goodbye until tomorrow, goodbye until the rest of my life

Reflection is one of the things my friends and I joke about constantly, as at our old school it was basically all we did. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but we reflected on so many things that it became habit to reflect on our reflecting. When asked to write a blog post comparing where I was when I began my blogging journey to where I am now, at the end of it, I first put it off until today because of the PTSD that reflecting brought upon me (just kidding, it’s not so bad). Then I couldn’t come up with an idea. Blogging hasn’t changed my life. It’s been sort of a nice outlet and a reason to write, and it’s been the homework that I get done first because I actually enjoy it. However, I probably won’t continue blogging after this assignment is over, mostly because I don’t have time.

As I sit at my kitchen table eating lime Tostitos tortilla chips and look vaguely out the window at the backyard where my dog freaked out at me when I came home from school today, I try to remember where I was at the beginning of this year, blog-wise. I’m left with nothing. Despite the fact that I was excited for this assignment before the school year even began, that’s what the blog is: an assignment. I’m generally a believer in doing things for yourself. Not meaning ‘don’t do anything nice for other people,’ but more like ‘do things because you want to, not because you want it on your college application or because someone told you to.’ Obviously there are exceptions to this rule, and that’s why I said generally. Anyway, the fact is that this blog wasn’t my own brain child. Or rather, it was, but the idea to have this brain child was put there by someone else. It is for this reason that I believe I did not get a whole lot from this experience. I did think it was fun, though.

If I’ve learned anything from this whole shebang, it’s that having interesting writing isn’t really about your topic, but way more about how you write about it. This I mostly learned from reading my classmates' blogs than writing my own. I can read someone's post about practically nothing and enjoy it, while others that should be interesting put me to sleep. 

Furthermore, even though style is super important, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and structure are still needed. To get your awesome point across, you have to make sense, and the best way to do that is to follow the guidelines set in place for you by whoever came up with the English language. I’ve found through reading other people’s blogs that someone can have a really cool idea or experience, or even just a way of writing that’s intriguing, but the point doesn’t make it to the reader’s end of the fax machine because of all of the grammar and spelling errors. It’s a balance that takes practice and skill. Nowhere is this balance, or lack thereof, more noticeable than in blogging. Blogging requires style and character to be interesting, and it is clear that many people stop there. Because it’s not an essay, they disregard the conventions that we learn in English class, despite the fact that it is an assignment (and that you should always use what you learn, especially in English, because it's actually important).

I’ll stop here to say that English is my first language, that my mother is a grammar-obsessed person just like me, and that spelling (she says as she types s[e;;omg) and the rules of grammar have alway come naturally to me. This post isn’t to complain about other people’s clear disregard for the rules and to point out that they’re ruining their lives by not knowing how to use a semi-colon; none of that is true. I honestly believe that grammar and spelling are totally random, and although I *cringe* when somebody says “your so sweet,” I still know what they mean.  This whole thing is simply the main observation I’ve made through my blogging experience. Mr. Parker, I don’t know if that's what you wanted us to get out of it, but it’s what I got. Other than that, it’s been good to have something to write on a regular basis besides Vital Vocabulary. No, my life would not be vapid without this blog, but it’s been a good time. I think it’s helped develop my style of writing, and honestly from here on out I think I need to work on varying my sentence length, because these are pretty darn long.

Thanks for the good time to all of my adoring fans. (I know you’re out there.) The power went out and I have no means of posting this at the moment, but I’ll get it up ASAP.

Cheers,

To the road ahead... or whatever.

Sam

sometimes the haters have a point

Taking criticism and/or being critical of oneself are things with which a lot of people struggle. It’s difficult for many people to listen to someone telling them what they’ve done wrong, or what they need to fix. There are also many who are too hard on themselves and think they never do anything right. Personally, I like getting notes, and I like hearing what I’ve done wrong in a performance and what I could do to make something better. I enjoy criticism and I try to be in a constant state of active self-improvement.

It’s really important to realize that criticism isn’t usually that critical, or rather, it usually isn’t meant to be negative or harsh. Even so, it can be hard to see it as anything but. It’s good to look at criticism as something positive. Think of it like this: if someone puts a big box in front of you, don’t see it as something they’re doing to block your way. On the contrary, see it as something that you can climb upon to lift yourself to a higher spot. This is a super hard thing to do, but it’s way better than stopping on the path altogether.

Even I, who like hearing suggestions about what I could do better, don’t necessarily take well to criticism IRL. For example, I recently dyed my hair. It’s no longer pink, but now sort of a silver color with purple.

Here is (sort of) a picture of what it looks like. The purple is much darker near the ends, which is the part I'm not super keen on.

It’s not exactly as I would have liked it to look, but I don’t dislike it and I really loved it when I first got it done. Despite the fact that this is how I feel about it and it’s my hair, someone saying “Yeah, I liked it better pink too,” is not what I want to hear. Criticism is fine, good even, but not when there isn’t anything anyone can do about it. If someone finishes a show, you tell them it was amazing even if it wasn’t. If you’re a director watching a rehearsal, that's a different story. There is time to make changes and you’re the person in a place to make those changes. However, I would definitely recommend against telling someone what’s wrong or what you dislike about something that is unchangeable (even if it is just for the time being). No one wants to hear “you should have done this.” Instead, how about “maybe next time try…”? That way, the criticism isn’t quite so harsh, even if you have exactly the same intent.

If you’re criticized and don’t agree with what someone is saying, don’t take it. It’s your life, and even if you yourself know you could have done better, remember that there’s almost always a next time. Be yourself, and continue to try to be the best version of that person. Improvement has its downsides, but it’s definitely better to go up than down. Looking back at something you’ve done in the past and thinking about how much better you could do it now, or just cringing at how awful it was, is a sucky feeling. Whether it’s a piece of writing, a performance, or even something you said to someone or how you reacted to a certain situation, feeling this way about anything is generally a lame experience. However, it’s all the better for you to make that comparison and see how far you’ve come.

Know when you need to improve, but don’t be too hard on yourself. Remember how cool you are, and if you don’t know that, find some better friends.

TTFN:) - Sam

your art doesn't suck

One of the things that drives me insane is when people say they’re “bad” at art. There is no bad art. Bad art is the oxymoron of oxymorons, and hardly anyone seems to realize it. First of all, define art. So many things could be defined as art. My pink hair is art. Makeup is art. Acting is art. Writing is art. Music is art. Drawing, painting, sculpting, etc. are art too, but those are the more obvious examples, as people tend to associate “art” with traditional forms of visual art. So, what counts as art, and what makes that art better than any other art? There are things that look good and things that don’t look good, but the way to make art good is to put your heART into it. The best art expresses an emotion, at least in my opinion. One of the best ways to 1) make your art look/sound/feel like you want it to and 2) put your heart into it is to PRACTICE. That sounds super cliché, but there’s a reason people say “practice makes perfect." Practice won’t make perfect, because perfect doesn’t really exist (again, especially in art because the definitions of both “art” and “perfect” are really open for interpretation); however, practice can at least make better.

I used to be complimented on my drawing abilities almost constantly. The fact that I could draw became my defining quality. At my old school, we used to do these activities where we would write compliments to everyone on a big poster. You could write whatever you wanted, as long as it was a nice little note or a compliment. I have multiple pieces of big construction paper on which a fourth of the comments are praising my artistic talents. It became the default when people didn’t know what to say. If someone didn’t like me very much, or didn’t know me, they would use that as their compliment. Sure, my friends told me I was great at art as a genuine compliment, and I didn’t disregard that. However, it became such a normal thing that I became almost sick of people telling me that I was talented. “I know,” I said, “but is that all?" (whether in- or outside of my head, I’m not sure). If you haven’t received exessive complimenting on a certain trait, that probably sounds really snobbish or self-absorbed. Really, though, I’m just telling it how it is. It’s interesting, as I was having a conversation with my friend who encounters almost the same situation daily. She has a very successful art account on Instagram and sells her work. People compliment her all the time, and after awhile she and I both found that it almost lost its meaning. From certain people, it’s truly genuine, and that means a lot. However, when you hear something so often, it starts to feel a little bit like, “Okay, I get it, what else is new?” It’s not that she, nor I for that matter, don’t appreciate it and feel really good when people comment on our talent. It’s more that it feels like it has become an almost obligatory statement. It’s not that it’s not true, it’s simply become the norm, in a way.

These days, due to the fact that I don’t draw as much as I used to as a direct result of my least favorite occurrence in the universe (commonly referred to as ‘homework’), my mad skills are not commented upon quite as much. Few of my friends know how large a part of me drawing is/was. This is super weird for me, even after almost two years out of the environment in which I was art-famous. I don’t mind it; honestly it’s kind of refreshing not to be constantly identified as “that one girl who’s good at drawing.”

Good art??? (original characters)

All in all, the whole thing about “good art” and “good artists” is kind of bs. What makes someone good at art are their ideas, not their talent. Anyone can get good at something with practice. Sure, some have more raw talent than others, and some are born into it. However, “that’s interesting” is a better compliment than “that’s pretty." Things that are interesting and pretty at the same time get bonus points (although there are some cases in which intentional non-beauty is a really cool choice). Point being, everyone has the potential to be ‘good' at art.

Good ideas=good art.

Au revoir,

Names are a box

a prank for people who don't want to be too mean

As stated on this page, I love to make a ruckus with my keyboard. I take piano lessons now, but one of my only regrets is quitting piano in the second grade. I don’t remember why I started playing piano originally. It wasn’t because my parents told me to, or because my friends thought it was fun, or even because I genuinely thought it would be a good skill to have. I have no idea. Well, I actually do vaguely remember thinking that it would be cool to play songs by Taylor Swift.

Regardless, I began taking piano lessons at my house from the music teacher at one of the public elementary schools. I also wanted to learn how to play the flute. Although now this has almost no appeal to me, it was something that I really thought was important that I do. My teacher suggested that I learn to play the recorder first, as sort of a “gateway instrument” to the flute. Thus, I started taking lessons, dedicating half the allotted time piano, half to recorder. Slowly, my interest in piano ebbed away as I realized that I was playing Mary Had a Little Lamb, not You Belong With Me. Recorder edged piano out of my lessons, and I finally stopped playing piano altogether. Recently-ish, around the beginning of this school year, I started playing piano again. My friend is hardcore amazing at piano, and I kind of couldn’t live with the fact that I didn’t know how to play.

Mini life lesson: If you can’t live without doing something, do it.

I started taking voice lessons at the same time as piano, so I now do half-piano, half-voice lessons. This time, though, I really enjoy both piano and voice, so I don’t think I’ll end up quitting either one.

I love being able to play piano. Even though I’m not Beethoven quite yet, it’s still one of my favorite things to do. There are pianos in the band room in my school, as well as the drama room, so sometimes I’ll just randomly play the piano between classes and at lunch. It’s good to have a few actual songs memorized, because Heart and Soul can only be a masterpiece so many times. Speaking of which, Heart and Soul:

Heart and Soul in and of itself is one of my favorite pastimes. (If you are unfamiliar, skip to the video at the bottom.) More specifically, translating Heart and Soul into every key possible is one of my favorite pastimes. Let me preface this with the fact that I am not a person who loves pranks. Despite this, I love to play Heart and Soul in the key of A major. You may be very confused, and this is completely rational. How is that a prank, double question mark, you may ask.

Allow me to explain. Most people don’t automatically know what key a song is being played in upon hearing it. I’m sure there are some people who can, but the majority of the people I know don’t have that ability. Anyway, for those who don’t know, Heart and Soul is usually played in the key of C major. Therefore, if the bottom chords are being played in A major, pianist number two is expecting to join in with the melody in the key of C. When they do so, however, it sounds horrible and screwed up when the background is being played in A, and the melody chimes in, plunked out in C. It’s a really fun thing to do, and I highly suggest playing Heart and Soul in the key of A major. 

In order, the fingering for the chords for Heart and Soul in A major go as follows (keys to play with pink lines):

Original image from here.

You can play it any way you like, but here’s an example video:

Have fun screwing people up! I know I do, and remember: you’re doing no harm, so this prank is okay.

Cheers, and I hope this post made some sort of sense so that you can revel in your own piano playing glory.

xx Names are a box

two things that keep a lot of people sane: friends and music

What I’ve come to realize in the past year is that you don’t need one best friend. If you have one, that’s fantastic. If you don’t, that’s also fantastic. All you need are people that understand you and love you for being the weird person you are. Expecting to have one single best friend at all times is an unrealistic expectation to which to hold yourself, and it does you no good. Do what you do to make you happy, but don’t go searching or picking people to be your BFFL because you feel like that’s the only way to go about life.

As I see it, there is very rarely going to be one person that fulfills all of your friendship needs (don’t get out your pitchforks quite yet, there are exceptions). Similarly, it’s rare that you’ll find one song that you can listen to in any mood.

Backing up a tad: absolutely everyone in my friend family is writing blog posts about us. We call ourselves “Squad,” which seems super annoying and I like to think that we’re being ironic, but honestly it’s more of a title than anything else. We’re a ragtag volunteer army in need of a shower. (Just kidding, none of those descriptors are accurate.) We’re a pretty weird cake-mix group of private school chicks, a Californian, guys who fight other people for leisure, and this other kid whose hair is made of gold.

We're not the Breakfast Club but here's a picture anyway. (photo credit)

Everyone else did cute little lists of “what everyone is” (i.e. book characters, music notes, etc.), and as the official squad Educator on Real Music and Other Important Things Such As Weird Sports Interview Videos, I thought it would be fitting to give everyone a song (or four). So, without further adieu, here is Squad + other friendlies as songs (a.k.a. The Playlist Based on People I Like, As Referred to by Their Secret Names That Aren’t Really Secret, As Well As One Sentence First Impressions Because That Adds Interest):

Goldilocks - Who is this kid that everyone is talking about?

      Dancing Through Life - Norbert Leo Butz (Wicked)

      Electric Feel - Brooke Adee (cover)

      Ghost (1 Mic, 1 Take) - Halsey

      Jenny from the Block (Track Masters Remix featuring Styles & Jadakiss) - Jennifer Lopez, Jadakiss & Styles P

Bub - That guy is cool-looking.

      Alphabet Boy - Melanie Martinez

      Ribs - LORDE

      Swim Good - Frank Ocean

      El Perdón - Nicky Jam & Enrique Iglesias

Papaya (a.k.a. The Taller Jew) - She’s the only person that can call me Sam.

      Shiksa Goddess -  Norbert Leo Butz (The Last Five Years) (How ironic.)

      Roll With the Punches - Lenka

      Hermit the Frog - Marina and the Diamonds

      A Higher Place - Adam Levine

La Playa (a.k.a. The Shorter Jew) - Someone told her I was shy?

      Seventeen - Marina and the Diamonds

      It Can’t Be True - 13 Original Broadway Cast

      The Scientist - Holly Henry (cover)

      Secrets - Mary Lamberts

The Oracle - All I remember is doing little children ballet together.

      Milk and Cookies - Melanie Martinez

      Dead Girl Walking (Reprise) - Heathers (Cast)

      Solitaire - Marina and the Diamonds

      Almost - Bowling For Soup

Spanish Professor - This guy is a mute (but actually just doesn’t speak English).

      Cheap Sunglasses - RAC

      Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song) - Billy Joel

      See Through - Pentatonix

      Ride (layered) - twenty one pilots

Mozart - He plays four billion and a half instruments whoa.

      Everything Else - Jennifer Damiano (Next To Normal)

     Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day

      All That’s Known - Jonathan Groff (Spring Awakening)

      Don’t Wait - Mapei

Oblivious - Whence did this older human come?

      Your Song - Ellie Goulding (cover)

      Can’t Pin Me Down - Marina and the Diamonds

      Headphones - Matt Nathanson (feat. LOLO)

      A Miracle Would Happen - Norbert Leo Butz (The Last Five Years)

The Mind - I’M A FAN.

      Soap - Melanie Martinez

      Obsessions - Marina and the Diamonds

      It Won’t Be Long Now - Karen Olivo (In The Heights)

      Blue - Troye Sivan (feat. Alex Hope)

Rayos - Preschool, good times.

      No Me Diga - In The Heights (Cast)

      Coming Up Roses - Kiera Knightley

      La la Land - Demi Lovato

      Uncharted - Sara Bareilles

Kitten - Baby swimming lessons.

      White Teeth Teens - Lorde

      Future Fantasy - Beckii Cruel

      Who Needs You - The Orwells

      WILD - Troye Sivan

The Guys

      Expressing Yourself - Billy Elliot

The Girls

      Candy Store - Heathers (Cast)

These are super random and seemingly sort of unrelated to these people, but they just fit somehow. I hope you all enjoy your songs, and I hope everyone else enjoys as well!

Ciao xx
Names are a box

people don't spend time in junkyards and there's a reason for that

This post is a detour, but a much needed and very important detour.

Humans spend a lot of time in the bathroom. It just seems to be a fact of life.

Spending time in spaces that look like this:

(picture from here)

…is not necessarily super fun. If your bathroom looks like the junkyard pictured above, or a different junkyard, or if you find things that look like this:

(picture from here)

lying around, or even if it just feels a little cluttered, here’s what you should do:

HOW TO CLEAN YOUR BATHROOM IF IT LOOKS LIKE A JUNKYARD

1. Start with the things you see right when you walk into the room. Don’t focus on drawers quite yet. (Just to be clear, I’m not telling you how to clean a toilet or a bathtub, more like a countertop.)

2. Clear the counter. For this step, I put all of the stuff that was on my counter in a big tub like this one:

, and put the tub on the floor and out of the way. 

3. Physically clean the counter. If you’re anything like me, your counter isn't just cluttered. There are hard-water deposits all over the place, especially around the sink, globs of things that you'd put on your face or in your hair if they weren't on your counter, etc.

To rid your bathroom of these, use a cleaner suitable for whatever type of counter you have (I have granite (?), so I used 409 Stone & Steel cleaner.)

the drama.

Sticky stuff will usually come off with a few good wipes of a paper towel, but luckily I didn’t encounter much of that this time around.

For hard-water deposits, I first used 409 and a paper towel, then 409 and a scrubby-bristly-brush thing, and then Lemi-Shine (For those who don’t know, Lemi-Shine is stuff that goes in the dishwasher along with… dishwashing stuff and it gets the hard-water deposits off of glassware.) This mostly worked, but it was hard to scrub in the tight areas around the faucet. I was more concerned about the clutter, but if you’re wanting to get really nitty-gritty, try using an old toothbrush to scrub the harder to reach spots.

4. Now that your countertop is spotless and sparkling comes the hard part. It’s time to sort through all of the junk. I sorted everything into piles of what they’re used for (i.e. hair, nails, teeth, face, etc.), just to make it easier to look at than one big heaping pile of hairspray, toothpaste, and lotion.

5. Then I threw away the stuff that was gross and  the stuff that I never used. At this point, you really do have to be willing to throw things away. Truly consider what you actually use on a daily basis. You don’t have to throw away everything! That said, be reasonable about it and don’t keep the never-opened bottle of expensive lotion that you bought three years ago.

6. Here, it’s a really good idea to have some sort of organizer. I got one for Christmas, but you can find them online here. I distinguished between things I use on a daily basis and things that I use every so often (or even never, but I saw no reason to throw away perfectly good chapstick). I tucked away the things I only use every so often in drawers, and filled the organizer with stuff I actually use.

7.  By now it’s really up to you as to how you’re going to organize everything. From previous experience, I would not recommend clumping, say, all of your hair stuff together, rather putting your bobby-pins separate from your hair ties. I’ve found that the less clear you make each item’s designated “spot,” the easier it will be for the whole thing to fall back into chaos. Again, though, it’s really up to you and what you know will work.

8.  Leave as few things as possible out in the open. A lineup of three bottles (detangler, dry shampoo, and a different hair thing that apparently has ten different uses), a big bottle of mouthwash, my toothbrush, a huge jar of coconut oil, and hand soap are the only things not in some kind of storage trinket. The fewer things without a specific spot, the less room for error (and the further in the future your next clean-out will need to be).

so nice

9.  Keep everything as nice as possible for as long as possible. Good luck!

Alright,

Sam

I'm benignly gentile.

Part I:

The best way to learn new words is by reading. However, if you’re kind of ridiculous and are against that or, like me, don’t have time at the moment because of what is known as the fiery pits of homework, music is a good, less time consuming alternative (pop, ha).

Por ejemplo, “benign” means “not harmful.” This was one of my vocabulary words in English, but I knew the definition beforehand because of a lyric in Marina and the Diamonds’ (aka the actual queen of the world) song “Hollywood.”

“Your mind is just like mine, all filled up with things benign…"

the Marina and the Diamonds concert AHH

Part II: Now, to musicals: an alternative to Hebrew School? (NOT REALLY)

The Last Five Years taught me that “goyishe” means someone or something that is not Jewish. “Shiksa” (as in “Shiksa Goddess”) is a gentile girl or woman. Finding this out lead me to look up what gentile means (which is also "not Jewish").

Shrek the Musical lead me to look up the word “Kafkaesque,” in turn leading to extensive reading of Kafka (as in Franz)’s Wikipedia page, thus leading me to find that he was a Jewish German-speaking author of novels and short stories during the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries.

The Fiddler on the Roof explained that “l’chaim" is a toast to life, and a billion other things about Orthodox Judaism. I saw it with my friend Rachael, who happens to be Jewish. At intermission, I grilled her on everything Jewish mentioned in the play, which is literally everything because the whole plot, for those who don’t know, is about an Orthodox Jewish village in Russia during World War II.

zees eez rachael and iy goeen to feedlare oan zee rouf

These definitions, and probably others to be totally honest, leave us with the task of figuring which of these conclusions is true: 1.) The world of musical theatre is fascinated in Judaism 2.) It just so happens that three of the musicals I’ve seen/listened to/been involved in recently have all had major references to Judaism (it’s all a big coincidence/the universe wants me to know more about Judaism) or 3.) Judaism is a super-big, worldwide religion that comes up all over the place and it’s only natural that musical theatre is included in that. In all honesty, it’s probably the third one, but I like to think that things happen for a reason (because imho life is more fun that way).

Just as a general side note, most (if not all) of the Jewish people that I’ve met have been some of the nicest people I’ve known as well. Who knows if there’s a correlation (and that’s not to say that your religion defines you or that any religion besides Judaism is inferior! Or superior! I’m not Jewish, or any other religion for that matter, so this is totally not meant to be offensive to anyone; it’s just my minuscule compilation of experiences.) Additionally, for much of my elementary school life I was fascinated with Judaism and actually kind of wanted to be Jewish (mind you, I’ve never been religious so I had nothing with which to compare it).

Takeaway:

Marina Diamandis can help you ace your English tests.

If you have any interest in subtly learning about Judaism, look to musicals.

Anyway, ttfn. Nice seein' ya.

time takes time, and so does everything else

I recently began an essay with the definition of the word “immigrant.”

I’m going to begin this blog post with a definition, albeit not the same one.

Time. Time is primarily defined by the dictionary on my school-issued Mac as "the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.”

When someone says, “I need more time,” they do not literally mean that they need more of the indefinite continued progress of existence. What they usually are referring to is the dictionary-app’s third definition of time, which is "time as allotted, available, or used.”

We need more time is (sadly) something that is said far too often in rehearsal for the musical at my high school. We cannot, however, have more of the continued progress of existence, and we also cannot have more time set aside to rehearse. When I questioned as to why this was, I was greeted with an answer that had something to do with the fact that we couldn’t rehearse during the summer. To me, the answer seemed simple: push the play back a few weeks in order to give us more time to rehearse. For reasons having to do with holidays and people who make decisions for schools, this plan wasn’t put into action.

Some people are planners. (e.g. the people who make decisions for schools). They set specific times (second definition: a point of time as measured in hours and minutes past midnight or noon) for everything they do, even counting to the second as to not throw their day into chaos.

My cousin has a professor who begins walking to the podium at the front of the class exactly twenty seconds before 10:15 am (when the class is scheduled to begin). If students aren’t in their seats by the time she reaches the podium, they are to leave. Her TAs are like guards, making sure no student comes into the class who wasn’t present at the given minute (or, in this case, second).

My aunt reached the JFK airport at some amount of time that is represented in minutes by a number greater than 60. For those of you so uneducated as to not be familiar with the specific rules of the John F. (which, as it turns out, stands for Fitzgerald) Kennedy International Airport, one must arrive at exactly one hour before the time of their flight departure (or boarding time, or something like that). (I’m joking of course; I do not expect you to know the policies of that particular airport, nor would I be offended if you happened to.) Anyway, by the time my aunt got through the horrendous security line, it was, you guessed it folks, 59 minutes before whatever that particular time was before which she needed to arrive 60 minutes. Because of this strict time rule, my aunt was not allowed through security, and something happened along the lines of she-missed-her-flight-and-had-to-go-to-the-trouble-of-booking-a-new-one-oh-bother. Or something like that.

Time is also important in my life. Although I am not a super-planner (I rarely plan even a week in advance), I participate in many activities which take up time. For instance, I have rehearsal every day after school (which ends at 2:25, 1:45 on Mondays) until 6:00 pm, possibly before. On top of that, I started taking dance classes, which are about a 30 minute drive away, as well as a new theatre class, also 30 minutes away, each of which are from one to two hours long. On top of those, I also have the general high school homework load of endless biology reading and math assignments, with the occasional essay or memorized speech.

What I sometimes look like after a day filled with filled time.

I very much enjoy doing all of these things. There was a time (ha) not too long ago that I did activities that I did not particularly enjoy. They were fine; however, they were not my PASSION/I didn’t have any passion in doing them. Passion is, as they say, a whole nother (dear FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT nother is not a word) corn grove (well, actually, I’m fairly certain that I made that one up, and that no one, or at least almost no one, has said that ever in the history of the world.)(Wait a second. Does corn not even grow in groves?! That's trees, gah. Cornfield.) Point being, I used time for things I didn’t like. Now I use time for things that I do like. Everything is much more fun. Shocker!

Even though I enjoy all of the things that I use time to pursue, sometimes I feel a bit… stressed out. I cannot, for whatever reason, get more time; I can only use less time to do things that I like in order to dedicate more time to things that need to be done, such as homework, that I don’t necessarily like, but I also don’t necessarily dislike. This is a constant dilemma. At this point in time (wow, I’m good), I’ve decided to just stick with the stuff, because I’d rather be doing lots of things that I like and also have to do some things that I don’t like than be doing some things that I like and also have to do some things that I don’t like and then have some time where I’m not doing anything at all.

If that makes any sense.

So, just to summarize...

1. Time is important.

2. Don’t use time to do things you don’t like.

3. Do use time to do things you do like.

4. Eat ice cream when you want it, even if it’s late and the ice cream has caffeine in it because it’s coffee ice cream.

5. Carpe diem ^^^ (or night, depending on what time 'tis)

6. Wait, what?

7. Never mind; I was just testing you.

8. Oh, okay.

9. Get to JFK International Airport more that 1 hour prior to whatever the time is to which you need to be 1 hour prior.

 10. Stress isn’t always bad, it’s just a side effect of using time to do many things that you like. 

11. In conclusion, do whatever you want, as long as you have time (and it doesn’t negatively affect anyone else), because there is only so much time anyway, so why spend the time in which you could be doing things you enjoy to do things you don’t enjoy that you don’t have to do.

Today has been a day of wordy explanations. I could talk about time for all time. Maybe I'll do a Part II sometime.

Anyway.

Ciao.