Mid-Terms, Motivation, and Exaggeration

What's this grand feeling of inadequacy? I can read for hours and never see the difference between my writing ability and someone elses, then I can read one article and feel as if I have no right writing at all. I love how there are so many writing styles and how unique certain writers become by making their own of it. There's something vaguely mysterious about the process of putting thoughts down; so much must have shaped the individual to allow them to see the world from all sorts of different angles and rely on their history to model the use of the words that they use. Language intricacies are so interesting, albeit complex I'm sure. Maybe one day I'll be interested enough to make time to study it, but for now I'd prefer just musing about the matter.

This week was amazing, miserable, and wonderful all at the same time. Now the deadlines loom over my head, somewhat reachable but just far away that they seem convoluted by the very fog that gave me this splotchy tan at the beach. Recap:

Saturday -
Ate at Red Pearl with my sister and a friend. It was pretty delicious, but in the end I think I preferred the chicken noodles to the beef pot (will note for future reference.) We got tons of snacks, from taro strips to an Indonesian candy bar. More than half of it was inedible due to holes in the bag. Big disappointment, especially when the taro had to be thrown away. Ben and Jerry's made up for it though. I forget what I had, but it was really good and had coconut in it. We stumbled around in different stores but didn't have enough time before the movie to wander aimlessly. My sister bought us both popcorn and drinks (Tally: 15 bucks) and the tickets (14 bucks.... Movies are less important to the theater than popcorn and drinks? Wild concept.) The Watchmen was an awesome movie; I really enjoyed Rorschach throughout the movie. He was pretty cool. Otherwise the movie was like extremely graphic, so much so that I thought it should not have had R rating anymore. Can't complain though, it was thought provoking, intriguing, and beautifully done.

Sunday -
Went to the Rec center with my family because I wanted them to experience the coolness. Attempted rock climbing and only my little sister agreed to do it. The boys stood back away from us and made fun of most attempts. Played racquetball for a while, or rather taught my siblings to play racquetball, and enjoyed it a lot. I need to play more; It's mildly addictive. Played basketball, which has never been my forte, but it was a lot of fun. I surprisingly hit a lot of baskets as soon as my little brother stopped trying to hog the ball and be the superstar of our half court game. I still missed enough that I could remember my lack of proficiency, and will leave that game to random bursts of curiosity or interest. Then went to the ping pong tables and practiced. My siblings need to get out more so they can compete in these odd little outings.

Monday -
Worked all day and got to follow Jodie around some. Also learned that there was a possibility that I could fall into a similar role as her in the near future if I work hard enough. Very exciting stuff, given it would be my first serious real job that had nothing to do with interning or clerking or something silly. The heightened responsibility is exciting. It would be a stable position too, which is even more cool.

Tuesday -
Same as Monday, except there was strawberry cupcakes gratis my awesome boss, and it was also the other Amy's birthday. We all went to lunch at Salsaritas, which is one of my favorite random restaurants right now, and had a good old time. Pretty awesome! My boss was superiorly sweet and made me strawberry cupcakes. (Very delicious ones at that.) Then I went bowling for the first time in about officially 14 years or so and had a great little party thing and had a big "oh no they're booked" moment and had to resend people to the right destination. I had a really great time even though only a bare minimum amount of people were able to attend because everyone was out of town. Merritt had his chance to make everyone look really badly and did so with enough grace that no one really minded the slaughter. Nothing was lacking besides food, because I couldn't bring myself to eat in front of everyone else when no one else had eaten dinner. I ended up being fairly hypoglycemic by the end of the night due to this but still managed to beat my sister in air hockey.

Wednesday - Overall, sucky day. It was depressing. Ray wasn't on, no special typical birthday treatment, and I even managed being responsible for purchasing my birthday cake and cooking dinner (which I didn't even want). I was definitely feeling a bit diva haha. Funny way to start off 21.

Thursday - Tres adore. My birthday wish was to be at the beach, and to the beach we did go. We ended up waking around 5:15, got ready, and were gone by 5:30. I managed to catch up with the around the year bible reading thing and was proud of myself for doing so (even though I keep managing to get behind and lost in the shuffle of life.) After a slight side track to the Panama City mall for dumb bells (don't ask), we made our way onto the gloriously perfect beach. About 30 minutes into my mini-vacation, fog began drifting in and totally obscured the sun and things relatively close to the beach. Not my picture perfect idea of the beach, but still had an awesome time and even managed to burn myself in several places. On the way home, we stopped in Dothan for food at Santa Fe restaurant. I'd never been there before but I was assured that it was good. Happily, I found out that it was. I had a steak and salad and sweet potato, all cooked quite well. It wasn't anything fancy or seriously memorable, but I definitely haven't had a sweet potato that was that good in a long time. (The practical bucket of butter and brown sugar that came with it probably helped this along splendidly.) It was very remniscient of Logan's steak house, complete with cowboy decor, and peanuts on the floor. I think I definitely prefer Santa Fe, even though the constant country music was relatively annoying.

Friday - My good friend Chandra met me after work to take me to lunch in honor of my birthday. I was given the opportunity to try Indian food for the first time, which I must say, was amazing. I will hopefully get the opportunity to go to Silver Coin very often in the future, but at the price, I will have to settle for on occasion. For now, Red Pearl still trumps all, because I've always loved Chinese food and this is relatively authentic compared to the Americanized version, and way better than. I'll always have a soft spot for Egg Drop soup, but those chicken fried noodles were to die for. I'm sure there are plentiful amounts of other things on the menu that I would just love. Surin's moving down on my 'cool' list because I feel like I'm missing out on real thai food when I eat there. A lot of the food just seems to be thrown together and lacking substance. I suppose that could be why I started to just eat Maki when I was there and avoided the entre's all together. Ah I'm rambling about food, I will do this further in a latter post, back to Friday. After lunch, we ended up perusing some stores, even got a little dolled up. We were going to go to Sephora for a makeover but they were totally booked. Instead, I told her about the Bare Escentials store, and ended up going there. She ended up looking like a full blown movie star or something after they were done with her. I bet she'll forget about it again like last time and not wear anything for a while until I get her set up with yet another one. All in all, a very fun day, complete with a happy birthday present to myself in the form of some very heely, super cute shoes.

Saturday and Sunday - Given the whole responsibility thing, I managed to study and research most of these days. Nothing happened that was terribly exciting. After the awesome week I had, I couldn't imagine wanting to do anything at all though. It was all cloudy and dreadful and uninteresting outside anyway.

Snow (Hey Oh)

It's really amazing what one badly timed snow storm can do to plans. Today may be completely different now due to the musings of the parentals on the safety of going anywhere in particular. I just hope I will still be able to see the show.

I can't particularly blame snow for any deviation in my day. I haven't seen so much snow in years, if not over a decade. It's been falling at a decent clip all morning, and at one point I thought it was dying out in warmth, but then it started to fall faster. I don't know what it is that makes snow so much more magical than rain. It is, after all, the same thing but colder. I like watching rain, but snow just seems mesmerizing as if I were looking out my window and my house sat in a snow globe. I suppose that's due to it being so rare and that makes it special because I never see it. I've been to snow covered places several times, with inches, if not a foot, of snow covering most things up north. I've never been able to see the creation of that snow though, just minimal flurries except during the '93 blizzard, of which I was probably too young to care to stay in one place long enough to really watch. I just did a little research on it, and the storm struck one day after my birthday. Now it's less than 2 weeks away. I guess March is the month of snow to Alabama?

It feels surreal. All in all, it's been a pretty awesome week, even though there's been slight kinks in pretty much everything I've tried to do. I suppose that's just how life goes. I do know on any wise that I need to find out what I'm doing during the summer besides take classes. I want to work full time... The new HR manager for the office will be working with us in a few weeks and there is no telling what he'll want changed or what he wants to stay. I am only on an internship, which technically they don't have to keep me after May.... It would be pretty lame to have to find a new company when I like this one as much as I do. I don't know where else I would want to work. I suppose everything works out for the best, but I still want to move out and all of that and there is no way that I could do so working part time or at least on so few hours. I probably shouldn't work full time and try to go to school anyway, especially taking so many hours in class. This semester I kinda wish I would have taken at least another class because even though I'm taking 18 hours, the majority of the classes are easy. It hasn't been terribly time consuming even though most classes require stuff for every class. I can't scrummage up a ton of interest in a lot of the projects, just the general attention to detail I put into pretty much anything I do.

I really don't feel like working on anything right now, even though I probably should go ahead and get a head start on next week or at least go through the practice GMAT I took last weekend. That's definitely going to take some attention to get it to turn out like I'd like it to but I think I should be able to progress. I'm kinda pulled in all directions. Do I look for companies that I may want to work for; do I look at grad schools; do I dedicate time to the delightfully dreaded GMAT; do I take classes this summer; do I shadow as many people as possible in various jobs I'm interested in (Tomorrow meeting with my mentor with hope to shadow him over Spring Break which just happens to be my birthday week!). I just don't know what to focus on. Right now, I'm trying to focus on everything, and it's slightly overloading my brain.

For now, dedication to relaxation and snow. Later will be everything else.

Sounds kinda like Willie Nelson

There is something uniquely charming about Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations." What would be a better employment than being allowed to travel the world, write, be sarcastic, and entertain myself through culturally themed hobbies and activities? I think that would be absolutely marvelous.

Life has been pretty simple lately. I should recant when using such words given everything going on. I think being able to try so many new things has given me a new perspective to life. The more I can experience the more at ease I tend to be. I think that has to do with the longing to be prepared and know. I guess I was taught to be ready for any situation, and I know I'm not.

I'm really thankful for being given the chance to work where I do. Shared iTunes playlists are only a mere drop in the bucket of perks for being here, but from these and some very cool members of staff (one being an ex-magazine music writer) I have found some pretty groovy tunes.

One of my favorite new bands is White Lies. Every time I start to listen, I find myself totally immersed in the music, sinking deeper in the rhythm and beat into some delicate flavor of music that I find quite enchanting. Okay... So some of the songs are mildly cliche and typical. There's definitely mixtures of a lot of different groups already on the market, but it's a lot of what I already like that's out there mixed together in some grand blender that knows to disgard what I don't particularly enjoy. It makes me want to dance.

"Let's grow old together, and die at the same time. "

I love Santogold. I'm going to go ahead and get that out there. I haven't found a group that I liked this much over all in... Well, a long time. "I'm a lady" is one of my favorites out of the whole cd. I can't come up with any one song that I didn't like on the cd though, which is a very rare or absolutely non-existent predicament to find myself in. (Yes, it did beat the ever famous "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends" but only due to the emphasis on whole cd versus one song. I still love the title song. The video... Not tons. I thought Apple did a better job.)

"I pay for what's called eccentricity and my wish to evolve."

Those are probably my two absolute favorites from everything. I do love Elbow, Spinerette, Roisin Murphy, Yael Naim, Feist, Manu Chao (of course!!!), but I haven't gotten the chance to listen to all these guys enough to decide how much. Feist and Yael Naim is too slow to really get into now and I don't have Elbow or Spinerette's cd's. Roisin Murphy seems like the music lacks depth but again I have not decided overall. I've been much too busy listening to my other new loves.

Something that I did not think that would happen is the redeveloped interest in The Raconteurs. Since seeing their show at Bonnaroo on the site I have decided I need to see them live. The album's not thriller by itself, but that set was amazing, and now I must go to Bonnaroo some day.

I must! (The lyrics to Consoler's of the Lonely follows this thought too well. "I'm bored to tears yeahhhhhhh.")

It would be fun.

Shove your hope where it don't shine.

I probably should not be writing right now, as I've just had a fairly emotionally disturbing conversation with someone fairly close and may sound cynical and bitter at some point in my little ruse tonight, however, I will take that chance. A lot has been going on lately, and there's even more than ever to do this weekend. I sit here tired... I don't know if this is more physical or mental at present, although both are probably stemming from emotional instability.

I'm cutting myself off from something very dear to me. I've done it before, but I've never been able to do it for very long because how attached I am. I don't want my return to stem from loneliness or anything other than I must go back because of true love.

Life for me is too easy. I don't have to deal with all of the drama going on with so many other people because in a way I'm locked where I am to avoid disrespecting my family's wishes. The last few weeks have been a bit traumatizing in general because most of my school plans were changed completely. Now I also have no real way to study abroad. (That may be a good thing if my resolve holds.) I verge on anger every time I think about how all of the plans have been changed. It's really frustrating me... And that is odd. Maybe I'm just normally really good at channeling that elsewhere. I don't know.

The simplicity has its charm, and then there's always the parts that sting. I've been invited to who knows how many things lately that I could not go to if I wanted to. In the case of a few invites, I really would have wanted to be involved. Some of the invites would be a matter of deciding if they were too secular or not. I am not interested in drinking, and I don't judge people for doing so on occasion, but I don't know if I could be hanging out somewhere with that going on. For instance, I want to go dancing, but do I want a bunch of drunk people around me doing who knows what? Not so much... I do need to work on finding more friends that relate more to me spiritually. It's hard for me to break through the facade of a lot of 'religious' people, but I long to be close to people that have similar beliefs. I don't think I deserve that though right now. I still long for something to belong to that I can accept and take for face value. The hodge podge group of people I know are so random and different, but a lot of them are a lot more 'worldly' than I am, probably because I've never been around them in those situations where I'd feel uncomfortable. There's a lot of things I have to think about on this end. Friends show who you are. Acquaintances are another matter. However, in getting closer to the people just living for pleasure and stuff, I don't know what I'm losing or missing from these relationships between me and God.

For now, rest. Tomorrow, education will be the focus.

Ugh.

Teacher... Here's Johnny!

We took a personality test in Business Honors last week and went through our results. I was oddly nervous about what I would be this time in the Myers Briggs personality test, because I kept getting different results when I was in different moods. I knew what I am basically, and I didn't want to be known as any of the other personalities that I had gotten when I was out of the ordinary moods, very focused, or very flighty and subdued.

Here is my psychological type and some description about what it means:

E (Extroversion) - oriented to the outer world, focusing on people and things, active, using trial and error with confidence, and scanning the environment for stimulation.

N (Intuitive Perception) - Perceiving with memory and associations, seeing patterns and meanings, seeing possibilities, projecting possibilities for the future, imagining; 'reading between the lines', looking for the big picture, having hunches; 'ideas out of no where', and letting the mind tell the eyes.

F (Feeling Judgment) - Applying personal priorities, weighing human values and motives, my own and others, appreciating, valuing warmth in relationships, and prizing harmony; trusting.

J (Judging) - Using thinking or feeling judgment outwardly, deciding and planning, organizing and scheduling, controlling and regulating, goal oriented, wanting closure, even when data are incomplete.

All together, these letters comprise ENFJ, and we were given brief descriptions about what all of the letters together meant.

ENFJ = Imaginative harmonizers, workers with people; expressive, orderly, opinionated, conscientious; curious about new ideas or possibilities. Having extroverted feeling as their strongest mental process, they are at their best when responsible for winning people's cooperation with caring insight into their needs. They value:
-Having a wide circle of relationships
- Having a positive, enthusiastic viewpoint of life
- Seeing subtleties in people and interactions
- Understanding others' needs and concerns
- An active, energizing social life
- Seeing possibilities in people
- Thorough follow-through on important projects
- Working on several projects at once
- Caring and imaginative problem solving
- Maintaining relationships to make things work
- Shaping organizations to better serve members
-Sociability and responsiveness
- Structured learning in a humane setting
- Caring, compassionate, and tactfulness
- Appreciation as the natural means of encouraging improvements

All in all, I feel this description is an extremely good fit for me. It touches on random aspects of who I am so vividly that I was pretty shocked at the level of specificity.

There was also a smaller description as follows: Leads by facilitating, helping others plan and cooperate to meet goals, influences by clarifying processes by which goals can be met, and focus is on encouraging others in building consensus.

How awesome! I did disagree with the coaching needs for this profile though which are as follows: Not getting down to business (... Definitely not me.), Taking criticism personally (Only time I care about this is when it's someone I really look up to and the phrasing is done in a very negative way.), becoming bossy or over zealous (I have felt this way before but I would never speak out in a manner that could be construed in this way.), and trying too hard for win-win, harmony (Been there, learned not to do it by now. Oddly enough, managing people on this site I used to be pretty dedicated to fixed all desire to make everyone happy. I am totally not falling for that one again.)

I have to write a paper about all of this stuff relating to my personality. I really don't feel like talking about myself in that way, but this post was to aid my logic and hopefully it has made the process seem more interesting. I think it has. I still wish the title to the personality type was something like... Commander of Everything, instead of Teacher. There seriously was one of the personality types listed as Mastermind. How colorful teacher is compared to that? Come on people? Make it fun and exciting to be a part of my fun and exciting personality type! I'll have to email the official Myers Briggs crew.

Yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from the masters' table.

A few days ago, one of my friends brought up something that happened between her and her boyfriend. She grew jealous because her boyfriend was looking at other women in this movie they were watching and making snide comments about enjoying it just to mess with her. One of my male friends was sitting there, and remarked that he didn't understand why women were jealous about guys looking at other women. I only listened at the time, but I've thought about it since. I know it would bother me if my boyfriend was staring at women in a sexual way. The reason is pretty simple. "I am my beloved's , and his desire is toward me." (Song of Solomon 7:10) When a person really loves someone else, they want to be wholly connected to each other, and both long for the other to want them.

"Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy as cruel as the grave" (SOS 8:6) In a marriage, the two must respect each others quirks and oddities, but they also must respect the other person enough to avoid giving any reason for jealousy. I want to be wholly entwined with my love, not merely on the outside of the relationship. My man has to be my best friend. The two becoming one is excruciatingly important to me. I would want him to be the other half of me. I don't understand stuff like bachelor's parties and bachelorette parties. I wouldn't want to see anybody else. My mind would totally be focused on the one person that really mattered. I'm like that now. I was pretty much invited to a bachelorette party, and there was mention of a stripper. I was like... I hope you aren't expecting me to come. I don't know what part of me is so devoted or where that came from, but the other stuff just doesn't even interest me at all. My focus is all on him.

I don't even know how dangerous that is to be wholly engrossed with someone like this. I guess that's why I relate to Bella's situation and why it was so addictive. Pretty silly I suppose.

Je ne t'aime plus

So... Manu Chao is awesome.

That was my public service announcement for today, which has gone pretty awesomely so far, even if I'm sitting here waiting for tutees to show up while being really bored.

1sts: I learned why Dad never let us get driven around by a bunch of random dudes in high school. Poor loaner car.

I ate at Maki Fresh. It was pretty good but not exceptional. The crunch maki was nice... I feel bad for never using wasabi on my sushi... Guilt. Sushi makes me feel guilty. That's really retarded. The sauce that came with it though was delicious, and a tad spicy. Seems just right.

I tried Edamame though... I didn't know you were supposed to pull the beans out. After eating one whole and deciding it tasted like a pile of strings from string beans, which of course I hate, Nick let me in on the secret. Don't eat the whole thing... Just the seeds inside. Brilliant, I know. Maybe I should ask people before I do things, expecting my actions to make sense or be logical seems to be a problem. Maybe that's some social knack that I never picked up... What more important reasons for etiquette classes are there? Too bad I can't find any available except for the business ones that only explain that we aren't supposed to apply lipstick at the dinner table and what not to wear with striped socks. I've gathered that beforehand; the girls at Kickoff did seem pretty cool for breaking the lipstick rule. General disinterested improprieties of common social behavior are pretty hot I think. I don't think, however, that includes spilling water on myself, or having my cheeks puffed out with water while waiting for the elevator, and someone just so happens to be in said elevator really counts as hot social disinterest. I'll have to work on that.

This week has been really fun, but pretty complex. My schedule will end up relaxing a bit, but right now is when everybody wants to be tutored and everyone wants homework and readings and so on. I was told today by Kristi that I would be able to do more hours than the 10 that she thought would be fine before. This is great news, except for the fact that I tried to fill in the empty holes here at Trio. And at present, I have about 10 random people looking for help and some of them are in classes I have absolutely no memory of. I guess relearning stats 1 will be beneficial... Happy 21 hours of classes to me. I suspect this is vaguely ironic because I do turn 21 in March... I at least won't be taking any tests for my students. Sigh of relief right there. I hate how I memorize things and they just slowly dissipate into no where. I especially abhor my memory when it comes to names and faces... I tried repeating these girls names that I met last Sunday in my head and trying to match them to their names, and the only name I remember is the first one that told me. I guess I'll have to keep working on that.