Happiness, Day 16

Today's gratitudes:

• Finally got started on my huge paper (actually writing it from notes). Still got a long way to go, but at least I'm making progress.
• The new Cosmo came in the mail! Preparing to be entertained lol
• Got to study/coffee with Ray and Becky today. Then Becky and I went out to dinner and I had yummy peanut butter pie. It was both productive and fun, which is how I like it.

Today's kindness:
Thanked my Dad for coming all the way here for Thanksgiving. He left early this morning to go back home.

Today's reflection:
Was talking on the phone with Laura and it became very entertaining:

Laura: So Sam's cousins are coming to NYC with us.
Me: Are they hot?
Laura: YES! One of them is like 17 and the other is 20, I should set you up with one of them! But not the 17-year old because you don't need any more problems from 17-year olds. I'll set you up with the 20-year old! He's tall and thin and has dark hair just like you like!! And he's a musician just like you! And then you'll get married, and then Sam and I will get married, and we will be RELATED!!
Me: OMG THAT WOULD BE SO AWESOME!!!!
Laura: I KNOW RIGHT!
Me: Ok, this is what's going to happen. We're all going to go out to lunch. Then Ben will go to the bathroom. Then I'll follow him to the men's room and seduce him. Then we'll come back to the table and I'll text you saying that I celebrated my birthday.
Laura: Meanwhile, Eliza will be telling some long drawn-out story, and she wouldn't even notice...
Me: Hahaha you are so right. I can picture it now.
Laura: You are sharing a room with her, so you could have sex while she's in the bathroom. She takes forever in there seriously. But if you get caught it wasn't my idea ;)

Omg I have been laughing so hard. And I have seen pictures of Ben and he is really attractive! And he has a 7-8.5 inch penis! Definitely looking forward to this blind date. And becoming related to Laura.



Aside from that, I had a very strange dream last night. It started out with me having sex with a guy (and it was awesome). Then, the guy became a girl. And it was still awesome. Then it turned out that the girl was Ray's best friend Jenny's girlfriend. Jenny's girlfriend said that she and Jenny loved me and wanted me to be polygamous with them. Then I was in State College waiting for a bus, and Jenny's girlfriend was standing behind me with her arms wrapped around me. The bus came and I almost missed it because we started making out.

It was so weird. In the dream I was talking to Jenny's girlfriend about how I liked Jenny but felt like I couldn't talk to her or be her friend due to the fact that she is Ray's bff.

It's really true. Unlike the rest of Ray's friends, who only seemed to like me because I was dating Ray, Jenny actually seemed to like me for myself. It's really a shame that we can't be friends. She seemed like she was really cool.

But more importantly, the dream showed me that I do want love at some point. I do want someone to love me and wrap their arms around me to protect me. It's just that I don't want to be hurt again. But that's the problem, isn't it.

High School Reunion

So today was my 5-year high-school reunion. Better late than never I suppose, but it's not like I could go to it anyway. Leave it to the people in my class to plan it last-minute on Black Friday.

I'm not that upset that I couldn't go. From what I hear, everyone's all competitive anyway on the 5-year reunion. Plus, I didn't even like most of those people anyway.

People wonder why I'm so obsessed with losing weight and going to the gym. I had to explain this to Becky the other day.

Me: I fucking hate this pouch of fat that I have on my stomach. I have a 4-pack that's covered in a layer of fat.
Becky: Why do you hate it?
Me: Because I've always had it and I want to get rid of it. Plus having fat around your middle is bad because it surrounds major organs and causes cancer, heart disease, etc.
Becky: I guarantee you that you do not have enough fat there to get cancer.
Me: Really?
Becky: I think you underestimate how attractive you are.
Me: That's because people in high school called me fat when I was this size. And it didn't help that my friends were either stick-thin or were obsessed with dieting to become stick-thin. Everyone was obsessed with being 115 lbs.
Becky: You mean people called you fat? They literally told you that you were fat?
Me: Yes.
Becky: Fuck them for saying that. You are definitely not fat. You're normal.

I know. But it's a hard mentality to break out of. On top of that, people thought I was ugly. I was teased by this asshole Russ who told me I looked like the Penguin from Batman. He took a picture of me in my car once when I was stopped at a red light, uploaded it to Facebook, tagged me, and then tagged me again as Penguin.

So I grew up thinking I was fat and ugly. It wasn't until I got to college that people actually told me that I looked really good and I started to believe it.

But right now, it's not about looking good for other people. It's about looking good for myself. I'm going to feel awesome when I reach my weight goal.


On a different note, I'm not sure how well this happiness thing is working. It definitely has worked some, but I'm still pretty much completely broken inside. The past few days I've felt really weepy and more emotional than usual... thinking it's due to the fact that they gave me a different Pill this month. Plus my hormones are all out of whack because I missed my last period for some reason. And as we all know, I haven't so much as touched a guy since Ray, so there's no way I'm pregnant.

Anyway, I may be over Ray, but I'm still deeply hurt by what he did to me. I've concluded that the worst pain in existence is when somebody you care about abruptly stops caring about you, without any warning. It hurts so bad. Ray did it to me and it almost destroyed me. Then Mara went and did it and it almost destroyed me again. I can't tell you how many people in my past have done it to me. I feel like if it happens one more time, I might not be able to recover. My heart is at the point where it has been deeply wounded in the same way over and over again, and is nowhere near the point of healing.

I was talking to Aaliya about this yesterday. She was trying to convince me that I should want to love again someday. I just don't know if I can. I don't know if I can ever again make myself that vulnerable to another person. It seems like every time I make myself that vulnerable, that person hurts me in the worst way possible by abruptly changing how they feel about me.

It's one thing to fall out of love. I understand that that happens. But why is there no transition period? You should be able to see that something is wrong. Whereas in my case, every time, I'm taken completely by surprise and am completely fooled, because there were absolutely no signs there to indicate that the person was falling out of love. Then, there's falling out of love, but you still care about the person. In my case, not only does the person fall abruptly out of love for me, but they also completely stop caring about me. So it goes from them loving me and caring about me to the next day them not caring at all. And I just do not understand this at all. I'm not sure that I ever will. It's been happening my whole life and I still don't understand it.

Happiness, Day 15

Today's gratitudes:

• Becky was able to smuggle me into her gym this morning! Had a lovely 30-minute workout on the elliptical and then did my stretches. Would not have gotten to work out otherwise today because my gym is closed for the holiday.
• Thanksgiving dinner with my friends and family. I think this is my first Thanksgiving spent with friends in addition to family. It was nice to have that mix of people, and the food was excellent, and the wine superb.
• Ray from my department was nice and paid for breakfast this morning. My Dad and I had met him at the truck stop, and the food was really good there. I said I thought I should get it because I owed him coffee, but he insisted because he said my Dad had driven all this way to be here, and I was a poor college student. Lol.

Today's kindness:
Ray was unable to join our Thanksgiving dinner because he has a severe cat allergy, so we made him up a plate with some of everything, and a second plate with some of each dessert, and some of Fred's rolls. He just stopped by my apartment to pick it up, and he was really happy that we had brought him some of the feast.

Today's reflection:
Today I fully realized something. Fred is a really, really, really great guy. Not only is he courteous, respectful, and generous, but he went out of his way to tailor the Thanksgiving feast so that I would enjoy it. He did homemade cranberry sauce because I had mentioned to him that I really liked it and didn't like the canned variety (it was soooo delicious). I told him that my favorite part of the meal was the rolls, so he made these heavenly rolls that were SO GOOD that I brought home 5 of them. Then we were talking about wines, and he remembered the type of wine that I prefer (sweet, but not too sweet). Then he was able to recommend which wine I should drink, and it was seriously the perfect amount of sweet.

He must really like me. When I met his Dad today, he said that he had heard lots about me already. I was kind of surprised at this. Then his Dad seemed to like me as well and invited me over for dinner the next time Becky came over.

What I realized is that he really likes me, and he's a great guy, but I just don't feel the same way. I'm Robin to his Ted. Katniss to his Peeta.

This quote from Catching Fire sums it up quite well:
Haymitch, to Katniss: You could live 100 years and never deserve that boy.
Katniss: I know.

I know that I will never deserve him, so I don't want to take advantage of him. But at the same time, it's nice to be treated well. I haven't been treated well be many people in my life. I'm thankful that someone cares about me enough to treat me that well.

Reflection

So today is Thanksgiving. I'm thankful that I no longer have abusive boyfriends, love interests, and best friends in my life.

But it's still really sad that it all came to that.

I was thinking about what it would be like to have Ray erased from my mind, like in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. You know how there's that one memory that is so good that you wouldn't want it erased? For me that memory would be when he and I were lying on my bed naked, watching Despicable Me. I had never seen it before, and I watched it even though I don't really pay much attention to movies when I'm watching with a guy. But I remember him saying how much he enjoyed being there with me, and how he liked that we just spent our time lying around together naked. I remember that time feeling extremely relaxed and feeling loved and cared for.

As for Mara, I would miss one specific memory and one habit of memories. The specific memory would be when we went to see the thesbians' production of The Producers. Oh my god, I love that musical. It's second favorite to Chicago. And I will always associate that night with Mara because it was the first (and only) time I've seen it, and beforehand we had gone to Noodles for dinner and had delicious pasta, and it was just a really great evening. The habit of memories would be the way we always met up to do homework at the HUB, sitting there with our Starbucks coffees and gossiping as we did homework. Then people we worked with would walk by and see us sitting there and be so glad that we had a friendship outside of work (especially our manager, Dale).

As for Ben, I would miss the way that he just felt right. Whenever I slept over at his place, I would lie in his arms and be completely comfortable. Like our bodies were meant to snuggle together in his warm bed.

As for Lana, I would miss the memory of how she came all the way to Boston for my birthday last year. I told her that a Swap had been planned on it, and she understood how much that sucked, so she made a trip from her house in Connecticut to be there for me.


It's hard because at the time each of those memories was made, it seemed like everything was going well with all of these people. Who would have known that they would turn out to be nasty emotional abusers. It just sucks, that's all. There's no way to predict when somebody you care about is going to change their mind about how they feel about you. How are you supposed to protect yourself from that?

Happiness, Day 14

Today's gratitudes:

• Am now completely outfitted for ND winter! Went shopping today and got heavy mittens that my advisor recommended, as well as two pairs of thermal pants. Bonus: I only had to pay for 1 pair of thermal pants. My Dad bought me the other pair and the mittens for my Christmas and birthday presents. I'm glad he did because those things are really fucking expensive.
• Got GIS working on my computer! Got a free student license good for 1 year. This makes my life a whole lot easier, as I can now work on my final project from my apartment and then I'll be trying to get certified.
• I only had 1 class today, which was nice because the whole rest of the day was a day off. Woo!

Today's kindness:
Made my Dad a latte from my latte machine, which he actually liked. I was surprised because I thought he wouldn't like the sweetness of the chocolate chips added. But I made his the same as mine and he liked it.

Today's reflection:
Currently in a food coma, haha. The nice GIS professor came in and he gave me a chocolate gold coin, because he was intrigued by my project in the Pacific Northwest. Then my Dad made cookies, and I've been eating them all day because they are the best ever. We ate personal pizzas for lunch and we got Chinese takeout for dinner, which was delicious. I'm glad that there is actually decent Chinese food here; in State College there was nothing decent at all.

Food coma... sleepy...

Happiness, Day 13

Today's gratitudes:

• Got a lot of sleep last night. I was so tired from getting up at 6 am that I went to sleep at 9:30 pm last night. Nice! Woke up again at 6 am and felt it easier to wake up because I had gotten lots of sleep.
• Got caught up on my grading! I had been so far behind. But I'm all caught up now. Thank fucking god for that.
• Acquired a coffee table! My Dad brought it up with him. It's the coffee table that was in our living room when I grew up.

Today's kindness:
My office mate is going home for Thanksgiving, so I agreed to fish-sit for her. Her fish is in my living room right now :D

Today's reflection:
I woke up to a text from Laura! She told me that the day she would be in NYC would actually be on my birthday!!!! OMG, all my birthday wishes come true! Spending my birthday with good friends, in a big city, where I get to see Chicago on Broadway!!!!!! And go to jazz show!!!!!!!! I AM SO EXCITED!!

Happiness, Day 12

Today's gratitudes:

• Woke up at 6:10 am!!! Went to the gym and did full body before my 9 am class. It felt great :D Hopefully I can keep it up.
• Saw Becky at the gym real early. She too is planning to go at that hour a few days a week. Yay workout buddy! It's kind of hard to spot myself for bicep curls...
• Insurance for 2014 will completely cover the IUD. I'll plan to make the switch over from the Pill in January. Yay! The Pill doesn't reliably work for me, but I'm on it because the Nuvaring failed miserably, so this will hopefully be better.

Today's kindness:
I went shopping to get my Dad his birthday present and his Christmas present, since he's coming here tomorrow and I won't see him in December. I got him a nice Merlot and a new book about Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, which he'll hopefully enjoy.

Today's reflection:
Well the highlights for today were the morning workout and getting to class early afterward. I seemed to be more alert in class than normal at 9 am. Then I got some grading done (almost caught up! only half a lab to go). I also enjoyed drinking two lattes back to back and then going shopping for my Dad's gifts. I'm considering buying GIS and CMG for my computer; hopefully I can find them somewhere for cheap. I'm about to go work more on my strat paper... need to desperately catch up on that.

Happiness, Day 11

Today's gratitudes:

• I'm really glad that I have a functional computer. I"m getting more work done on my strat paper, and it's great that I can relax enough to focus on it.
• Today at the gym, there were a lot of people there for some reason and the ellipticals that I like were all in use. I went on the kind that I USED to like a lot. That was the kind that I sprained my hip adductor muscle on, and have not been on since. Going on this machine shows me that I still have work to do in getting a completely healthy hip adductor. This machine has a really fast motion; I'm not used to that yet. I think this is why my hip adductor got re-injured last spring during my fitness assessment-- they had me going really fast on the bike, and my hip adductor couldn't handle a fast sort of stress. I will need to work on improving my muscle to handle faster motions.
• Fred didn't care that I was bitchy the last time I talked to him (Friday night when I was in a terrible mood). I apologized for it, but he said he understood that I was under a lot of stress. That's what friends are for-- not caring when you act like a bitch sometimes.

Today's kindness:

My friend Al had asked me if he could put me down for a reference for some job he was applying for. I said ok, and the person had called me but said that they would try to have an agent from ND talk to me in person. Today that agent talked to me, and even though I thought it was kind of weird that I couldn't just do it over the phone, I agreed to meet with him in person. I hope Al gets the job, because he's a really smart, good guy.

Today's reflection:

I was thinking today about this guy Kevin that Aaliya had tried to set me up with after I broke up with Ray this summer. The timing had not been right for Kevin and me, unfortunately. We went on a double date at a bar to hang out for the first time, and of course Ray ended up being there, which had completely thrown me off. And considering how thrown I had been by the whole Ray thing in general, I wouldn't have been ready for a new relationship anyway. Kevin deserved more than I could have given him then, which was basically a rebound type relationship.

But Kevin is a really great guy. He's nice, funny, and I remember that we have some similar interests. He seemed interested in me too. It was really cute because he had a party that he told me was a housewarming party for his new apartment, but he told Aaliya that it was also a goodbye party for me. I went to that party and had a great time. It's a shame that we didn't have more time together.

Happiness, Day 10

Well, today I exchanged my computer for a different one. It was the last straw yesterday when iTunes stopped working after a Windows update and then could not be fixed. Ironically enough, there was already a problem with my brand-new computer (ugh). The h key was ajar, so I had to hitch a ride back to the store to have them fix it. It does not bode well that there was already a problem with my new computer.

However, I am REALLY hoping that there are no more computer problems. REALLY HOPING. I swear, if there's one more problem with my computer, I'm traveling all the way to Pennsylvania and punching Ray in the face. While I'm there, I'll punch Mara in the face as well. And if I feel like it, I'll punch Ben in the face afterward.

I'm really exhausted from all this. My day went something like this: wake up early to go grocery shopping with Ray, spend some time backing up my files, finish GIS project proposal, go to BestBuy and exchange computer, come home and start installing things on new computer, go back to BestBuy to have them fix the h key, go back home and have a problem getting my music into iTunes, go to dinner, go to CVS which was by that point closed because Grand Forks sucks, go home and figure out that I had picked the wrong music folder (there had been many on my external hard drive) and finally got iTunes to work, spent time organizing the info on my computer and on my external hard drive, put in a load of laundry, and now I have a headache and am too exhausted to start doing any schoolwork. But at least now I HOPEFULLY have a working computer that will HOPEFULLY not have any more problems, and I can work all day tomorrow.

Today's gratitudes:

• I'm really glad that the woman at BestBuy let me get a different computer model. This one is apparently preferred over my other one even though they are very similar. I had thought that I could only exchange for the same model, but she let me get this one instead. This one was cheaper than my other one, so I got a gift card with store credit. I bought some ink cartridges as well as Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2, since I have never gotten around to seeing those.
• I'm so glad to have iTunes working again on my computer. A lot of people don't understand how important that is to my mentality. I need to have my music working and accessible at all times. iTunes is preferred because it allows me to play things in a continuous stream, unlike the programs that come installed on my computer. Also, I have an iPod, and the only way I know how to sync it is through iTunes.
• Had a coupon for 50% off my Starbucks latte. There's a Starbucks in the Target that we went to after shopping, but they didn't accept the coupon. So that just meant that we went to Starbucks after going to BestBuy, haha. A 2-latte morning, where one was 50% off, and both were made in my Happy Mugs.

Today's kindness:

I told Alex that I appreciated hearing his point of view on the jobs vs. school debate. He brought up a good point about commute time subtracting a lot from the free time. I hadn't thought much about that, so I'm glad he brought that to my attention.

Today's reflection:

Today I took a picture of the weather on my computer: -12 degrees F/feels like -24 degrees. I posted it on Facebook saying, "This is where I ask myself: WTF am I doing here?"

Mr. Yummy liked it.

:)

He really is so yummy. I was really into him for a long time. He lives in Texas now, earning his Masters in Music. I can't believe he has the power to warm me up all the way from Texas. I think it's because he's just a really happy person. Not only that, but his whole family seems to be happy. It's something that I never had, but wish I had.

Frustration

I'm just feeling annoyed with everything right now. I feel completely drained from the day. There were a whole bunch of extra things I had to do today that ate up all my time.

First, I had to stay late in GIS because there was a guest visitor. We're allowed to leave on Fridays after we finish our lab, but this guy came in the second half of class and talked for 45 minutes about how it's better to understand the program concepts rather than the specific Arc-GIS that we're being trained to use. He also talked about the importance of learning Python because old programs like Fortran are now out of date. Don't get me wrong, those are both good points. It was useful advice to me for preparing for my career. But he could have talked about that in 5 minutes, instead of 45.

Then my lunch break was even shorter because I went for the last CMG short course. But apparently now that wasn't the last, he wants us to come again on Monday. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to be learning CMG. It's just that I signed up for this because I thought it was a one-weekend class. It wasn't supposed to continue this week, let alone next week.

Then there was a geothermal team meeting this week, because next week we have the day off for Thanksgiving, so it met this week instead. Right after that I had to go to the LEEP talk about fracturing on Venus. My advisor had specifically asked us to go to it because apparently nobody goes to the guest lectures when they come and it looks bad on our program.

I get it, I really do. If I had all the time in the world, I would love to do all these extra things. But I don't have all the time in the world. I'm behind on everything. Behind on my GIS project, on my strat paper, and on my grading. And I'm never going to catch up if I have to keep doing all these extra things all the time. Because now, it's the end of the day and I'm completely drained. My lunch break was reduced from 3 hours to 30 minutes. I had to stay late today an extra 2 hours. Yes it's not even 6 pm, but I don't have the energy or desire to do anything productive because I'm so tired. Ugh.

Plus, I hate people who argue with everything I say. People who pick out small details that are unimportant compared to what else is being said, and choose to argue with me about those things instead of focusing on the main points. My sister did this on my post talking about jobs vs. school. I had said something like, "When you have a job you have 5 evenings completely free and 2 whole days on the weekend completely free." And then my sister had been all, "pshh there are lots of jobs not like that. I've worked at jobs not like that."

Yes, I'm aware that some people work nights and some people work weekends. My main point in saying that was not to say that every single person works from 9-5 Monday through Friday. I only said it like that because those are the hours I would like to have for my job. My main point was that having a job is better than being in school because no matter what your hours, you have way more free time than in school. Unless you're like Alex, who explained that he works 3 jobs/75 hour work weeks (his choice).

Jobs vs. College

Recently I made a Facebook post saying that I looked forward to having a job, so that I could actually come home at the end of the day to free time instead of coming home to do more work on homework. I was so surprised when my sister's friend Alex commented on it and implied that being is school is actually better than working at a job, that my opinion would change once I've actually been at a job.

I just don't understand! What's not to like about a job? How could it possibly be worse than school?

Here's how the job would be better:

• No homework. Like I said, you work hard during the day (or night depending on your job), then you come home from work and you can do whatever the fuck you want. The time is completely yours to keep up with your hobbies and interests. To do things that you like to do, and you actually have time to do them because you don't have any homework to do.
• Getting paid to work hard at something that you love. What's so bad about this? That's the dream! Why would you not love getting paid to do something that you love doing?
• Your goals are now focused only on your career. Currently, I have goals that correlate to school AND career: do well on my final projects so that I can do well in my classes, finish my thesis proposal, try to find a summer internship to gain experience, make as many contacts and connections as possible and start researching potential jobs. What is the goal list when you have a job? It's only, do well at your current job, make as many contacts and connections as possible, consider whether or not there might be a better job out there to suit you. SO MUCH BETTER! So much less to think about.
• Actually having weekends. Two whole days where you don't have to do work of any sort.

So I really don't see why Alex thinks being in school is better than having a job. Maybe he doesn't like his job or something. But I, for one, can't wait to have a job and build my professional career. And actually have some fucking free time consistently.

Happiness, Day 9

Today's gratitudes:

• Had a productive day. Caught up on CMG for tomorrow's end to the short class, did a bit more on my GIS project, finished grading a lab.
• Found another place with flavored long island iced teas! I miss my Café teas back at Penn State, but these are (almost) as good.
• Trying something new. Fred and Becky convinced me to go out of my comfort zone and order the fajitas for dinner instead of ordering pasta. It was delicious! It was my first time trying a jalepeno wrap, which I actually liked.

Today's kindness:
Some of you might remember Mr. Yummy from my other blog. Well, today he posted a link on Facebook that discussed 21 habits of happy people. I went to look at it, and there's a lot on there that I'm not doing yet. I commented on the link and thanked him for posting it. I need all the help I can get really. I just want to be happier.

Today's reflection:
I had such a lovely evening! Fred picked me up at my office and then we went to the restaurant for dinner. My food was excellent, they had yummy Café teas, and my dessert was heavenly. It gave my mouth an orgasm.

Becky and I got pretty drunk, which led to some interesting conversation about uncircumcised penises. Her friend Tom was supposed to come join us for a drink, and she wanted to introduce me as "Veronica." Damnnn lol, I was all too eager to oblige. I unzipped my sweater, pulled down my shirt so that the top of my bra was just showing, and Becky helped me apply some red lipstick. Fred said that the red lipstick looked hot and then gave me a cigarette.

Lol it seemed to work, I flirted with him a little and he seemed liked his interest was piqued. Unfortunately though he got there almost right before we went to the movie, so I didn't have much time to do some real Veronica damage.

Laura texted me and said that I should "celebrate" with him. Hahaha! I couldn't properly celebrate her birthday this year due to the fact that everyone here is married. Oh well, it was nice to see Veronica come out from hiding though. The last time my alter-ego came out in real life was over the summer when I was with Ray, and he didn't give a fuck about it. Well, fuck him.

Anyway, then we all went and saw Catching Fire!! It was SOOOOO good. So good. And it didn't make me sick either, as movies in the theater have started to do these days.

Happiness, Day 8

Today's gratitudes:

• This morning people were handing out free hot chocolate in front of my building. Then the nice geography professor dropped off a tray of cookies in the back of a classroom. On my way out of class I grabbed a peanut butter sugar cookie. Delicious!
• One of the good things about being single is that I can wear my retainer whenever the fuck I want. None of this, "A retainer is really not-sexy, never ever wear it EVER when you're sleeping in the same bed as a man" business. I want to keep my teeth straight, damn it!
• This made me laugh. THAT IS MOHAGONY!!!

Today's kindness:
My GIS professor and I had a little tiff this morning. He emailed me to apologize for calling my attribute table "stupid." I wasn't sure whether or not to respond, but then I thought about the fact that he was reaching out to me as a professor, and it bothered me when I tried to do that for some of my students and they didn't respond. So I responded and also apologized for being short, saying I had been stressed out because I'm behind in everything, including his project, and that I wanted to do well on it but I needed to know exactly what I was going to do for it. I had gotten even more stressed when he told me to email him my project goals, because that meant I still wasn't making any progress on it. Really though he was asking because he's a visual learner like I am, so it's easier to understand things that are written down. I hadn't understood that at the time because I wanted to start work on the project and was stressed.

Today's reflection:
This morning went well. I slept well, and I was even closer to getting up at 6:15. However, I fell asleep again and didn't get up until 8. At least now I can reliably get up at 8, and I was early for once for class. The free hot chocolate and free cookie were nice too.

The rest of the day was kind of blah though. I'm just stressed out about schoolwork and unmotivated. I really wish they would give us a fall break so that I could catch up on things and reset.

Anyway, since I made a post about this shitty year a few days ago, I might as well reflect on some of the good parts of it:

1. Graduating from college. 5 years of hard work, and I got 2 bachelor's degrees in completely unrelated subjects.
2. Getting into my top grad school and studying with the leading member in my field.
3. Really learning a lot from my advisor. I'm learning how to set myself up for professional success, in addition to learning the importance of keeping up with the current literature/conference proceedings.
4. Keeping my New Year's Resolution of getting back into shape and going to the gym every day. I bounced back from 4 injuries, and now I'm so much healthier and stronger.
5. Losing the weight that I gained after I became a heavy drinker. 27 lbs lost, I'm currently back where I was in high school, which is nice. However I'm not done, because in high school I had always wanted to lose 10-15 lbs but never did. I'll try to do that now.
6. Eating better. The way I lost weight was to control my portion sizes. For the most part, I eat very healthy now. I try to make sure I eat enough of each food group every day, but not too much.
7. Traveling places. Got to go to Las Vegas, Denver, and Winnipeg. Hopefully will visit NYC in December for my birthday.
8. Having a better understanding of myself, and seeing how strong I am, from all the bad experiences.
9. Repairing my relationship with my Mom. Hopefully it can get to where I want it to be.

Happiness, Day 7

Today's gratitudes:

• Got iTunes working on my computer! One of my students suggested to try downloading it on Chrome. It worked! Yay. I've now re-installed everything and Powerpoint still works fine. Hopefully this indicates that my computer is going to be ok from now on.
• Lost 1 lb even though I hadn't eaten very well in the last few days. I guess this means my metabolism has improved! Yay.
• Today's elliptical and stretching helped my back to feel better. When I woke up this morning my back still hurt, so that meant I had to skip full body this week completely. I decided to try today's workout because I thought it might help (I'm thinking my sore back is a result of sitting for long periods of time). And it did help, so hopefully after tomorrow's day of rest it will be back to normal.

Today's kindness:
Two of my students were having fun during the class, and they were making me laugh a lot. I told them that I liked that they did that, that it was nice to see them having a good time as they worked on their labs.

Today's reflection:
Today was another pretty good day in general. I ALMOST got out of bed at 6:15. I was so close. But then I ended up sleeping until 8. Then I went to the gym, which went well. Then I went to the library to finish printing out my CMOST document, and saw Becky (she works there) so I got to chat with her for a bit. After that I went to my office to grade some papers before class (trying to catch up because I'm 2 assignments behind). Class went well, and then it was a fun teaching day. Not only were those two students having fun, but two of the others were talking to me about Thanksgiving plans. It was so funny because one of them asked me if I had my drivers license, and I about died laughing because Laura and I have been making so much fun of Eliza for the fact that her boyfriend told her that she had to get her drivers license before they move in together. After teaching, I graded a bit more. One guy stopped by my office to talk about our strat paper (ew, behind on that as well), and another guy stopped by to invite me along to trivia night. Unfortunately I had to decline because I'm so behind on everything. But it will be nice to get back into trivia nights! I used to do it all the time at PSU.

Happiness, Day 6

Today's gratitudes:

1. My Happy Mugs arrived!!!! Very exciting. I had this Eco mug that was really nice and looked like a candy cane. It was perfect because I could steam my milk in it and it wouldn't burn it, and it was the perfect grande latte size, and I could make coffee in it and take it to go. But then I broke it and was sad. I had to get by with making a tall latte size in a kitchen mug, which meant I had to be in my apartment to drink coffee. But now my replacement Happy Mug, along with two other Happy Mugs, have arrived and yay that means back to business as normal!
2. Bubble baths. So warm and relaxing. Prepares me for sleep, which I would be doing right now except for:
3. I wanted to continue the happiness trend so bad that I'm posting right now instead of going to sleep right after my bubble bath. Ranting is nice because it gets the negativity out of your system, but it can take awhile. After I wrote my last two posts, I didn't just forget about what I had written; I ended up stewing about it for awhile because I had relived all that horrible stuff. I realized I truly do want to be happy, and this had been working pretty well (except the meditation bit).

Today's  kindness:
It was a kindness to myself. My strat professor presented today instead of me, which means mine is pushed back (again) to the next class. I generally like to get them out of the way so I can stop worrying about them, but today I didn't really care and didn't really feel inconvenienced. I have it prepared, so it doesn't matter when I present it.

Today's reflection:
Today was a pretty good day in general! I got minimally caught up on my TA stuff during my break between classes and after class. I went to the continuation of the CMG short course, which was nice because I'm learning so much from it and I'm enjoying it. The computer lab was unavailable because someone was teaching a class in there, so I went up to the library to record the grades. I got to talk with a nice guy in my GIS class as well as the nice librarian. I did not go to the gym because for some reason my back started to hurt, but it was a good decision because I knew that if I pushed myself to go, I would have gotten injured. Hopefully it's better tomorrow morning. I came home and ate some leftover pizza (delicious) and made 2 coffees in my new Happy Mug. I got myself organized and up to speed. I needed to print out the large document for the next short course in CMOST, so that meant I had to re-install my printer/scanner. Powerpoint is still working fine, which is a relief. The only thing left to re-install is iTunes, but I don't know how to do that because it magically installed itself last time (here's hoping it will do that again) and downloading it still didn't work. Then Aaliya called me and I talked to her for an hour. She told me some entertaining stories that only close friends would share. It was nice to have that, because I'm not really close enough with anyone here to talk about that stuff. Then I took my bubble bath, wrote this, and now going to sleep!

What If

Okay. Let's play what if.

What if I had listened to my first instinct and never gave Ben the time of day?

I would have:

1. Not been hurt and emotionally abused by Ben.
2. Probably never have met Ray.
3. Not been given the ultimatum by Mara, who never would have dated him.
4. Maybe would not have been in a good enough mood to be generous enough to get myself into legal trouble.
5. Not been hurt and emotionally abused by Ray.
6. Probably would not have been emotionally abused by Mara.

#4 and #6 I can't say for sure. Probably I would have found out about Mara's true disgusting nature at some point anyway.

But I guess there would be some negatives as well:

1. Might not have discovered what it was like to be given what I had always wanted but never had.
2. Would not have discovered that I had been missing that in the first place.
3. Would not have learned that I suffer from anxiety from the way that people treat me.
4. Would not have learned how to recognize emotional abuse.
5. Would not have learned to walk away from people after the second infraction that deals with the same problem.

I mean, I guess I now have a better understanding of myself and when to walk away from other people. I don't wish that I were still friends with any of those people and I don't wish that I were still with Ray or Ben, but I just wish that all that bad shit had not happened to me.

This Shitty Year

I'm putting the happiness thing on hold right now. I think I need to write about all the shitty things I've had to deal with this year in an effort to let go of them.

Being 23 has sucked. It started out with Ashley scheduling a Yankee Swap on my birthday. I alerted everyone to the fact that it was on my birthday by saying, "I'll come so long as you all join me for some birthday shots afterward :)" I mean, I suppose I could have asked her to change the date of it, but I knew that if I did, I would never see any of my friends on my birthday. Long history of shitty birthdays, people not bothering to make the effort to come see me after my Mom moved closer into Boston, the works. My Dad made me cry on my birthday once. So I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when only Eliza came out with me for a drink afterward. The others couldn't be bothered to drive 1 mile to celebrate my birthday with me.

Then I went back to school, and that's when things started with Ben. He had liked me before but I had said no. In fact, I almost didn't give him the time of day, but then relented and decided to be nice to the guy. Maybe I shouldn't have. I'm wondering how much better things would've been if I had gone with my gut reaction. Anyway, Ben had spent a lot of time trying to get me to go out with him, all of which I had refused. The ironic thing is that once he gave up, he became a close friend to me, one who was there for me when I needed. This of course made me fall for him.

We ended up hooking up after one of his parties. Afterward we had a conversation and I told him how I felt. He told me that he talked to some of my friends and he wasn't convinced that I liked him for the right reasons. (Because obviously my friends know me better than I know myself....... wtf.) Then he said he didn't want to date me because I wasn't his soulmate because I didn't play videogames.

Yet, he still wanted to be friends with benefits. I went along with it even though I shouldn't have.

Meanwhile, I sprained my wrist by playing viola. I couldn't do the thing I love most in the world for 3 whole months as I completed physical therapy. Nobody cared about this emotional pain, not even Ben. I had to drop orchestra, which meant I couldn't perform in the Bernstein Mass (probably the 11th performance of it ever in history) and I was not recognized as a graduating orchestra member. I was no longer a full-time student, which meant I was terminated from the job I had worked at for 5 years and loved.

Lana, one of my good friends at the time, didn't even care about my wrist. She saw me several times with the brace on, and never asked about it once. She also sided with Ben in his whole retarded logic, spending all this time talking to him about me and refusing to talk with me about him.

Meanwhile, my hip adductor got re-injured, and I got tendonitis in both knees. Cue even more physical therapy and frustration.

I needed to take my mind off all this, especially because I was getting too attached to Ben. I went out with Lana and I told her I liked her friend, Denny. Lana told me that SHE liked Denny. But then she went and was trying to go home with the guy in the blue shirt. Um, excuse me, you can't reserve every fucking guy for yourself. She even refused Denny's offers to buy her drinks, sending him the message that she was uninterested.

Well, he was interested in me. I went home with him and fucked his brains out. Then of course he went and told Lana, even though I had asked him not to tell her, and she cut me out of her life. Well, whatever, she wasn't being a good friend to me anyway.

Then Ben told me that I "needed an intervention" and that he was going to tell me what to do. He wouldn't even give me the courtesy of talking to me in person about it, he said "look I'm not going to change my mind. The friends with benefits thing is over." via text. Chauvinistic piece of shit.

Then Mara made her ultimatum that if I ever did anything with Ray, there would be "Lana-esque" consequences. Fuck her for making an ultimatum like that.

Subsequently my sister almost ruined my Dad's wedding, taking out her upset about the divorce on me in the form of pants. Sorry for donating pants that I thought were mine because you gave them to me 8 years ago and never wanted to wear them since then.

Then I got in legal trouble for furnishing alcohol to minors. Had to go through the whole court process, spent all of my life savings on a lawyer, now I'm paying that same amount for my fine. How fun, getting busted for being too nice.

After that, cue the emotional abuse from Ray. Realizing that I do not trust men at all anymore and I want nothing more to do with them. Then realizing I do not trust anyone anymore.

Meanwhile, spending 3 months sorting out the stupid refrigerator issue with my apartment. They replaced my refrigerator with a new one that didn't have a circulating fan. My food was being damaged because the stuff at the back would freeze and the stuff in the front would melt. I had them come for a service visit because I thought it was broken, not knowing about the circulating fan issue as that, in addition to anything like my problem, was not described in the instruction manual. They charged me $90 for that visit because "nothing was wrong with it." After 3 months, they finally conceded and gave me $45 back, which is better than nothing I guess.

I tried to see a therapist about the Ray thing, but didn't like how they assumed that I was going to go commit suicide in 5 minutes. They were trying to convince me that I had problems that I didn't have, so I quit.

Cue the emotional abuse from John. Kicking me while I was down, saying I was a bad friend for dumping an emotional load on him when he had schoolwork to do. When HE was the one who had started the conversation with me about how things were going.

Meanwhile, having every computer issue under the planet. Computer is STILL in the shop, even though they said it would be done this morning. Very dissatisfied with this service.

Cue the emotional abuse from Mara. She is probably the most disgusting person I have ever met.

As for now, I just feel abandoned by some of my friends. I know they probably don't do it on purpose, but after all I've been through I just don't trust people anymore. I called Aaliya when my grandfather died and the Mara thing happened, and she waited so long to call me back that I don't even really want to talk about those things anymore. Now we're playing phone tag and we have to schedule a time to talk days in advance. Then I tried calling Mandy about how Lawrence said I have low self esteem for being upset about losing close friends, but she didn't answer and she only called me back a week later when she needed me to support her with her problem. Lawrence asked me if I wanted to see a movie with him that I already had plans to see with Fred, but then he ditched me to go hang out with his other friends at a coffee shop. Apparently I'm not as important as they are or something.



And what a wonderful year it's been. I have lost 4 people that had been close to me. I have been emotionally abused by 3 of those people, by 1 family member, and by 1 new friend. I got in legal trouble. I was injured in 4 places.

Happiness, Day 5

Today's Gratitudes:

• My hydrofracking professor. I'm so lucky that I have another kind, intelligent, helpful man on my thesis committee. I met with him about my thesis today and he had so many brilliant ideas on how I can enhance not only my work, but also myself. He told me that the way to becoming marketable is to learn as much software as I possibly can, as that knowledge will help me to have the advantage over other applicants. He said I'm well on my way to doing that from taking his CMG short class. Also, turns out he has his own contact at Itasca (!) who told him that his students can complete training for the fracture software for free!! So even if I don't get my mentorship with them, I can still learn that software for free! And even if that somehow fell through, he has recommended additional software that would be good for me to use for my project. Also, he told me that he was impressed with my thesis title and idea. I'm so glad to have him on my team, I always seem to leave his office in a great mood.
• Geothermal team meetings. Today we had our first team meeting in awhile, due to all the traveling to conferences that everyone had been doing. It's really awesome to see what everyone else is researching, and what ideas everyone else has for each other. I think it's a great way to learn new things about our field.
• Today the scale at the gym had been fixed and re-calibrated. I told them about it yesterday because it told me that I weighed 152 lb, and I knew there was no way I could have gained 15 lb in one week. But they fixed it, and it said I weigh 137 lb. Sweet! Getting closer and closer to my goal. 26 lb down, 12 lb to go.

Today's kindness:
I had asked my officemate if she could drive me to pick up my computer, and she said she could take me. But then she cancelled on me at the last minute and I had trouble finding someone else to take me. I decided to be nice and forgive her for that.

Turns out, they hadn't even fixed my problem >_< So it's still in the shop anyway.

Today's reflection:
I really enjoyed talking to my hydrofracking professor. I have a lot of hard work ahead of me. I work hard, but I'm going to have to work even harder. These are the things I need to do:

• Spend time learning as much software as I can during my time here. Try to figure out which software would be best for my thesis work.
• Do a background reading on what has already been done so far on sedimentary enhanced geothermal systems, and find out the successes and failures.
• Research the three basins I want to study to make sure there is enough data for me to use those.
• Do enough of the above in the next few weeks, so I can finish my project proposal, schedule the preliminary thesis committee meeting, and schedule my thesis proposal talk.

Anyway, he's the second person to tell me that he was impressed with my project (my thesis advisor had been the first). It's really nice to be told that I'm doing a good job and that my project is interesting and important to people who are smarter than I am.

As for meditation, I just... agh. I'm just not good at it. Maybe I'll get better at it if I keep trying, and then I'll be able to better focus on everything instead of getting lost in my own thoughts all the time.

Happiness, Day 4

Today's gratitudes:

• My hydrofracking professor is teaching a mini-class on CMG simulation modeling this weekend. I signed up for it! Hopefully this will be useful, especially for my thesis.
• The guys in the office next door to mine have this thing in the hallway where they sell snacks (trying to raise money to send students to field camp). I knew that if I didn't eat something before seeing Ender's Game, I would die, so I ate an instant ramen for 50 cents. Got rid of all my change that way too ;)
• After the movie, Ray drove us to the CVS so I could pick up my prescription. Even though I was only gone 5-10 minutes, the others didn't care that we were making a stop for an errand I had to make and they didn't mind waiting for me in the car.

Today's reflection:
Exploring my building! Apparently there is an elevator that I never knew existed. It's really sketchy because it used to be a cargo elevator, and you have to slide open the door yourself. But I rode it for the first time after we got back from the movie, and the others couldn't believe I had never been on it before.

Today's act of kindness:
Giving more credit while grading than normal. It bothers me when students don't answer part of the question, so I take off points for that. This time though I decided to be nice and give credit if they thoroughly explained how they would have labeled the diagram (even though they didn't label the diagram).

Happiness, Day 3

Today's gratitudes:

• Renewed love for my work. My computer is in the shop again, so during dinner I was reading some geothermal literature. I LOVE MY FIELD!!!
• Proof that other people agree with me that salads are disgusting. I was at BestBuy for 2+ hours, and the guy helping me was giving me restaurant advice for when my Dad comes to visit. Then we got on the topic of how disgusting salads are, and how we hate salad dressing. Just... blech.
• Ray from my department. He patiently waited for me during that 2+ hours at the BestBuy, as he had been my ride. He doesn't mind driving me around places. Also, he is usually the one to organize department outings. We are going to see Ender's Game in the theater tomorrow afternoon!

Today's act of kindness:
Talking on the phone with my Grandmother. She really appreciated my call, and we talked for a little while about my Grandfather, about how school is going, and preparing for the cold winter up here. I told her about the new coat that I bought for the winter, which I'm excited to wear with my new boots. She said that grad school sounded like a lot of work, and I said that it was but that I didn't mind, because I was spending time doing what I like to do. I realized that I truly meant it, too. I love the work that I'm doing here, and I love "leaning in" to my field. At the end of the conversation, my Grandmother said that she had really enjoyed talking to me, and that I could call her any time. I could tell that she meant it too <3

Today's reflection:
There were two high points to today: talking to my Grandmother and drinking my Starbucks latte. My Grandmother made me feel loved, because I could tell that she meant what she said, and I was glad that I made her happy. It made me happy that I had made her happy.

Ray and I hit up Starbucks after our long time in BestBuy, and we each had a free drink on our gold cards. I suggested he try the peppermint mocha latte, which he got and really liked. I got my usual latte, only venti-sized because it was free. Extra warm, lovely, succulent coffee. It warms me up inside and makes me so happy.

Meditiating is so hard!! I tried it again yesterday and it went slightly better, but I couldn't do it for very long. I did feel relaxed afterward, but the relaxed feeling was kind of paired with being tired. I'll keep trying...

Happiness, Day 2

Today's gratitudes:

• My good students. I love chatting to some of my students. Some students don't want to actually have conversations with me because I'm their teacher, but these ones do. Also, some of them have fun while they are working on the lab, which is great to see. Plus it reminds me of myself; often I was like that in school.
• Bonus cash. I love playing in the orchestra because I love music, but it's also nice to get paid to do it. My mom emailed me today saying I got a check for $104 from them for the last concert. Plus, I got more tax returns from Pennsylvania, in the amount of $44. The bonus cash is nice, particularly because I'm trying to pay off my nasty fine from the summer. With 5 orchestra concerts, that adds up to a little less than half of my fine.
• Coffee. I fucking love coffee. So sweet and succulent. Starbucks lattes are the best thing in the world. And I can make them in my kitchen whenever I want!

Random Act of Kindness:
It's hard for me to think of random acts of kindness to do, because I'm already too kind to begin with. Today I let one of my students use the classroom computer to check her Powerpoint? Does that count? Also I called my Grandmother, I hadn't done that yet... but she didn't answer, so I'll try calling again later.

Meditation I'm also finding to be very difficult. My scientific mind is always thinking about things, always working to make sense of things... it's hard to shut that off. I tried it last night before I went to sleep, and I was trying to picture my Happy Place.

My Happy Place is a place I go in my mind when I want to feel calm and serene. There's a field of green grass, and you can smell it fresh. There are sunflowers in some spots, and you can hear rushing water somewhere off in the distance. It's sunny and warm there and lovely.

Anyway, I'll try it again later tonight.

Finally, today's reflection. I went to the gym this morning and did elliptical and stretching. It felt really good to stretch because I was so sore from yesterday's full body workout. I really enjoyed the walk back, because it was sunny out and I was listening to my workout playlist on my iPod.

Happiness-- Day 1

I recommend everyone to go watch this video.

He says that the secret to becoming happier is in 5 steps:

• 3 new gratitudes
• journaling
• exercise
• meditation
• random acts of kindness

If these things are done for 2 minutes, 21 days in a row, then the brain is supposed to be retrained to be happier.

Well, I already exercise, so that's one less task for me.

I already journal, but most of my posts are not happy. The goal here is to reflect on a happy moment of the day because it will help you to relive the experience.

Meditation will help to focus on the task at hand. I need help with that for sure. I get stressed easily about major assignments.

For a random act of kindness, you can email someone in your social circle and thank them for being awesome.


Well I'm all set to try it! Let's see how it works.

Today's gratitudes:

1. Being well enough to go back to the gym. After being away in Denver, I only got to go to the gym once before I got sick. Was sick for a week and a half...
2. Got the chance to meet my neighbors. The fire alarm went off again, and I met the nice woman who lives down the hall from me and a boy who I think is her son. We chatted for a little bit, and she told me that if I ever needed her to give me a ride somewhere, she would be more than happy to give me one.
3. Having the day off school. It was nice to sleep in today and have the day to work on my assignments.

Today I will reflect on my wonderful friendship with Laura. I called her up today to take a break from my strat presentation. She asked me if I wanted to go down to NYC to meet up with her around my birthday!!

"That way," she told me,  "if Ashley schedules another Yankee Swap on your birthday again this year, you don't have to go and you can tell her that you have other plans."

And then, I was just off thinking. For such a long time now, I have wanted to see Chicago on Broadway. Chicago is my favorite musical, and my favorite thing to do ever is to see a musical on Broadway. What better way to spend my birthday than to see my favorite musical on Broadway with one of my best friends?

For my random act of kindness, I told Laura that she was awesome and that I was so glad that we were friends.

Because really, she is. She knows that I haven't had the best record with birthdays, so now she's going out of her way to make sure this birthday will be a happy one.

Yay! So excited. Hopefully all the plans come together for this trip! I'll be sure to tell Cameron, my Birthday Buddy, about it. If she wants to come with, then we both will have a very happy birthday for sure.

<3

The Difficulty of Communication

A lot of times, it's hard to communicate well. Even for people who try to communicate well like I do, it can be a challenge. The first struggle is figuring out what to say. What do you want to talk about? What are you feeling? The second struggle is saying it in a convincing way that best gets your point across, so that misunderstandings are minimized.

It's like music. A few days ago, I listened to recordings of my junior and senior recitals. The big difference between the two was that my junior recital lacked convincing melodic lines, while my senior recital had some melodic lines that were convincing and others that were not.

A lot of the improvement between the two recitals came from me thinking about what melodic lines I wanted. Then, I had to listen to myself as I played to try to determine if what came out of my viola was the same sound that I wanted. But even after I had done those two things, the recordings show that I didn't always know how the music sounded to my audience. Since my vantage point is right next to my viola, I only know what it sounds like there. It's hard for me to know what it sounds like to an audience at a distance.

But as we know, there is more than one pathway to achieve something. I think my problem of not sounding convincing all the time is because after I play for some time, my posture starts to deteriorate and my bow is not always in the string. If I work a lot on keeping my bow in the string, that makes it easier to create convincing melodic lines.

Not only that, but it has to do somehow with the timing of everything. It has to do with whether my mind and body are in sync with each other. When I think in my mind, "make this melodic line now," my body has to cooperate. There has to be an efficiency of motion with the bow and with my left hand fingers. Not only do the motions need to happen at exactly the same time, but the motions have to be correct (they have to be suitable in getting across my melodic idea).

So communication is very difficult in music, and I don't think it's any different for verbal communication. Sometimes the first step-- figuring out what you want to say-- is hard enough and takes a long time. Maybe you don't know how you feel. Maybe you do know how you feel but you don't know why. Maybe you know how you feel and know why, but the other person is not interested in hearing what you have to say.

But it appears that the next step-- saying what you want to say in a convincing way that best gets your point across-- is even more difficult and requires even more work. First, you have to convert everything to "I feel" type statements so that the other person doesn't feel like you're attacking them. Second, you have to fully explain why you feel that way, to help the other person understand.

But that's not enough. Sometimes you do that, and it makes sense to you, because you are still present in your mind. But that doesn't mean that it will make sense to someone else. It's like when you write a thesis paper and everything makes sense at the time, but then you go back and read it again in a few months and you think, "what the fuck was I on when I wrote this? It makes no sense anymore. There was more in my mind than I wrote down."

Also, the person can misunderstand what you say based on their own personal experiences. There's no way for you to fully know if this will happen, because you do not know what it's like to be that person. But you should always look out for something like that-- usually they are just misunderstandings that can be corrected. Or like in music, you can never play Bach and please everyone. Everyone has their own opinions on what is a good performance of Bach. If you stay true to your own opinions, the other person decides if he wants to hire you. So with good communication to others, if you stay true to yourself, the other person decides if he wants you in his life or not.

Then, maybe all the information you are saying is good, but your body language is bad. Maybe you're making hand gestures that contradict what you say. Maybe you're yelling instead of talking calmly. Or maybe your information and your body language support each other, but they are not efficiently in sync with each other.

Good communication takes a lot of work. And we are not taught any of this in school for some reason. We're left to figure it out for ourselves. It's no wonder most people suck at it. How are we supposed to get all those factors right every time? It would take like 300 years.

Belonging

I've started to feel very homesick for Boston. I don't know if it's because things are better with my Mom now, or if it's because Cameron tells me that I'm BostonStrong and that my views are like those of Bostonians, or if it's something else. But I feel like I belong there, because it's my home.

I don't really feel like I belong here in North Dakota. First of all, it's not even winter yet and already it's as cold as the winters I'm used to. 17 degrees but feels like 1 degree with the windchill. And it's only going to get worse from here...

Then, I've taken so many trips this semester. Probably the highlight was Las Vegas; that was actually probably the highlight of my whole year. Then there was Denver, and Winnipeg. I know that coming here for school was the right decision, because it made all these other things possible. But I feel like I have to leave here to fully accomplish those things.

Also, I don't feel like I have found "my people" yet. People here are really nice and friendly, and really helpful. But I noticed that I don't really talk about a lot of the super personal stuff with those people. Like usually I have more guy friends than girl friends, except for the close girl friends who I talk about the super personal stuff with. But here, I talk to my girl friends and guy friends about the same stuff. I don't feel as close to the people here for some reason.

Finally, there is just a dearth of single men here. Literally all the men in my department are married. Apparently, I missed the memo that you're supposed to get married in between college and grad school. Now, there's nobody left for me. It's not that I want a relationship right now, because I don't, It's that it's nice to have single men there who try to chat with you, and date you. You can flirt with them, you can play with them, haha. But there aren't really that many guys looking for drunk hookups. If I wanted to get laid, maybe I could make it happen. But it's not like at Penn State, where all the boys wanted to sex me (or any girl, quite frankly).

When I went to Penn State, I never took any trips anywhere during the semesters. But I didn't feel like I belonged there, either. There was the huge rivalry thing between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, a rivalry I had no part in because I'm not from Pennsylvania. Then, everyone loved football and tailgating, and I didn't. Also, even though there were boys that wanted to sex me, there were hardly any that actually wanted to date me, which sucked. Moreover, there was that competitive nastiness from the majority of my classmates. Plus the fact that I got in such big trouble for being a nice person.

I don't know. Interestingly enough, I did feel like I belonged in Las Vegas. I loved everything about it. It's a big city, with lots of things going on all the time, lots of things to do, music and performers everywhere on the street, happening for the geothermal industry, warm... *sigh* <3

Well, I can dream. Anyway, I'll be really happy to go home for winter break. I'm planning to get the gym membership, so I'll go there to work out, and then I can relax and read some books and write. Plus I'll get to see Cameron and her cat, and have chick flick marathons, teeheehee. It's definitely something to look forward to, I'm excited already.

The Solution of Methods

So I talked to a variety of people on this. I've asked people older than me, people my age, people who tend to have opposite viewpoints to my own. Everyone I have talked to has said that Lawrence's method is not good. They think that my method is far healthier and far more productive.

The problem though, was that Lawrence is far happier than I am. I didn't understand how that could be possible, if my method was apparently better.

But finally, my Mom found the answer:

The reason that my method does not make me happy is that I hold onto people longer than I should.

I told her about the Mara situation, and she said that she counted three times where we were friends and then not friends. She said that my method is great to use for a first infraction, or maybe a second infraction that is different than the first infraction, but beyond that, Lawrence's method should be used. But in the Mara situation, the infraction was basically a variation of the same thing: Mara did not trust me and had not forgiven me for the Ray thing. She said that if something is not resolved the first time, it's unlikely that it will ever be resolved. Therefore, because the same problem kept coming up with Mara, I should just let her go. Forget about her. Because it's likely that the same problem would keep coming up again and again, introducing more cycles of being friends and then not friends.

Come to think of it, that's what happened with Ray as well. Two cycles of being friends and then not friends, where the infraction was the same for both. It's best to just move on and forget.

The other thing to note is something Fred said. He said that usually, people use my method if they really care about the person. They use Lawrence's method if they do not really care about the person. So based on which method the person uses, it's an indicator of how much they care.

Friend Breakups: Do It Right

Yesterday I hung out with Lawrence for the first time in a month. As I've said before, Lawrence is really smart, and he gives me really good advice. Except yesterday.

First of all, he assumed that I have low self esteem because I get so sad when people are hurtful. Um, I do not have low self esteem. If I did have low self esteem, do you think I would have been strong enough to stand up for myself in the Mara situation? Probably not. And he's implying that losing a friend should not be sad. I should not feel any sort of loss when somebody that I care about walks out of my life. Get real.

Then he went on to say that you're never supposed to tell anyone that you're mad at them. If someone makes you mad, you stop talking to them and move on. They have to disprove whatever it is that made you mad, without knowing why you are mad at them, if they want to remain in your life.

What kind of nonsense is this? This goes against everything I have been taught, and everything I have learned. Is this what most people think? Is this the method that most people use??

His example was actually with John. I thought that he and John were still friends, but apparently not. Lawrence says he stopped talking to John because John made some comment that Condoleezza Rice was way less successful than his parents. Lawrence was offended because John's parents are not rich and nobody has heard of them. He deduced that either John is too liberal for his own good, and is unable to see that Republicans can be successful, or he's a racist, thinking that black people cannot be successful. So he has stopped talking to John, simple as that.

If John was a racist, Lawrence, then why would he even talk to you in the first place? This is ridiculous. I told him that if it were me, I would have said something like, "Your comment about Condoleezza Rice bothered me because ....." or "What was with that comment?" Maybe the whole thing is a misunderstanding, and you're throwing away a friendship because of it.

Misunderstandings happen all the time because 1) people are not good communicators, and 2) people lie. You're supposed to tell someone that something that they did made you upset, in the hope that it was a misunderstanding and that they take steps to explain to you what they actually meant by it.

That was what I did with Mara. I hadn't heard from her in 3 weeks, so I sent her a message that outlined why I was upset with her. Since I wasn't sure when I would hear back from her, and I wanted to move on with my life, I told her what I would need from her if we were to be friends.

There was indeed one misunderstanding, about the visit of "her Danielles." Since they were only coming for a weekend, they would not be alone in her apartment, and her quiet roommate wouldn't be freaked out.

Everything else was not a misunderstanding. She does not care about me anymore and she thinks that mental abuse is ok.

Anyway, I believe that you're supposed to give someone the benefit of the doubt. You're supposed to hope that whatever it was, was a misunderstanding. You're supposed to give them the opportunity to explain it before throwing away a friendship.

Lawrence also asked me why I thought I had to work so hard for friends. You work hard if you care about someone. If someone means a lot to you, you're supposed to try to make it work before you cut them out of your life. If you're willing to just cut them off without any effort to make it work, then you didn't care about them that much to begin with.

Another thing that Lawrence said was that you're not supposed to care about the reasons for why people suddenly don't like you anymore. You don't need to hear their reasons, because you don't need to listen to their negativity. He says the only reason you need to know is that people change all the time, and they changed their mind about you. That's it.

I get where he's coming from on this one. But at the same time, for them to not tell you anything and just cut you off, going from best friend to enemy and not explaining why... that sucks too. They are not giving me the benefit of the doubt that there was a misunderstanding. They're just assuming that I'm a horrible person, when the day before everything was fine and we were best friends, and I don't know why.

Is there a happy medium somewhere? Does anyone have any ideas?

Disgusting

As I've mentioned before, our society places far more importance on physical injuries than mental injuries. I really think that this is something that needs to change.

If someone punches you in the face, and you can have them arrested for assault. If someone is emotionally abusive, nothing can be done. That person cannot be arrested for the emotional harm that they have done to you. That person will not have to pay any money in fines for what they have done, and will not have any infraction placed on their record. They freely and cleanly get away with causing you pain.

This disgusts me. People who are emotionally abusive should not be allowed to get away with it. And all that does is encourage people to keep doing it. That it's ok to mentally abuse someone.

Well fuck that. If I could, I would have Mara arrested. People like her don't deserve to roam free. She deserves to be locked in a cell with Ray for eternity.

She told me that she couldn't give me what I needed as a friend, because she refused to talk about my point of view about Ray. I told her, "All I hear is you saying that you do not care about me enough to give me basic levels of respect."

This would have been the time for her to say something like, "You're misunderstanding. I do respect you." But nope, nothing like that. Which means that what I said was true: she does not care about me enough to give me basic levels of respect.

Instead, she chimed back with, "And all I hear is you saying that I'm a bad friend for not bending to what you think you need."

Excuse me? I do not know what I "think" I need. I "know" that I need to be treated with respect and equality from my friends. That is something unnegotiable.

So I said, "I will never bend my necessity to be treated with equality and respect. I can't believe you are even asking me to do that. What kind of person are you? Do you want me to be emotionally abused by you? Do you think that your friends don't deserve to be treated with equality and respect? Well I'm sorry for dating Ray. You two deserve each other."

Honestly. I don't know who she thinks she is. When somebody tells you that something you do makes them feel disrespected, and then you refuse to change your behavior, that makes you an emotional abuser. Because if they decide to stay your friend, that will mean that they are demeaning themselves. They are saying that it's ok for you to treat them in a way that makes them feel disrespected.

Well, I wasn't having it.

Then, Mike had the gall to comment on my Facebook status that said "People disgust me. I really wish I understood why people think that others are inferior to them. People should be arrested for emotional abuse." He said, "Um, how about the first amendment?"

Seriously, what. the. fuck. He's suggesting that emotional abuse is protected by the first amendment. How special. This is exactly the kind of mindset that needs to be changed. This is exactly why there are no laws in the first place to protect people from emotional abuse. Apparently, it's constitutional to demean someone.

What I Said

Well I did it. I finally sent Mara a message after 3 weeks of radio silence.

But you know, it's really time for me to start moving on with my life. There's only so much you can dwell on a certain situation before it gets in the way of moving forward.

So I told her my feelings and thoughts on our friendship. I told her that for us to be friends, she would have to forgive me, treat me like an equal, and start being honest with me. I told her that on my end, I would have to forgive her for fooling me. I'm not sure that I can do that though.

And of course, no response. I spent time organizing my thoughts in a way that was clear that she would understand, without getting into the topic that she refused to talk about before. And yet, she still ignores me.

Well, I'm done. I'm moving on. At least this way, she knows what needs to happen for us to be friends. If she wants to take it or leave it, that's her decision. But I'm not about to waste any more time or effort trying, when she has decided that I don't matter anymore.

Destiny

Perhaps my personal life has never been great because my professional life is destined to be so great that it needs to be balanced out by shittiness. And I'll be damned, if my personal life is going to always suck, then stuffed if I'm going to bother myself with it. Instead, I'll focus on the one thing about my life that I can control-- my career.

I spent the whole weekend networking, pretty much. Talking to the people I had met at GSA, organizing and updating my notes, updating my resume and Linked-In profile. It felt great, actually. I enjoyed doing it. The next tasks are to tackle some of the geothermal literature, and to consider joining more organizations.

Then today, I secured my three thesis committee members. It's going to work out perfectly! My thesis advisor, of course, for the geothermal perspective. My strat professor for the sedimentary perspective. My future hydrofracking professor for the fracture perspective.

And the hydrofracking professor seemed pleased that I had asked him aboard for my project. He even is allowing me to bypass the prerequisite for his class because he sees how useful his class will be for my thesis. He had been a guest lecturer in my thermal class this semester, so I think he's interested in getting into the geothermal side of things instead of the petroleum side.  So, yay! And he is so nice. And kind of reminds me of my ex, T.J. Which I think is a good sign.

On my walk home, I was listening to the song Trains by Porcupine Tree. My ex James got me into that song. But as I was walking, it seemed to perfectly fit my mood: not quite happy, but excited, and accepting of my destiny. My smile was so wide that some guy grinned back at me and said hey to me as he passed by.

And hey, I'll take it.

People... are like Science?

As I was reading strat paper after strat paper this evening, a thought came to me: maybe people are like science. The more I thought about it, the more it makes sense.

In science, nothing is absolute. We cannot say FOR SURE that anything happened. We can say, this is our BEST GUESS of what happened. We are fairly certain that it happened. We are so certain that we will believe this theory to be fact until someone comes along and disproves it.

Well, maybe that's how I should think about people. Friendship. Relationships. Friendship/relationships are never absolute. We can say, I think that these people are for real. I think that they actually care about me. In fact, I'm fairly certain that they are for real and that they care about me. I'm so certain that I will believe it to be fact until they disprove it. Key words: until they disprove it.

But I should never forget that people, like science, are constantly changing. What was believed to be true at one point is most certainly likely to change in the future. And we can never be sure what the truth actually is, because there is no way to for sure prove it.

Does that mean that science is bad? No. Does that mean that people are bad? Yes.

Haha. At this point in time I really dislike people. But probably the answer to that question should be no, people are not bad for changing. I just hate them for doing it in ways that affect me so directly.

Depression by Association

Perhaps what I'm going through right now is depression by association. I had been trying so hard to be strong. To forget all about Ray, and all the pain he had caused me. To forget all about Mara, and how much her betrayal had hurt me. But now, with the death of my grandfather, those things are being exhumed from the deep place I had them buried.

Now I just feel sad. I'm never again going to see my Grandpa look at me and smile, or hear him chuckle like he did. And I'll never hear him make a joke again in that serious way he had.

And that is just so sad.

Because of that, there's no need for me to pretend to be strong anymore. I'm still suffering from Ray, from Mara. And I don't know how to get past it. The feeling of loss right now is so strong that I don't know what to do. I've lost one person who I know for sure cared about me. I've also lost two people who I really cared about who claimed that they cared about me. But it's not as if the two of them died. If they really cared about me, I wouldn't have lost them, now would I?

Dwelling

I guess one thing to take from all this is to focus on the good stuff instead of the bad. It's one of those things that is easier said than done, however. One of my flaws is that I'm often stuck in the past, and I have trouble living in the moment.

For instance, today I was thinking about Ray a lot. I know that I'm almost over him, but this is one of those times where I miss him loads. I miss tender, sweet, caring Ray. The Ray that was always there for me no matter what. The Ray that I fell in love with. I know that part of him was like that, and I know that the other part of him was the exact opposite of that. But all I want right now is to feel his arms around me-- holding me, protecting me, comforting me.

I guess what it is, is a war between my head and my heart. My head is telling me that he is bad news, that he hurt me more than anyone else ever has. But my heart is still feeling, telling me that I want him so bad, and I want to be with him, and that he would be the perfect guy if he was able to extricate himself from drugs.

I'm even dwelling on Lawrence and Mara. The thing with Lawrence was just me being self-conscious about the way he was treating me, so I can relax on that now.

But instead of thinking about them, I should be thinking about the people who actually are wonderful in my life. The people who did talk to me about my grandfather. The people who make an effort to be there for me. Those are the people I should be thinking about. Yet for some reason, I'm dwelling on the horrible people.

I wish I knew how to change that. It's really hard to control what you think about.

I guess I'll start by making a list of all the great things happening in my life:

• Making more and more business contacts
• Learning so much from the conferences and from my advisor
• Music!! Playing in the symphony here and getting paid to do it
• My great friends-- Laura, Cameron, Ashley, and Mandy
• Lilo and Fred, who I don't know very well but who keep asking me to hang out and offering to drive me places
• Being part of a supportive geology department
• Having the courage to go to a new place, completely different than anywhere I've ever been before, and having adventures
• Learning so much in my classes

I think I just need to start embracing my life. I need to get out of this funk and enjoy the present. Hopefully I'll get better at waking up early soon, so I can put Project Excitement into effect.

Death

I woke up to some terrible news yesterday: my grandfather had passed away. He had prostate cancer and had not been doing well with it, but what got him in the end was old age. He was 90 years old and died peacefully in his sleep.

My family has never been good at emotions. My Dad told me that he was going to go work on a translating job; working instead of grieving. I kind of get this-- yesterday I didn't go to class, but I did go to my orchestra rehearsal. The only way to keep going is to do something that you love. He also told me that I don't need to come for the funeral. I get where he's coming from, because such last minute plane tickets would cost $1000 or so. But at the same time, I would like to be there to support my Dad and the rest of our family. I want to say goodbye to my Grandpa.

About a month ago, my Dad asked me to think of a favorite memory with my Grandpa. It was to celebrate his 90th birthday earlier this month. I couldn't think of anything. But the reason for that is that I enjoyed seeing my Grandpa every time, so there was no favorite memory. He was always so kind and happy to see me, and he broke my family's trend of emotional distance by telling me he loved me every time he saw me. I guess what I'll remember most about him is that he made me feel loved and happy every time I saw him.

I wish I knew more about his life though. I know that he served in the Navy during World War II, and that he was stationed on an island in the Pacific. I know that he was good with tools and mechanics. I know that he loved my Grandmother and also my Step-Grandmother. But aside from those things, I hardly know about his life. I wish I did.

Also, I'm sad because I'm thinking about how the people who have cut me out of their lives do not care. If Ray found out that my Grandpa died, he wouldn't care. If Mara found out... well I don't know. I half expected her to contact me, because she had been so upset when she lost her grandfather a year ago. She would understand. And yet, no contact from her. No contact from Lawrence, who I haven't even heard from in a week or two.

I feel like times like this are supposed to bring people together. Other people are supposed to be sympathetic and there for me. And a few of my friends have reached out and talked to me, which I really appreciate. But honestly, I almost feel more alone than ever. I'm not really getting the support I need from my family, or from the majority of my friends. I guess situations like this point out and separate those who really care from those who don't.