So last night I saw the most absolutely beautiful sunset, with someone I care a lot about. I didn't have my camera with me and so I wanted to run back and get it, so I could capture that image forever. But by the time we got back, the colors had already faded, the clouds had moved, and there wasn't hardly anything left, just dark sky.
Remember the tools for staying happy are only tools. And sometimes, it is the wrong tool for the job. Instead of trying to freeze that image forever, I should have stayed and made a memory I could cherish forever.
Don't lose sight of your priorities, and what is most important in your life. Journal it out, type it up, make a sticky note, whatever. But think about it. Relatively often. Whether that's once a week, once a fortnight, once a month, just do it. You may find yourself finding that some of those stressors just really don't matter. It makes it a whole lot easier to do what you need to do that way :)
Monday, February 7, 2011
Friday, February 4, 2011
delving into the unseen
It's been another couple of days since the last time I posted, but I'm determined to not have a huge gap again (especially a nine month one).
In these last two days though, I have had a bit of a....funny...experience. My Thursdays are absolutely packed with classes. I spend a full quarter of my day in just two of them! All in all I spend around nine or ten plus hours doing school stuff, not really including homework time. Well I spent a lot of Wednesday, especially Wednesday night stressing over how I was going to get everything done. Then I spent most of Thursday dreading whatever was coming next, even though I had done all of the preparation ahead of time, getting ready to complete my labs, studying for my quizzes, and doing my homework. By the time I got through it all though, I realized it really wasn't so bad, and was not quite sure what I had been stressing out over. I mean, sure I was tired, but I wasn't at wit's end. I guess that just goes to prove that old proverb,
Now I wasn't quite on par with that saying, as is apparent since I still was "afraid". But that's just because I was not quite wholly prepared; I left out one important step: trusting myself that I could accomplish what I prepared to do. If you haven't developed confidence in yourself, you haven't quite prepared.
Now wait a second, am I saying that you have to be confident to be confident? Why does that make any sense? How do I ever start to develop that confidence in the first place? That's a good question. Now hopefully this is a good enough answer to match. More than confidence, it's a matter of trust, and not making things out to be worse than they are. There really are some situations that we honestly would not be able to overcome. However, I'm going to promise you right now, whatever it is that you are facing, isn't one of them. Now everyone is different so not being a psychologist who has spent an hour or two picking your brain I can't even begin to tell you how to trust yourself. But maybe by now you have come to trust me a little bit. And then it is my hope that you'll trust me when I say that you are a fantastic individual, and that you can do it, whatever it is.
What would life be without dreams? And if dreams weren't aren't achievable, we would still be in the Stone Age! Welcome to the realm of humanity, where we make impossibilities possible.
And you know what? If you relax into the flow of it all, you may find that you enjoy yourself. For example, I had a total blast taking pictures of everything I was looking at under the microscope:
The previously unseen is there just waiting to be discovered, just like your dreams.
In these last two days though, I have had a bit of a....funny...experience. My Thursdays are absolutely packed with classes. I spend a full quarter of my day in just two of them! All in all I spend around nine or ten plus hours doing school stuff, not really including homework time. Well I spent a lot of Wednesday, especially Wednesday night stressing over how I was going to get everything done. Then I spent most of Thursday dreading whatever was coming next, even though I had done all of the preparation ahead of time, getting ready to complete my labs, studying for my quizzes, and doing my homework. By the time I got through it all though, I realized it really wasn't so bad, and was not quite sure what I had been stressing out over. I mean, sure I was tired, but I wasn't at wit's end. I guess that just goes to prove that old proverb,
If ye are prepared ye shall not fear.
Now I wasn't quite on par with that saying, as is apparent since I still was "afraid". But that's just because I was not quite wholly prepared; I left out one important step: trusting myself that I could accomplish what I prepared to do. If you haven't developed confidence in yourself, you haven't quite prepared.
Now wait a second, am I saying that you have to be confident to be confident? Why does that make any sense? How do I ever start to develop that confidence in the first place? That's a good question. Now hopefully this is a good enough answer to match. More than confidence, it's a matter of trust, and not making things out to be worse than they are. There really are some situations that we honestly would not be able to overcome. However, I'm going to promise you right now, whatever it is that you are facing, isn't one of them. Now everyone is different so not being a psychologist who has spent an hour or two picking your brain I can't even begin to tell you how to trust yourself. But maybe by now you have come to trust me a little bit. And then it is my hope that you'll trust me when I say that you are a fantastic individual, and that you can do it, whatever it is.
What would life be without dreams? And if dreams weren't aren't achievable, we would still be in the Stone Age! Welcome to the realm of humanity, where we make impossibilities possible.
And you know what? If you relax into the flow of it all, you may find that you enjoy yourself. For example, I had a total blast taking pictures of everything I was looking at under the microscope:
The previously unseen is there just waiting to be discovered, just like your dreams.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
self discovery
It is super late so I will try to limit my long winded-ness and make this short. Today was quite an adventure. I tend to be going and going all the time, staying super busy (hence my super late night). But a really good friend of mine keeps checking up on me and making sure that I take time to myself to do something that I love. She loves to ask and make sure I'm taking my "me-time". There really is great wisdom in that. Even doing things you love with other people just can't quite compare to the amount of unwinding that happens by yourself, sometimes in a secret place, when you get the chance. For me I like to go into a room by myself and play the piano, or go down by the river (where the poem's pictures are from) and play my guitar or just think. But those are just the things I do. There are innumerable others to choose from, each individual to each and every person.
And like I promised, I started carrying my camera around with me today (though I've decided I really need to find a better way to carry it around). At one point today, I was just taking pictures, and playing with the settings a little bit. I discovered something that I have always sort of known, but never really noticed or thought about before. You know that I absolutely love learning. I talk about it in pretty much every post. And going to school and learning is such an awesome experience (as in awe expiring like being in the presence of a super powerful being {or someone you greatly admire} that you can just feel, as opposed to 'cool') and I don't want to discount it, even remotely! But discovering new knowledge, for yourself, is so much more satisfying. For the sake of learning all there is to learn in the time that we have to learn it, school is extremely efficient and very very valuable. But take the chance sometimes to discover something for yourself. You'll likely remember it far better too. And it doesn't have to be something extreme or different. It can just be as simple as learning some of the material for a class, but going on an adventure of discovery to find it and really understand it, supplementing the textbook information with confirming research that really delves you deep within the subject matter, rather than just taking your teacher at their word and copying their lame notes.
Here's a quick story about me that kind of demonstrates the potential for doing this. As a kid, whenever I would have a fact based question, my parents would go tell me to look it up. I think they were quoting some movie or something, but they stuck by it. Well I would go to our great (and now old) enc-
yclopedia set and look up whatever it was. If there was something within that article that caught my eye or that I wondered what was, I would go look that up too, to better understand what I was reading (which I was obviously interested in since I asked about it to begin with). One thing always led to another, and sometimes I couldn't even remember what I had started with, because I had spent so much time following such a long chain of queries and articles. But it wasn't ever boring like doing research for a poster in elementary school was. It was some of the most exciting reading I ever did as a child!
And like I promised, I started carrying my camera around with me today (though I've decided I really need to find a better way to carry it around). At one point today, I was just taking pictures, and playing with the settings a little bit. I discovered something that I have always sort of known, but never really noticed or thought about before. You know that I absolutely love learning. I talk about it in pretty much every post. And going to school and learning is such an awesome experience (as in awe expiring like being in the presence of a super powerful being {or someone you greatly admire} that you can just feel, as opposed to 'cool') and I don't want to discount it, even remotely! But discovering new knowledge, for yourself, is so much more satisfying. For the sake of learning all there is to learn in the time that we have to learn it, school is extremely efficient and very very valuable. But take the chance sometimes to discover something for yourself. You'll likely remember it far better too. And it doesn't have to be something extreme or different. It can just be as simple as learning some of the material for a class, but going on an adventure of discovery to find it and really understand it, supplementing the textbook information with confirming research that really delves you deep within the subject matter, rather than just taking your teacher at their word and copying their lame notes.
Here's a quick story about me that kind of demonstrates the potential for doing this. As a kid, whenever I would have a fact based question, my parents would go tell me to look it up. I think they were quoting some movie or something, but they stuck by it. Well I would go to our great (and now old) enc-
yclopedia set and look up whatever it was. If there was something within that article that caught my eye or that I wondered what was, I would go look that up too, to better understand what I was reading (which I was obviously interested in since I asked about it to begin with). One thing always led to another, and sometimes I couldn't even remember what I had started with, because I had spent so much time following such a long chain of queries and articles. But it wasn't ever boring like doing research for a poster in elementary school was. It was some of the most exciting reading I ever did as a child!
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