A Wonder of a Land

With the prolonged crap weather, I've had the opportunity to stay in and watch a LOT of BBC Planet Earth documentaries. They go from pole to pole, from mountains to valleys, and from lake to ocean showcasing the most beautiful natural wonders and the astounding variety of living organisms of the world.

Patagonia Lake, Argentina

And as I sat there in my dark living room with the dull patter of rain barely audible against the window, I looked at those stunningly vivid pictures of the most beautiful landscapes on Earth and realized how very little of this planet I'll probably end up seeing in person. I know, that just got a bit depressing. That's exactly what I was thinking the entire time: this is really freaking depressing. Thanks BBC for taking me on a magical journey across earth just to rub it in my face because YOU David Attenborough, got to go to all those places and I can't!

I will never get to share this look of understanding with a majestic golden eagle in the wilds of Australia like David Attenborough (probably).

It doesn't help that one of my friends from school is on a trip around Europe and Asia right now and every other day I'll look on Facebook and he'll have posted another 50 pictures of some new country he's been to. Not to mention he's already been to over 60 countries because his father owns the Bank of America or something. He's even been to North Korea. WHO FREAKING GOES TO NORTH KOREA? WHO THE HELL IS EVEN ALLOWED TO GO TO NORTH KOREA? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WHY IS THAT NOT MY LIFE???

After venting for an appropriate time about his unfair good fortune, I pulled it together and made a promise to myself to live the life of David Attenborough. At least to a certain extent.

If I'm going to end up being a teacher, which, realistically, I will, that means summers off, and I don't care if I live close to destitute if that means I can save enough money to travel during the summers. I mean, ideally I will marry rich and my husband can pay to have me fly around the world, but I need to have a backup plan just in case.

In the grand scheme of things, I will be on this planet for barely the blink of an eye, and I'll be damned if I don't get to see and experience as much of it as I possibly can.

Dreaming is for the ambitious.

Weighing In On Success

Like most people with poor self-esteem and body image issues, I believe that all my life's problems will be solved if I lose 5 pounds. I know that when I can finally fit into those size 28 7 For All Mankind jeans I've been holding onto for years, I will suddenly find the love of my life, do remarkably well in school, get offered an incredible job opportunity, and somehow inherit millions of dollars.

To make it in life, you need to be one of three things:

1.) Exceptionally attractive
2.) Exceptionally brilliant
3.) Exceptionally good at faking both 1 and 2

My goal of course is to be really really good at number 3. I'm excellent at bullshitting which is why I am so good at pretending to be really smart. It got me into Johns Hopkins where I continued to bullshit my way onto the Dean's List, so I'm pretty confident in my abilities in that regard. As for faking being attractive, well, that's why God invented makeup. To complete this visage however, I need to tone my body as well, and this is where I begin to have issues.

I remember the exact day when I came to the conclusion that I was genetically pre-disposed to have "curvy" (the nice way of putting it) hips, thighs, and butt. It was a gloomy November afternoon at the shopping mall. I was in seventh grade and shopping with my mother when I realized that I could only fit into size 6 jeans. I was fine with the size, but not fine with the fact that just six months earlier in April I was a size 0. I cursed my jeans, cursed my genes, cursed puberty, and cursed my thighs in frustration. It's only gone downhill since.

Now what's the way for average people who aren't blessed with lightening fast metabolisms or thin genes to get a great body?

The Gym.

That place where people willingly put themselves on torture devices, run for hours without actually going anywhere, and pay money for people to lord over them while they're sweating balls and to yell at them to go faster. That place is a madhouse. I hate that place.

I'm really not good at sticking to a routine, and gyms are all about routines. There's the circuit training, the interval training, the on days and off days for strength training, and on top of that I'm supposed to keep a strict diet and eat a certain amount at a certain time depending on when I'm doing the aforementioned training activities? Are you mad?

The gym is an impossible Rubik's Cube. At least for me. But despite all that nonsense, I defied my own expectations and went to the gym today. I was feeling pretty good about myself and my iron will until about 20 minutes after I got there when I was kicked out because the gym was closing. What gym closes at 3 p.m.? Exactly. The universe is pretty much telling me to just cut my losses and do what I please.

So will I give up on trying to achieve my goal? Maybe. But I'm starting to get really hellbent on improving my life and inheriting money, so maybe I'll just go to the gym occasionally and take up some kind of eating disorder. KIDDING (almost).

The Seven Deadly Sins

Whilst I was in church today zoning out and looking at the stained-glass windows, I amused myself by trying to list the seven deadly sins by way of visualizing the photo shoot that they do in cycle 4 of America's Next Top Model where each girl represented one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Yeah. I get real bored in church.

The capitol vices i.e. the Seven Deadly Sins which sounds more dramatic and god-fearing, are essentially considered to be the root of all evil; they are the vices from which all other sins originate. In early Christian times they were pretty much used to teach people that if you didn't get a grip on your self-control you'd end up screwed and eternally damned (demonstrated quite graphically in Dante's Inferno). In the present day they are more like an ethical code that you should aspire to follow. Though you still will probably end up eternally damned.

The Seven Deadly Sins are as follows:

1.) GREED

2.) LUST

3.) ENVY

4.) WRATH

5.) SLOTH

6.) GLUTTONY

7.) PRIDE

Looking over the list I realize that I exhibit each of these sins at least once a day. Skimming over the Seven Deadly Sins Wikipedia page however, I'd like to focus on just number 6 for a moment.

GLUTTONY.

Now I originally thought that gluttony was just the act of eating to the point of excess where you can't physically put another crumb into your body because your stomach might burst. Like on Thanksgiving. It's considered a sin because when you are clearly rollin' in (fried) dough, 500 pounds, and not giving handouts to the needy, you are like the worst type of person. I understand that bit, but in the Middle Ages this one priest expanded that definition to include a total of six ways to commit gluttony:

Praepropere – eating too soon
Laute – eating too expensively
Nimis – eating too much
Ardenter – eating too eagerly
Studiose – eating too daintily
Forente – eating wildly

Now some of those make sense I guess, but I'm sorry eating too daintily? I don't really see how that's an insult to the needy, in fact I'd consider stuffing your mouth full of burgers in front of starving African children to be more of an insult than using basic table manners when you're at a social event. But alas. Both perpetrators are considered gluttons and are condemned to the third circle of Hell where they are eternally pelted with garbage and rain and have to stand amongst, filth, worms, and their own waste. Sounds like a fun time. 

Regardless of what the exact definition of a glutton is, I fully intend to relish every one of my meals with the appropriate amount of zealousness because I think it's more of a sin not to enjoy a good filet mignon than to just passively enjoy some cold porridge.

For as it so eloquently says in the Bible, "And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." Summary:

Thank you Luke 12:19 for validating my habits and giving me comfort that I won't end up stuck in an eternal storm of raining garbage. Cheers.

Karma's Bitch

In a most ludicrously ironic coincidence, a spider suspended suddenly down onto my laptop whilst I was innocently creeping around the Internet last night. I screamed and bolted out of bed (thankfully this time I didn't get a charlie horse) and then was forced to spend the rest of the night in a completely different bed due to my reasonable fear that there were a thousand spiders crawling amongst my sheets. I cocooned myself in two comforters so a repeat wouldn't occur. Looks like my fear of insects isn't subsiding anytime soon.

Now the odds of this happening just after I had blogged about it were just too small to be a coincidence. It just has to be Karma. Do you hear me bugs? I'M SORRY. I'm sorry for calling you gross and ugly and horrifying. I'm sorry for saying you're mean and terrible creatures designed to cause me misery. I'm sorry I insulted your exoskeletons. NOW PLEASE GET ME SOME GOOD KARMA BACK.

There aren't a whole lot of things I believe in, but one of them is Karma, mainly because I've been it's victim countless times. Anytime I do something even slightly bad, like speeding, white lying, excessive drinking, Karma makes sure to give me a good slap across the face later down the road in the form of paper cuts, a stain on a new shirt, or an unbearable conversation with obnoxious people. Cause and effect, action and reaction, all that shit is scientific and proven.

The Karma Cycle

Now everyone always feels like they are on the bad side of Karma, because it's much easier to see the reactions of bad actions than of good ones. But that's because we are always pessimistic and spoiled. A nice day when you aren't working, finding a $5 in your pocket, finding the perfect dress 50% off, it's all a "job well done" pat on the back from Karma.

HOWEVER.

There are of course certain people who are either completely selfless and do-goodish and get completely shafted by Karma anyways, or there are the users and abusers who Karma seemingly overlooks without doling out any much-deserved consequences.

But I'm still holding out hope that in their next life the good-doers will be rewarded and the users and abusers will get reincarnated as mosquitos. Because Karma always get its way in the end.

Linens-N-Things

I believe I'm speaking generally universally when I say that it's near impossible to go to sleep when you don't have at LEAST a sheet covering your body. Even when it's like 100 million degrees. It doesn't matter. That sheet is your protective barrier.

Why is this even a thing? It's not like I believe there're scary monsters lurking about in my room, ready to strike the instant a bare strip of my flesh is revealed.

Nice try, Grudge Boy. No way you can get under MY sheets.

And it's not like I'm even that afraid of the dark or something so typical as that (however, I still sprint up the stairs like the devil is chasing me after shutting all the downstairs lights off and I don't breathe until I'm back in a sufficiently well-lit area. But really I swear, not afraid).

No.

So what is my personal big issue with sleeping without a sheet then? I'll show you.

DUN DUN DUN!!!!!

That's right. INSECTS. I would have picked a real photo, but it was just too horrifying for me to do so.

Insects are actually the worst.

#1 They are bone-chillingly disgusting to look at. They aren't the cute little bugs depicted in the picture above, oh no. They've got like a million little eyes, 4-6 too many spindly legs (or even more. Millipedes are hands down THE most terrifying creature on the planet), an exoskeleton which freaks me out and makes a sound that gives me shivers when you crush it, and antennas or other sorts of feelers that can't wait to probe you.

#2 The way they move makes me want to die. The way they skittle about with their too many legs, or fly around your head to the point where you get so frustrated you're ready to douse yourself with DEET just to get them to go away, OR how spiders unexpectedly drop down in front of you when you're innocently reading a book in bed and you jump up so quickly that you get a charlie-horse. The WORST.

#3 They HURT. Insects are literally designed to cause us pain. They have stingers, are equipped with poison, or inflict bites that make you itch until your skin is raw.

To summarize: They suck.

Now where was I going with this rant? Oh yes. When I'm in bed at night, the slightest whisper of wind across my skin or a stray hair grazing my leg are those creepy-crawlies ready to devour me. But not when I have my sheet! My sheet creates an invisible forcefield that no insect can penetrate!

Should I work on this fear? Maybe. Fears get in the way of things, and I'm all about trying to self-improve. But until insects decide to improve themselves and not be so gross and scary and hurtful? Well. I'm not abandoning my sheet.

The Intro

When you feel like your brain is going to explode from all its wishy-washy thoughts scrambled around in there, the natural solution is to turn to the cold hard metal of a MacBook Pro. A keyboard, the Internet, and the false feeling of confidence that goes along with anonymity are the perfect components to try and sort out my life.

Let's do a quick review of my other attempts at a creative outlet:


Art is beautiful (sometimes) and very meaningful (sometimes) and really expensive for no apparent reason (all the time), such as this lovely Mark Rothko painting which sold for $86.9 million at a NYC auction (a real bargain, I know).

Now, not to slight Mr. Rothko, but I think my own attempt at modern art was pretty decent:

But alas, this masterpiece that I finished in just one class period washed away as soon as I took a shower. Art and I were not meant to be.

And apparently neither were singing and I, because every time I belt out a note this happens:

And not in the cool, talented way it's supposed to.

Art and music failed, so now it's on to writing, specifically, in the (hopefully relatively) anonymous world of the inter webs, because I already have half a dozen botched attempts at writing a novel until I realized I wasn't much good at that. But what I am good at is talking about myself, for that is the one subject I'm an expert on. I can prattle on for days about what's been running through my mind. 

And so the journey begins.