Wish me luck!

Crossing the line

Today I came home from one of the most exciting overnight trips of my life.
I went on a retreat to the Dixie State Cabin in Pine Valley with the Theatre Majors.
It was such a fun time to be with people that were interested in the same things as me.
I met so many new faces and gained a lot of new friends, which is what I have been praying for.
But the most memorable event from this trip was an exercise that we did this morning with the dean of students from Dixie state.
It was called crossing the line. The object was that every participant would stand on one side of the line and the facilitator (dean of students) would ask a question to the whole group; if your answer was yes you would step over the line and face the participants that had not stepped over then once the question was over you would return to your original space. He started out with simple questions, ones that most people would step over then line for like "if your a male step over the line" so on and so forth. But as the session went on he got down to some harder questions, ones you had to really be honest with yourself and have courage to step over the line, questions like "if you have ever been or know someone who was abused as a child, step over the line". This game made you think and feel for everyone in the room, it allowed you to trust yourself in giving an honest answer even if it was hard, and it allowed you to trust other people in the room with secrets that no one else in the world could know. The room was completely silent for over an hour, and after the exercise was done we spoke about how we felt and what we gained from experiencing it together. It left more than a few people crying, including myself, but we also walked away with a better understand of each other, and an appreciation for the people in the department.
Crossing the line felt like you were stripping away all protection of yourself to let people in, so that they could understand you. It shocked me how much love I felt after it was over from the people that I had just barely met. We were all going through problems in our lives, whether they had happened recently or they were thing that we had left years behind us. Either way, I didnt feel alone for once. I had came to this retreat scared and feeling more alone than I had in a really long time. My best friend moved away that very morning and I was looking for a way to cope with things that were causing me depression and anxiety, but what I found was so much more than just a replacement. It was a cure, that only came with trusting myself enough to let others in.

I just want to say thank you to everyone that was there. Thank you for trusting yourself enough to let us in and for allowing me to be someone that most people have never seen. I love this department more and more every second and I cant explain how much I am looking forward to this year with you all. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Waving Goodbye

Waving goodbye to a friendly face

is like surrendering to a cold embrace

it’s hard to hear they are off for good

but even harder because you know they should

go out and conquer the big open spaces

to smile and live and meet friendly faces

you know that they are much better off

but you wish that this wasn’t the last stop

it truly is a bitter sweet ending

but then again maybe it’s just the beginning

you will see them again when the train comes back around

they will always be your strength to lift you off the ground

so you wave one last time as they look back at you

you hope and wish and pray that they find something new

because whatever lies ahead for you both

will never break the strongest oath

that you made to be friends forever

and no one can break that not now not ever

Mountain Top

When the air touches your face
you feel the world embrace
your soft skin collides with life
all your sorrow pain and strife
slips away with the cold breeze
you can hear the wind in the trees
but your sweat still runs hot
on top of this rock
you reflect on the climb
wishing you had more time
to breath in the valley below
because soon you must go
onto the next hill
where life is no thrill
because the top is so far
and its getting to hard
to climb with a smile
keep going the extra mile
don't stop till you reach
the valley underneath
for when you get up so high
you realize your just fine
because the reward of it all
is more than the risk of the fall
so you will climb the next mountain
stretching you limits for the fountain
of youth that we all seek
because your growing oh so weak
but your hopping to catch your breath
so you may see all the world before the valley of death.....

Hello Mr. Unknown

Have you ever sat awake at night wondering where your life has gone?
I have, I do, all the time.
One day I was walking to kindergarten and the next I was walking on a college campus.
One day I had loads of friends, and the next I was saying goodbye to each and every one of them.
One day I had love in my hands, and the next day I couldn't remember the last time I had been kissed.
This time of year is always the hardest on my dreams.
I always get so wrapped up in the "unknown"!
I lay awake at night wondering where my life is headed and why I cant just stop time.
I get crazy anxiety and cant concentrate on just breathing.
For once I want to lay down in bed and actually sleep.
I don't want to think about money, or people, or anything for that matter.
I just want to sleep.

But tonight I was laying in bed and I thought, "if I embraced the unknown then maybe I will feel better about my life"
So that is my goal for this year.
I am going to embrace Mr. Unknown because maybe if I do that then I wont feel so scared.
If I tell myself that there is nothing around the corner that I can't handle, then maybe I can come to the top of the mountain before I even realize I was climbing.

Mr. Unknown is around the next corner, but I am ready for him.

ARE YOU?

Experience

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God

do you learn.” C.S. Lewis

Sometimes there are things in life that we don't understand, things that we have to go through in order to make it to the other side. They call these things experience, but most often what we experience hurts us. Society as a whole has troubles seeing the bright side of things, or the lessons within a horrible encounter. Although its hard to find the silver lining, I have learned that there is always something waiting for us to discover even under the darkest clouds. Its easy to dwell on the negative, to forget that we have to learn something from all of this. The hard part is finding what you need out of what has happened. I never thought that loosing myself would allow me to eventually find myself. It took time and patients but it all got better, and it is still getting better every day. When I wake up in the morning and know that I am alive and have so many blessing to be thankful for it takes away all of the stuff that once made me sad.
If anyone could say it right C.S. Lewis did, you learn so much each day by sheer experience. No matter what happens there is always a lesson to rely on and an upside to hope for. Because life is not about what goes wrong, although there will be many things that do, its about the happiness you find when what when wrong turned out to be exactly what you needed. So stop crying today, and appreciate life for what it really is: a string of experience that you can either get lost in, or learn from. Choose the later, because you life, your soul, and your future depend on a brighter perspective today.