without further ado, a tour of my room

i made this sweet flipagram!! i was going to go into a bunch of detail about all the things, but i don't know if i really want to anymore. i've had a lot of fun putting this room together, and i think it turned out pretty great. like i said the other day, i'm really happy with the mix of found and made and repurposed and purchased. i'm still missing a couple things, but overall i love it. here's to creating a space exactly how i wanted it!

25 things to do while i'm 25

i'm stealing this idea from c.jane, who was a lot more detailed and specific in her list. but these are some things i hope to do this year. 

1. save enough for a big purchase (car? new computer?)
2. go on a spontaneous trip
3. go to an avett brothers concert
4. get a big girl job
5. learn to sew
6. start learning a language
7. receive a master's degree
8. go somewhere i've never been
9. west coast road trip
10. record something
11. go to the temple
12. publish something
13. learn to ride a bike...i guess
14. consolidate
15. read the standard works
16. go to a fancy party
17. family reunion--aspen grove 2013!!
18. read classic novels--i've got a running list
19. read c.s. lewis
20. make a piece of art to put in my house
21. eat something new every month--let's face it; i go to the same places and eat the same things. i need some variety up in here.
22. write and send a letter at least once a month
23. hike the Y
24. go legit camping
25. choreograph a song for zumba

and there you have it.

on creation

i found this on a newly discovered blog the other day:

We each have to say to ourselves, What will I create of my life? My time? My future?

First, go where the Spirit directs. Be still and listen. Your Heavenly Father will guide you as you draw near to Him. Immerse yourself in the holy word of the prophets, both ancient and modern, and the Spirit will speak to you. Be patient, ask in faith, and you will receive guidance in your creative efforts.

Second, don’t be paralyzed from fear of making mistakes. Thrust your hands into the clay of your lives and begin. I love how Rebekah of old responded to Abraham’s servant who came in search of a wife for Isaac. Her answer was simple and direct, “I will go,” 3 she said.

Rebekah could have refused. She could have told the servant to wait until she had the proper send-off, a new wardrobe, until she lost a few pounds, or until the weather was more promising. She could have said, “What’s wrong with Isaac that he can’t find a wife in all of Canaan?” But she didn’t. She acted, and so should we.

The time for procrastination is over. Begin! Don’t be afraid. Do the best you can. Of course you will make mistakes. Everyone does. Learn from them and move forward.

Third, support others along the way. Every person on this earth is unique. We all have varied interests, abilities, and skills. We are each at different levels physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

Finally, rejoice. Creation isn’t drudgery. Creation flows from love. When we do what we love, we rejoice along the way.

If you are unhappy, if you are feeling weary, troubled, or disillusioned, may I ask you to try something? Instead of dwelling on your troubles, focus instead on creating something remarkable, something of eternal significance. Nurture a testimony, strengthen a relationship, write a family history, go to the temple, serve. 

Mary Ellen Smoot, "We Are Creators"

pretty great, right? create something remarkable today! 

a new outfit for my little blog

so, i just reformatted my blog. i guess i've been wanting to switch things up for a while, but i'm not super html-savvy, and it freaks me out a little. it's not exactly what i want. maybe i'll google how to fix some things in the next few days. and, since i changed the font of my blog description, i realized that the first set of quotation marks is backwards, but, of course, for some reason i can't change it. if it bugs you as much as it does me, i am truly sorry :)

i wanted a grey and white chevron background, but then i couldn't figure out how to get rid of the solid color background at the top by the blog header. that was annoying. so we'll see how long i keep it this simple.

meanwhile, i've just spent the last hour schvutzing around while i should have been doing homework. ah well, the night is still young.

(p.s. schvutzing is a word, right? i tried to look up some yiddish sources, but nothing definitive came up. maybe people spell it a different way? whatever. using it anyway.)

thoughts on wednesday

i was going to call this "hump day thoughts" but then decided not to and then decided to just share my thought process anyway.

yesterday i had sixteen conferences with students. one way i know the semester is officially underway=conferences. then once those start, it feels like they never stop. but, miracle of miracles, all of my students yesterday showed up, for the most part on time, and they all had drafts. that almost never happens. and most of the drafts were pretty darn good. have i said that i love teaching?

i read this article on the @ symbol yesterday. it was awesome.

my brother posted this video on my wall last night and then promptly sent me a text that said "check out the vid i put on your wall." i did, and within the first 30 seconds of viewing i was clapping my hands in delight. taylor swift + hanson=all of my wildest dreams coming true.

i am so glad i'm getting paid on friday.

if anyone knows of a house south of campus that will have four spots for girls come winter, let me know. it is becoming more and more apparent that the four of us need to move in together asap.

and, last thought, thought that's always in the forefront of my mind, why is dating so dumb?

happy wednesday!

back from hiatus

i've been in arizona for the past week out adventuring and basking in the delightful sun instead of blogging. i'll get back to that soon.

but for today. this amazing letter was exactly what i needed today.

i think about love a lot, clearly.

life is a special occasion

i was watching something on hulu one day, as i am wont to do, and i saw an ad for hallmark. i don't remember exactly which version i saw that day, but you'll get the idea from this one.

 

the main thing i am concerned with here is the sentiment at the end: "life is a special occasion." how beautiful is that? this piggybacks on the birthday post i wrote a few days ago. actual special occasions (birthdays, holidays, anniversaries) are awesome, but what about the awesomeness of regular life?

this has been going through my head since i saw that little ol' ad the other day. life is a special occasion! amazing, glorious, exciting, momentous things happen every day, and i want to celebrate those things.

one of my favorite bloggers talked about this idea of celebration late last month. she decided that her theme for the year would be a simple one: parties. parties for explicit reasons, parties for holidays, parties for no reason. just parties, little mini celebrations throughout the year, excuses to decorate and dress up and get together with people you love.

i certainly love parties (though maybe not as much as andrew w.k. does), and i'm going to make this my own theme as much as i can, but i want to find ways to celebrate outside of parties as well. this means sending cards in the mail, maybe heart attacking someone's door to let them know i  care, writing little notes to my friends and family telling them how awesome i think they are, making treats for people, and perhaps a host of other things. the idea is that life is something to be celebrated--goodness, some days getting out of your pajamas constitutes a reason to celebrate.

come celebrate with me?

i feel a road trip coming on...

i just (as in, about a minute ago) read this post and i think what i need, to solve some of my problems and remember what is really important, is a road trip. doesn't have to be a cross-country road trip (though i am in the midst of planning one of those), doesn't even have to be a week long. i just need some time to get out on the road and think about life. it's about time for a break from the world.

who's up for  road trip sometime soon?

resolution for the new year: to not letting friendships fade

i've been surfing the internet more than i usually do lately, mostly to look for cool blogs and inspiration for this creative kick i'm on.  

(and, can i just say, one really awesome thing about these blogs is that the women who write them acknowledge that their sites only portray a small part of their lives. they seem perfect, because they are churning out crafts or putting up pictures of gorgeous interiors, but they readily admit that they are not perfect. but along with that, the blogs i've been following lately are created by women with families who seem genuinely happy with their lives, and often they are stay-at-home moms, and often they are not lds. i think that's pretty cool, and it's something i want to live up to. the end.)

 yesterday i came across sometimes sweet, and this was part of one of the first posts i saw. the author, danielle, is talking about one of her best girl friends, whom she met during college.

But then things changed and somehow we drifted apart. There were never hard feelings, but she got into a serious relationship at the same time I moved in with another group of friends, and we fell out of our norm. It would have been impossible to keep our friendship going at the same intensity- as life changes relationships change too. And although we understood this, we let what could have been a shift turn into a total end.

Sometimes Sweet, "Now and Then"

the same idea comes up in this song, "5 years' time" by noah and the whale, that i've been listening to for the past few weeks. here's the song for your listening pleasure. (for some reason i couldn't get the official video, which is awesome, to upload to my blog. so i'll have to settle for music only.)

at the end he says, "in five years' time i might not know you/ in five years' time we might not speak/ in five years' time we might not get along/ in five years' time you might just prove me wrong." the whole song they are having so much fun, fun, fun together, but then he realizes, hey, what about the future? we might not know each other in a few years.

i think about this a lot. i can think of a few different friendships of mine that are currently in this kind of liminal space. we have tons of fun when we are together, and it goes just back to the way it was before we drifted apart, but somehow our lives have changed. we don't keep in touch regularly, so we don't know the details of each others' day-to-day activities. and i'm not mad about it or anything--how could i be? i'm as much to blame as anyone--but it does make me a little sad. 

because, like danielle says at the end there, every relationship changes as life changes, even the relationships you have with people you see every day. but if both of you don't put in the effort to preserve your friendship in its new form, it will simply fade. 

it seems to me that if there is someone who means a lot to you at one point in your life, they should probably mean a lot to you at the other points of your life, too, though probably in a different way. i've let many of those important people just slip away from me, and now i think that i should have tried harder to keep something going. i think that i usually just shrug my shoulders and say to myself, 'well, i've grown beyond that friendship, and we're both in different places in our lives now.' but does that even make any sense? if i really cared about them, wouldn't i want them there through all the "different places" of my life, and wouldn't i want them to think the same about me?

sometimes i worry about this happening with the friendships i have now. i wonder, will we even talk once the convenience of this relationship leaves us? but, really, it's up to me (and hopefully the other person) to keep it going when we live farther away or when our lives are different. if we drift apart, it's partly my fault.

the moral of danielle's story is that it's never too late. both she and her long-lost friend wanted to reconnect during their years of little contact, and both always seemed to lose nerve. but, eventually, they got together again and figured out how to become good friends within the framework of their different lives. and, like charlie fink says in "five years' time," it's up to the people in the relationship to prove that they can last.

i'm all for this; it is a little scary, because it means putting myself out there, and i usually run away from such things. but i've never understood the logic behind restricting yourself from having as many friendships as possible (it's why i react so violently against the idea of a "friend zone"), so why would i just let these great friends/great people slip out of my life?

so, another resolution: to reconnect with old friends and not be satisfied with the mentality that "oh, we're just in different places in our lives now." because, let's face it, i can use all the friends i can get.