I’m struggling with a multitude of things.  It’s difficult to not let myself settle back into the depression I suffered from for so many years.  It’s a daily battle, especially when I have to face things I never thought I would have to face.

The most difficult thing for me to understand is how some people can be undeserving of things and yet, still seem to get everything they dream of having.  People are so unappreciative of their opportunities and do anything to destroy every single thing in their lives.  People make excuses for being the way they are when all it takes is the desire to change and the willingness to do it.

Where is the balance to the universe?  I was a strong believer in Karma and balance, but what makes one person deserving and another undeserving?  Why do bad people seem to have the upper hand in life? Is it because their ultimate reward is loss after believing they had everything?  I hope so.

I don’t know.   But I’m struggling to make it through the day without breaking down in tears.  I’m trying to look to the positive, to be outwardly happy and cheerful, and trying to maintain the belief that if I fake it long enough, it’ll be true.

As I grow, I find that things must change in order for me to survive.  It’s hard to say what comes next in my life. Despite not knowing the future, I have faith that I will not walk through life alone, but with my love, my family, and my true friends.

This week is going to be a busy one.

Things are happening!

I took some baby photos this weekend at my friend’s house.  She and her husband had twins about a month ago.

I have two projects due for school this week, plus a typed resume and cover letter due tomorrow.

I have three weeks left in the freshman level esthetics class.  This can’t go by fast enough.  I’m feeling really overwhelmed by it all, but it’s alright.  I’ll make it.  Six and a half months left.  I can do it.

We had originally planned on going to East TN for labor day, but I don’t think it’s happening now.  Too much stuff is happening and we just don’t have time.

So, we have two projects, resume, editing pictures, book work for school, getting kit together, ordering some things online, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Ugh.

I need to learn some time management skills because I’m really suffering.

In a random side note, this weekend has been interesting.  I was like a damn baby whisperer at my friend’s house.  Weird.

Things that make me smile:

kitties meowing good morning and begging for “pettin’s”

orion’s belly flap that wiggles and wriggles when he trots away from me

snuggled in warm bed linens in a cold apartment

spooning

spending saturdays in bed with brett

slipping into a freshly-made-with-clean-sheets bed

jonsi

being happy

making friends with the only other weird girl in my esthetics class

finally feeling like i’m doing something right with my life

finally. finally. feeling like everything is going to be alright.

I prematurely gushed about the machine usage.

I don’t mind the machines.  They’re pretty cool.

I just didn’t expect to have to do the school’s signature facial on an outside client today.  See, I’ve only used the machines one and it was for a few seconds on a fellow student.  Definitely not long enough to be able to use it on an outside client.

So yesterday was very stressful for me.  So stressful that my client even, after asking if she had any suggestions for improvement, said to try to be less nervous.  I hate that I was so nervous.  That isn’t relaxing for a client, but guys… I was very scared and mentally unprepared for this facial.  I started the day thinking that I was going to be doing this on a classmate and instead got a client.  Yikes.

I feel pretty confident in my abilities to perform these services on people.  I just didn’t get mentally ready, I guess.  And my preparation was thrown off because my teacher pulled products for me and put them on an already disorganized (due to using a table-top machine) work space.  Everything felt cluttered, and I didn’t feel prepared. I felt totally off my game.

Better luck next time, right?

I just don’t want to get the reputation for being passive and not knowing what the hell I’m supposed to be doing because that is not me! I can do a killer basic facial fine and I get rave reviews on my facial massages. I know I can do these things!

What I’m trying to say is that being so freaked out about using electricity on a client that she actually noticed my anxiety kinda disappointed me.  I can do better, and I will.

Oh, yeah, it’s also makes me nervous to have my instructor coming in every five seconds to tell me what I’m doing wrong.
*sigh*

I had felt “off” all day yesterday.  I hope this feeling doesn’t follow me through the whole week.

The light in the bathroom is screwed up. I flip the switch, it turns on. Normal, right?  Yeah.  Then it flickers and turns off. So I flip the switch off and on again and nothing happens.  This is occurring in higher frequency as the days pass.

The refrigerator is seemingly running louder.  It could be because it is actually from the 70s and will break down soon, resulting in massive spoilage of all of our food and there goes more money that we don’t have.  I wonder if the apartment complex could reimburse us for our rotten food if that happened?

I find myself growing less and less patient with dramatic people.  I want an easy life.  I want a happy life.  Dramatic people make life neither of those things.

While I am pretty happy, there are some things that bother me and I have bad days.  Everybody has bad days, right?  Even if they’re happy?  Sometimes it’s hard to be cheerful and happy when you’ve got crappy things on your mind.

I think being in esthetics school has given me a confidence that I have long lacked.  I feel confident in my decisions, but less confident about my appearance.  See, getting facials and having my face touched all the time has caused it to break out more.  I don’t like that.  I’m trying to get it under control, but it’s hard when I’ve got weirdo products getting slapped on my face.

This week we are doing facials with electricity modalities.  Sounds scary, huh?  Using the high frequency tool definitely sounds a lot scarier than what it actually feels like.  It’s tingly and makes my skin feel funny/itchy.  It’s good for break out prone skin though, especially if you have an active break out.  Galvanic current is also good for purging the follicles of excess oil and sebum build up.  Guys, it is awesome.  It’s like magic.  When you put a negative galvanic current on the skin, it spews out all sorts of awesome stuff and makes a foamy goo.  It’s yucky and fascinating at the same time.  Is it weird to get excited about this stuff?

I miss taking photos.  I need to do that.  I might be going on a road trip this weekend, but it’s up in the air, so that would give me an opportunity to take some of more than just our kitties.

I’m weighing whether or not to go East Tennessee for Labor Day.  I could always stay home and go do something with Brett.  Every weekend is a three-day-weekend for me, so that weekend isn’t very special for me, haha.

Whenever I die, I really want people to sing “The Parting Glass” song.  It’s such a great song.

Go sing, too loud
Make your voice break- Sing it out
Go scream, do shout
Make an earthquake

You wish fire would die and turn colder
You wish young eyes could see you grow older
We should always know that we can do anything

Go drum, too proud
Make your hands ache – Play it out
Go march through crowds
Make your day break

You wish silence released noisy drummers
You wish white noise surrendered to summers
We should always know that we can do everything

Go do, you’ll know how to
Just let yourself fall into landslide
Go do, you’ll know how to
Just let yourself give into low tide

Go do!

Tie strings to clouds
Make your own lake – Let it flow
Throw seeds to sprout
Make your own break – Let them grow

Let them grow
Let them grow

……

You wish surprise would never stop wonders
You wish sunrise would never fall under
We should always know that we can do anything

Go do!

“Go Do” by Jónsi

This song has a good message.  It’s so darn happy too.  It makes me smile. :)

Life seems to have gotten the best of me this month!  I’ve updated less in August than I have in a long, long time.  It’s hard for me to balance life and my blog, especially since I don’t feel like I’ve got much to offer as far as content is concerned. :)

School is going well.  I am  nearly finished with the “freshman” level of esthetics class.  I have roughly four weeks left in the annex and then I’m moving on up to the senior class.  Time is flying.  I just finished my sixth week at school.

I’m finding that I love esthetics more and more each week.

I participated in a competition yesterday involving the cosmetology students and formal hair and make up..  My stylist didn’t win, but it’s all good.  She did a great job on my hair and make up, plus she did it without any help from her instructor.  She was very nice, confident, and happy with her work.  She worked as a machinist for more than a decade and at 42 decided to do something that made her happy.  So far, she said doing hair has made her the happiest she’s ever been in her whole life.  It also shows in her work.

I already have a client (a cos student) who I think will work with me through the duration of both of our educations.  She’s already scheduled an appointment with me next week so I can get really involved in her skin care.  Woot.  She’s a stressed out mom of a little two-year-old boy, so it makes me feel good to give her something relaxing to look forward to every week.

Hopefully I will get back to updating a little more frequently.  I might have some posts lined up soon.  I need to start writing down ideas for posts because otherwise, I just forget them all. :)

I had a dream that my friend who killed himself six years ago was still alive.  I was so angry to find out that he’d actually been alive this whole time!

Talk about a weird dream, especially considering I hadn’t thought of him in a while.  Very peculiar indeed.

I have no idea why my brain decided to  dig up that gruesome mess.

I’ve been thinking about what happened the day I found out he’d killed himself.  He was still biologically alive on machines and I tried to see him before he “legally” died.  We went to the wrong hospital, which actually ended up preventing me from seeing him before he died.  My mom called my dad (who was driving me) and I still remember him looking over at me and saying, “He’s dead.”  We turned around in the parking lot of the hospital where he died without going in.

It’s strange the things you remember years after someone dies.

You wouldn’t think that somewhere in our week-long vacation, plus 23 hour round trip driving, that I would have a life changing experience.  I didn’t think I would either.

Amidst the hours upon hours of corn fields and blue skies, I started thinking about my life and the direction in which it was heading.  I was feeling like I was floundering in the currents, so to speak.  But oh, this was just the beginning.

I will be honest and say that when we arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, I really didn’t like what I saw.  Fit people, public transportation, beer drinking all the time, granola moms and dads, hipsters, farmers markets, buskers.  I felt very much in an alternate world.  More importantly, I felt like I had never seen so many damn happy and liberated people.  Everywhere I looked, everybody looked… well… ridiculously happy.  So it is quite easy to say that I experienced some major culture shock.

When I verbalized my shock, it sounded silly, not only to me, but I guess to my sister.  Should someone be so shocked to be surrounded by so many people who are unashamed of who they are, what they believe, or how they feel?  In my day-to-day life, I encounter many people who pretend to be things they are not, and many people hide who they really are, which definitely includes me.  So to be surrounded by people who celebrate who they are is rather shocking to someone like me. :)

In the end, I feel I prematurely said, “I could never live here.  It’s just too liberal.”   I should have said, “I feel uncomfortable because suddenly I feel as though I’m a very conservative person.”  And I’m not just talking politics…

Now, all I can think about is being back there in Madison with my sister and with Becky, and, of course, Brett as well.

I’m not sure when I decided that I loved Madison.  It  happened without warning.

Truthfully, I think it has a lot to do with the food.  There is easy access to fresh fruits and vegetables during the summer, and there is a grocery store there that has aisles and aisles of mountains of different fruits and vegetables.  There were approximately six rows of apples, each with presumably at least three different varieties in each row.  I’m not an apple person, but I’m sure I could find one I liked there!

I really miss Madison.  I miss my sister and Becky.  I miss public transportation, bike riders, the State Street Mall, the buskers, the Union terrace.  I miss all the things that made me recoil in fear of the unfamiliar at first glance.  Madison is a vibrant city in a way that I can’t seem to find here in Tennessee.

While in Madison, I decided to make a life-changing commitment.  I’ve written about our new food “rules” and habits, and it all started with Madison.  While I can’t say I ate the healthiest the whole time, I definitely didn’t eat as much “junk” as I used to at home in Tennessee.  So far things have been easy.  I’m now down 12 pounds (or 14 if I go by my mom’s scales) in about six weeks.  That’s decent weightloss… all spurned by my trip to Madison.

Since our trip, I’ve been a lot happier.  I’ve tried to look at things positively and have actually done pretty well.  I know now that moving to a place won’t make me happy if I can’t find at least a little happiness in where I am at the current moment.  Happiness isn’t solely achieved by external influences.  A lot of it has to be by a conscious decision inside to make oneself happy.  Either you choose to be miserable and stew in it, or you can learn from your experiences and become a better person.

I’ve also learned that when you constantly surround yourself with “bad” things, like negativity, greasy, unhealthy foods, inactive people, etc, etc, you, yourself tend to become similar.  If you want to be happy, surround yourself with happy people and things that make you happy.  If you want to eat fast food every day and never exercise, well, surround yourself with people like that.  After being in Madison for a week, all I wanted to do was get fit, eat healthy (whole) foods, and be happy, and, get this, be outside..

This trip created a domino effect in my life.  First it was the food change, then the exercise change, then the journaling to relieve my tendency to bottle things up, then the extra huge change: esthetics school.  I honestly feel like this single fucking trip is what triggered all of these changes, whether for the better or the worse.