STRESS is a word that requires all caps

{a lovely, unstressed picture of me in Jamaica. *sighs* *cries*}

Isn't it amazing the way we get stressed out about everything? Especially when stress is an absolutely completely 100% USELESS thing to feel. I mean, since when have you been more productive, felt better about yourself, or been a more positive person because of stress? Since never. But yet we continue to worry ourselves sick about things that are, for the most part, beyond our control.

Can I control that today I did not practice my violin but instead ate cap'n crunch, gushers, and apple pie? I cannot now that I've eaten them. But I can and am stressing about it right now. Can I control that I have musical rehearsal until 9:30 p.m. tomorrow and I will be at school all day and I might not practice and I might be really annoying around my friends? No. Does that mean I'm not stressing about it? Also, unfortunately no.

I want to stop stressing so much about the things I can't control. I need to let them go, let them be, accept and even enjoy them as they come. This, I think, might be easier even than the other problem I have with stress.

See I have this thing where if something doesn't go exactly perfectly, I get frustrated and just want to throw the whole thing in the garbage. Give up, quit, whatever you want to say. I have the capacity to work extremely hard and I have the capacity to be mind-bogglingly lazy, and somehow being lazy makes me way more stressed. My thought pattern goes somewhat like this:

This is like the hundredth game of hearts you've played on your iPod today. What the heck are you doing with your life? You hate being on technology so much. Why are you doing it? You're a lazy, ignorant, stupid person getting stupider by the minute by rotting your brain away with that device!
Well, I don't even care. I'm going to just keep on rotting away my brain then. And well I'm decomposing I might as well eat as much unhealthy food as I can find! And not pack for tomorrow because screw my future self!

Yeah, my brain isn't always a fun place to hang out in.

It's also how funny how quickly I vacillate between "You've failed so badly it's not even worth doing anything at this point" and "It's not so bad, you can still get stuff done today". It's like a motivational battle waging high-speed war in my brain and it drives me nuts. I wish I could shut that stupid little failure voice inside of me up forever. I think I'd get so much more done.

I also kind of want to throw my iPod out the window and never see it again, but then I couldn't play virtual hearts and lose at virtual hearts dozens of times so ...

Resolution for the crazy busy next three days: Take it one moment at a time. Do my best for each moment, and if I fail, that's a momentary failure, not an entire day failure. Also, do not buy so much candy at the canteen and stop playing so many games on my iPod. And practice more. And don't forget rehearsals and memorizing all your music and...

There I go again.

PSYCH I'm Still Here

{a cartoon that has more to do with my love of Calvin and Hobbes than it does with the content of this post}

Since I stopped writing this blog, I went back and revisited it a couple many times. Because I really and truly loved writing it, or at least most of it. A thought that's been running through my brain the past few months is the idea of writing as a connection. It connects us to others and to ourselves. Truly good writing makes you feel empathy for characters or ideas. Just reading a good book can teach you things about yourself you wouldn't otherwise know. As Carlos Ruiz Zafon says: “A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.” {Don't think I'm getting too pretentious. I read that in lit class.}

I think we discover a lot about ourselves when we reach those points of emotional crisis when we 'don't know what do'. We've all had them. They can be big moments, like deaths or funerals or horrible accidents, or they can be small moments, like liking someone who doesn't like you back, dealing with rejections, or crashing the family car {yeah I did that. Twice.} They all share that same restless, insisting, confused mash of feelings that you must get out somehow. That somehow--through art, music, sports, or, in my case, writing, is your personal outlet. The way you make sense of yourself and the world. An essential part of you that once you know about it, you can use to your advantage {or disadvantage}.

I've been neglecting mine horribly, because I've been busy. Also because I downloaded Monopoly on my iPod and that game is more addicting than Mini Eggs and Mini Eggs are pretty much crack so there you go. But in reality, technology has been rather a battle of mine lately, and I haven't been using it as I should. I should be using it to write. To blog, I realized the other day as I perused The Fledgling Angel for the 30th time since my goodbye post. So that's what I'm doing. Because there are days I really, really, really want to blog about my newest lip stain or my new punk outfit or this new way of doing my hair that actually works. Even though I'm not a beauty fashion or hair blogger. And there are times I need to vent to someone about how certain stupid boys are driving me insane or how it feels to like someone who you haven't seen in practically a year. This blog is perfect for an insane mash of things that make no sense together but somehow reflect me and calm me and allow me to understand myself.

So if you want to read a complete mess of a blog that may contain such things as mascara, flannel shirts, annoying boys, way-too-goodlooking-boys-who-live-far-away, lace up boots, university applications, and graduation worries--look no further! I've got you covered. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, I'm off to practice my stupidly hard violin piece which I'm playing in a month and a half in front of a panel of judges in a different province so I can be accepted into a university for music where I may or may not attend.

Angel, over and out.