Naked as the Day you were Born

Okay, so not QUITE that naked, but naked enough... as naked as I'll ever be in public, save for the all too occasional beach trip. Wednesday night I participated in a Chapman "tradition," called the Undie Run (and in doing so became a walking college cliche, but that's besides the point). My excuse is that it's for a good cause. Our school has a club called Action in Africa, and one of the things they do is collect the discarded clothing of sweaty college students and send them to African orphans. I support this, except I didn't because in a frenzy not to miss the run I threw my shirt off in my car and sprinted to Memorial Hall, but that doesn't mean I don't care.

So Chris and I take off down the street and leave Erica and her not-so-in-shape friends in the dust. Chris, who's training for the San Diego Marathon, yells at me, "Let's win this thing!" "Chris, it's not a race..." as I struggle to keep up. I know, I already ran a marathon, a quarter of a mile should be nothing, but I've got a bad knee now and the doctor said to stay off of it so back off. We get to Memorial just in time for the sea of bodies to come tsunami-ing towards us, so like good little water dwelling creatures we joined in and ride the wave all the way to the circle, avoiding every professional looking camera I saw in order to avoid having my face all over the internet. My mom reads the OC Register, she knows what day it is.

Though this was my first time running scantily clad through Old Town, I have read up on past episodes enough to know that last time my comrades damaged the Old Town fountain, sorry Mr. Mayor. But to be fair, Chapman paid for the near $20,000 worth of repairs, and I find that to be the best use of my tuition to date whether I was there or not. This year every fountain on campus and off was roped off like a sloppy murder scene. Instead we had a very contained orgy/naked dance party in the gym... by that I mean I saw a wiener. One lap around the gym and I was ready to go home and roll around in my bed, alone, in about 1,000 peoples sweat. Not exaggerating, there was 1,000 of us. I woke up smelly and in desperate need of a shower, except my apartment has no hot water... awesome.

The thing is, this Undie Run wasn't just a run for me, oh no, it somehow sparked something in me that even turning in a hard copy of my thesis a day early couldn't do... it made me realize that college is over. In a few short days I'll start my grown-up job working for the county and have to stop acting like a retard in public. The mayor of Orange isn't going to strip down to his underwear and run around City Hall with me, and even if he was willing, that would just be creepy and highly unprofessional... one picture of that and his far reaching political ambitions are crushed. Mine aren't, but I don't really have ambitions (I mean, that's kind of a lie, but there are pictures of me in a bra on Glassell St. so if I think I'm going to be the next county supervisor I should check my camera at the door.)

Something changed when I started that sprint down the sidewalk. Maybe it was the burning in my chest from that one shot of Bacardi, or maybe it's the fact that I know there's an old dude with a photo of me in his personal collection, but whatever it is I know I'll never be the same... especially not after tomorrow morning at around 10:45AM. I'll be a college graduate. I will never be an undergrad again. I can't do stupid crap anymore. I mean, I can, but it's going to be far less expected of me now that I'm supposed to be "mature." People keep saying how proud they are of me, and it just makes me feel weird, but since that run I've realized what an accomplishment it really is. I spent five years of my life reading tons of books and writing more essays than I can count to learn how to write and research and, well, think. I loved what I studied and I loved the people I studied with. Rather than feeling awkward I think I'm going to start responding to people by smiling and admitting it, "Yeah, I'm proud too."

Dream On, Dreamer.

I'm in the mood to dream.  Any form of dreaming will do.  My unconscious dreams usually have me waking up in a pretty good mood.  This morning I woke up from a dream where Ryan and I were being chased by killer bees and, naturally, took refuge in his parents dental office.  We decided it was a good idea to meet Amy at KFC, forcing us to run for our lives.  I like my night-dreams.

My day dreams are just as wonderful, though decidedly more realistic.  My dreams, though, are about a far off time/place.  A time when I'm no longer in college, a place where I have a career.  A time when I'm much more sure about the direction I'm headed and where that leads.  A place with a little room to breathe.  I want financial stability, job security, stimulation and passion (in no particular order).  

I need to find my niche.  The niche I dream about all day long and that same niche that manifests itself abstractly while I sleep.  

On an almost entirely unrelated note, I read an article on Cracked.com today that was talking about the 5 Ways Your Brain is Messing with Your Head.  One of the items mentioned is that a study of the brain showed that when faced with a decision, you have actually made a decision before you make it.  In other words, before you are conscious of having decided on a given choice, a part of your brain already "knows" the decision you're going to make.  The article then questions what that implies about free will.  I'm not sure what I think about that, but it's interesting to think that God could be in my head guiding my hand (or even finished guiding my hand, for the moment) as I type.  Besides that interesting point, I'm now addicted to Cracked because their articles are altogether informative, relevant, and witty (maybe they'll hire me).

I'll leave you now with a picture from last weekend's Big Bear trip. Fortunately our cabin was full of amazing props for this picture...

Conditional Love

I've been thinking about this the past two days. The notions of conditional versus unconditional love are complicated, when you think about it. The only unconditional love that is absolute is God's love for us. Sure we can say that we love someone unconditionally, but how true to form is that? Will we really be around when the going gets tough, I mean, reaaaaaaallly tough.

To expand on that, I guess I feel like people sometimes walk on the opposite side of the fence and, to a certain extent, tell it how it is. What ends up happening is that people put too many conditions on love. We ask questions like, "Would you still love me if I laughed like Fran Drescher?" "Nope!" Now, is that necessarily true? No, but on a slightly more serious note, what happens when the question becomes, "Would you still love me if I got in a horrible car accident and lost both of my legs and my ability to speak?" Well... would you? That's a tough question, Ryan had a point when he said that you probably couldn't accurately answer that question until it happened, but what about if you know that the answer is no? Can you still profess your love for that person knowing it's not unconditional? I suppose it's hard to answer the bigger question when you're going off of examples, but my point is that sometimes we get so caught up in asking, "Will you love me if..." That our relationship becomes more of a shell, with nothing inside. We create a set of conditions that make us comfortable and anything outside of that is mutually unsavory... we don't like it, we don't want it, we won't have it. We leave no room for the unexpected. Where's the chaos and the dirt? The bumps and bruises create dimension, add a little flare.

What are we so scared of?

New Year in February

Sooooo I haven't posted anything new because I haven't written anything new. Tragic, I know. With all of the resolutions people have been blogging about I realize I never blogged about mine, though I just like to call them goals, I feel like if I call them resolutions I won't keep them. Among the obvious and surefire goals (graduate from college, for example), I've also decided that I need to write more. I don't expect to be the next Maya Angelou, but before I die I want to publish SOMETHING and the only way to do that is to write until I've written something publishable.

I could probably even write a bit here and there at work, but alas I spend my days on monster.com, college job sites, and searching for publishing companies (to work for)... and reading all of the blogs I subscribe to, but let's not get into THAT obsession. I've come to the hard realization that I can't afford to go straight back to school. This creates a lot of new directions for me because if my path takes me down the road to becoming a professor, then there aren't really "entry level" positions I can take on in the meantime. You're either a professor or you're not. Jumping into any job in the educational field would certainly help, but that's not necessarily the only road I can go down.

I've been looking into publishing jobs hoping that I can jump into a company and do copy editing or another form of entry level editorial work and become a corporate worker bee. The more I read the more I find mistakes, or disconnects, or ways that, if tweaked, a story could be that much better. I think that if I can cultivate that, I'd like it even more than being the writer. I'd be able to work with people and read all day! Okay, so it's not THAT simple, and perhaps I won't always be reading something of interest, or even something with merit, but I'll be reading and reading and reading and that's exactly what I love.

The problem is that I was born on the wrong coast for book publishing (magazines and newspapers are, of course, a different story since there are locals and regionals everywhere). The best place for book publishing, especially for powerhouses like Penguin and Random House (which basically house almost all other, smaller and slightly less well known publishers), is New York, followed by Boston. That's quite a move. If I'm lucky I can get in with a smaller book publisher around here or get a job with any number of magazines. The economic state of this country has me a bit discouraged though, what a crap time to graduate college when there are no jobs. I'm going to Chapman's career office tomorrow to spruce up my resume and see if they can help me with a job search so fingers crossed!

Tag!

I've been tagged by Mel, which means that you all (by all I mean the 3 people who read my blog) get to read 6 oddball facts about me and thus receive a small glimpse of my quirky nature.

1. Every night, almost without fail, I have really ridiculous dreams. I can almost always pin them to conversations or events that have happened the day before. Last night I had a dream that I was in Mexico at a Nacho stand where a shirtless boy was serving me custom nachos with olives and extra fresh squeezed limes on top. The olives kept falling through the bottom of the thatched bowl. The whole dream likely stemmed from the in depth research Ryan and I did into the calorie count of a new nacho plate at Taco Bell. (ask me about the green hanger, I'll laugh so hard I cry)

2. I'm super afraid of balloons. When I was in 3rd grade I went to a birthday party and participated in a relay race. My leg of the race required me to run to the other end of the yard and sit on a balloon until it popped. Instead I did a half squat and cried hysterically... my team lost.

3. I hate having my belly button touched. Even the mental image of (or blogging about) a finger in my belly button makes me want to gag. It makes me think of umbilical cords and abortions, both of which I cannot stomach. When I have a kid I'm closing my eyes until the cord is gone, I'd feel really bad if I puked on my baby.

4. I love lists. I am so scatter-brained and they make me feel a bit sorted. I have lists for everything. Lists of things to write. Lists of authors I like. Lists of things to do. Lists of quotes. Lists of goals. Lists of qualities I want in a relationship. Lists and lists and lists, most of which are saved on my computer in a folder labeled "lists," which is quite full and might soon require a subfolder.

5. I can't stand meatloaf. I don't know that anything else needs to be said about that because, well, it's meatloaf. Yuck.

6. I don't watch TV. Unlike most people who say they don't watch TV, I REALLY don't watch TV. The closest I get is my Sex and the City dvds, which is a show I started watching while working at Conroys, well after the show was off the air. Contrary to TV, I regularly watch waaaaay too many YouTube videos. In fact, here's one of my favorites.

Eye Candy

For a solid month now the weather has been changing.  So have the leaves.  There are two trees across the street that I stare at every morning when I pull out of my driveway, excited to see the daily progress of the leaves as they change from greens to yellows to oranges to reds.  Right now they are a deep crimson color, I have three of them sitting on my kitchen table.  I snagged them yesterday on my walk.  I decided that since the semester is over and I now have a large amount of free time that didn't exist before, that I would do things like that.  You know, walk.  And cook.  Sometimes both.  

So yesterday I looked up some recipes for basil chicken in addition to trying to mimic Chipotle's cilantro and lime rice (except with brown rice... verdict: not as good).  There were, of course, things I needed from the store, because why would I harbor a stash of fresh cilantro in my fridge?  I walked across the street making my way to Albertsons, but I didn't get far at all because I realized I didn't have my camera (or a sweatshirt and it was quite chilly), so I went home and retrieved both.  There were so many moments where I would stop on my trail to capture the contrast or how the light hit a tree at just the right angle.  A green tree next to a red one, or a bare tree next to a full one.  I love snapping pictures of all this fall, I have so many from years past but they never get old to me. 

I suppose my love of fall has a lot to do with the vibrant colors.  One of the things that I thank God most for is color (some might find that trivial, but I think when He made me that He knew it would be crucial to my happiness).  Often when I see fresh fruit or a healthy flower or a loud outfit I'm reminded that color is one of the recreational aspects of existence.  What I mean is that God could have made the world cold and gray, a sweater serves its purpose of warmth just as well in charcoal as it does in turquoise.  But God didn't create the world in shades of gray, He filled it with brilliant eye candy.  The beauty that leaves embody as they change is a wonderful reminder that He loves me, which is why I love fall oh so much.

On the Heels of Discovery

The following is a photo project I did with a piece I wrote.  The idea was to take a small portion of a piece and take it outside the confines of the medium (paper).  The photos are not in order of the stanzas.  Also, please forgive the horrible photo editing, consider the cause my and iphotos combined lack of skills.

The original piece reads as follows:

I sleep in heels, crossing my legs like a lady while I dream of dark things, looking and feeling

like a lady of the night, but still a lady.

I run in heels, catching the night bus at 3am outside the club in Camden Town so that I don't have to wait in the cold looking like a lady of the night, but still a lady.

I trip in heels, falling flat on my back and sullying my new dress, showcasing my goods to the 

world like a lady of the night, but still a lady.

I cook in heels, dancing and stirring and seasoning, playing the role of a proper and contented

housewife, fantasizing about the life of a lady of the night.