Heelprint

I love my college; I really do. I haven't regretted coming here for a single second. I still haven't tired of the ubiquitous blue, the unrelenting (and sometimes downright rude) school spirit, the vibrant community.

All the little concerns that keep college freshmen lying awake at night before they move to their universities disappear within days of arriving. The bathroom arrangement is fine; it's not hard to get along with your roommate; friends will come fairly easily if you smile and say hi; classes are difficult but not impossible; the food is pretty good; the campus layout will unfold itself to you in a few days.

But that is not to say college life is not without concerns. They're just new concerns. What was important in high school is replaced by something bigger, more pressing. There's always a pit in my stomach when I pass a flyer advertising some amazing opportunity and I keep walking. I know I can't do everything; that would be impossible and suicidal. But I have to wonder each and every time if I'm passing up my one great opportunity; maybe that was where I was going to meet my future employer, future passions, even future husband.

But that is ridiculous. I don't believe in fate. We make the happiness we seek. I have actively reached out to organizations I know I will love, and in turn will have an automatic connection with others involved. When I do my homework, I worry I'm not reaching insightful enough conclusions, like I need to force something that simply isn't there. Reach a higher plane. I'm always afraid I'm not stretching enough. Not challenging myself enough, not growing enough.

It's a weird feeling. Everything just seems higher stakes. When once a GPA got me into college, it now gets me a job. Before, most friendships (at least at a high level of intimacy) were only for the duration, now they have the potential for lifelong relationships. I have to make connections, make roots, make a mark. A "Heelprint."

But I know, just as I was freaking out the night before I moved here, that one day I will look back on this moment and tell myself that everything eventually was okay.

Ready

I've never felt more ready to go off to college than I do right now, sitting here in my bed, typing on my laptop at five in the morning. Five in the morning isn't usually when anything productive happens or people feel especially prepared, but somehow, in this moment, I finally think I'm absolutely ready.

It isn't about the piles of stuff heaped haphazardly in the guest bedroom, or the half-read summer reading book waiting to be finished, or the completed textbook order forms, or the move-in plans made, or anything you can check off on a to-do list.

You can prepare logistically to move out of your parents' house forever, but I don't think that's the most important part. It wasn't until this moment that I began moving, consciously at least, all the people in my life from actively affecting me to have affected me. That is not very clear, I realize, but it's a hard concept to force into the limitations of the English language.

I think most relationships reach a point where the people can simply no longer glean anything from each other, whether it's as important as life lessons or as insignificant as lunchtime company. Perhaps it's a bit callous to view people like tools that can outstrip their usefulness and call for replacing, but I can't help but feel that's what is happening to me right now.

Every conversation feels useless and strained, like everyone is just going through the motions because we've all grown accustomed to things going a certain way. There's no joy or relish, no excitement or fervor. All habit, tired routines. We've all been nailed into the caricatures formed by years of familiarity. We rely on the predictably we've created; while this once was comforting, so comforting the thought of leaving it was terrifying, it is now boring and limited. I feel stuffy and confined.

Most dangerously, I feel annoyed. The smallest things get to me. I want so badly to live a new life that things that belong distinctly in this old one are infuriating. All of this is coming from a self-professed hater of change. Nothing is more persuasive to me than the fact that I yearn for change, so often my mortal enemy.

Of course I love dearly all the people that have shaped my current life, and I always will. But I have to get away, or I will kill someone. I need newness, fresh faces that don't know anything about me. People that won't keep secrets from me because they fear judgment that doesn't exist. People that trust me because they haven't time to formulate prejudices. People that are willing to accept changes because they never knew the past. This is what I need now.

So finally, I think I'm ready. Things tend to be over-dramatic at five in the morning, but I'm grateful for these late night "epiphanies." Sometimes they give me the strength to face the oh-too-soon morning.


"I've lived in this place and I know all the faces/each one is different but they're always the same./They mean me no harm, but it's time that I faced it/They'll never allow me to change."

This Is Country Music...And We Do

I'm not a redneck by any stretch of the imagination. I wouldn't be caught dead in a cowboy hat or boots. I don't drink, smoke, or drive a pick-up truck. I don't hunt or ride horses or live in a trailer park or any other stereotypical redneck thing.

Really, there's only one country thing (except maybe Cracker Barrels) I really like: country music. My ipod contains twangy country tunes with banjos and steel guitars amongst "cooler" music ranging from 80's rock, today's pop, and singer songwriters.

I never really could explain why I like musical genre that so enthusiastically sings about many things I hate like Hicktowns and illiteracy until I attended the Country Music Association's Annual Music Festival.

The fact the festival even exists is a testament to the uniqueness of the country music community. All of the artists play for free, and it's the big multi-platinum selling ones offering their services out of sheer appreciation for the fans who bought all of those millions of albums. All of the proceeds go to a charity that puts instruments and musical programs in inner city schools. Even though I'm not a huge fan, Taylor Swift summed up the cool thing about CMA Musicfest. As she closed the show on the final day, from the stage at the center of the big football stadium, she pointed at a moderately priced seat to the right of the stage: "when I was 15, I sat right there and watched this show, and now I'm up here thanks to all of you."

No other genres come together so cohesively like country music. No matter what song any of the performers sang, every single person (80,000 or so strong) knew all the words and shouted them with complete conviction. Country music fans are simply country music fans, not just following one or two artists.

But really, the greatest thing about country music is that there are real gems hidden among all the redneck anthems. If you dig past the mudflaps and boondocks and Daisy Dukes, you find songs that speak to the collective human experience. I came to that realization while James Otto talked about his writing of "In Color," a song about reflecting on life through photographs. He explained how he reflected on his grandfather's stories as he turned the creaky pages in his black and white photo album while writing the song: "A picture's worth a thousand words but you can't see what those shades of grey keep covered; you should've seen it in color."

I couldn't help but think of the photo albums we took from her house after my grandma died. They chronicled her life, in black and white. They told stories we'd never get to hear from her now and reminded us of the ones she did share with us. We truly couldn't see what was behind that grey smile as she perched on the hood of some car one summer in her youth. James Otto and Jamey Johnson captured all those feelings deep down in me that I didn't even know I had.

Isn't that what good music is supposed to do? I've never felt that way about a Lady Gaga song, no matter how much her fans think I'm silly for watching a devastatingly unattractive (seriously, look at a picture of Jamey Johnson) man pick guitar strings and sing his life story to a very drunk crowd, but I'll defend it to the day I die.

Tim McGraw sings "Some say it's too country, some say it's too rock-n-roll, but it's just good music if you can feel it in your soul." I think a good song is one that makes the listener feel something, the emotion oozing out of every syllable, every note. A song that transmits the experience of the writers and performers straight to all the open ears taking it in. I think Johnny Cash's "Sunday Morning Coming Down" is one of the greatest songs every written because it can make a person feel so utterly lonely even when surrounded by loved ones. It's just that powerful to me.

So maybe I'm not a redneck, but country music isn't just for rednecks. It's for anyone who has found peace in their childhood homes, left home or missed their adult children, or just learned from life's mistakes or simply living.

Of Blogs and Blogging

Bloggers, on average, are irritating people. They're usually self-absorbed, thinking people care about what they ate for breakfast and saw on the drive to work. They're usually egotistical, thinking their previously under-appreciated writing talents will one day be discovered. They're usually annoying, whiny people who the internet afforded a place to whine annoyingly.

But not all of them. Some just like having an outlet to write in. If you stop writing with an audience in mind, then the writing becomes more worthy of an audience. People can tell when things are thinly veiled attempts at catering to readers who really don't exist. Some people are just passionate about a subject and need a place to pour all the creative energy their hobby or lifestyle creates into something outside of themselves. Others blog to chronicle their own lives; there's something interesting about watching yourself progress, month by month, along the sidebar of the blog.

But the former types of bloggers give bloggers everywhere a bad name. It's easy to dump on the idea, and it's easy for the concept to become another technology-created narcissistic fad. The only real way to save it from being such a thing is to use it in a more meaningful way.

Sure, I could type all these thoughts onto a word document in my computer, but I know I wouldn't write with such regularity (arguably regular, anyhow) without such a specific place to go to write. That date on the blogger dashboard shows me how long it's been since I've sat and thought about where my mind is at (which seems kind of odd... thinking about where your mind is at, but that's truly what it feels like). It's easy to get caught up in the humdrum of life and forget to think about anything at all. I don't think there's anything narcissistic about evaluating life from time to time, and I know I can't do that effectively without writing.

Writing is so, so precious, and blogs are one of the few places on the internet that really allow the good, productive sort of writing. It takes no thought to write a 140-character "witticism," but it takes thought to plan out an entire blog entry. If only people would write thoughtful blogs, and people would give thoughtful blogs a chance, they could be something meaningful. But the internet is not the place for anything meaningful much, and it's overly idealistic to think that could happen.

I follow quite a few blogs and a few them are truly good. The people writing them are the sort of people I might like to know in real life, but since I can't, I can reap the benefits of their thoughts and productivity and insight through blogger. I don't see how that can be anything but good.

When I go off to college, I will probably retire this blog. It only seems fitting to let it sit as the person writing it will invariably be different. I don't know if I will start another one. Part of me thinks I will definitely need to, more than I do now, and part of me thinks it will just seem like something time-consuming and in the way. I guess I will know when I get there. For now, I will keep writing and reading because I can't help but feel there is just something inherently important in it all.

There Are Places I Remember...

I know this is roughly the same topic I always write about, but hey, it's my life. Whatcha gonna do?

I feel like a baby bird getting tossed out of a nest. It's necessary, and I want to do it, know I have to do it, and know it'll be wonderful being able to fly. But before you can leap, you have to sever connections with everything inside that nest.

My nest is considerably bigger than a baby bird's.

It feels like life sort of makes these disconnects for you. Lately, I've been feeling more disconnected than I used to be from everything and everyone. At first, I was sort of depressed about that feeling, like it indicated some kind of failure on my part to keep in touch. Then I started thinking it was just me being beaten into sad monotony by the same life I've lived for five years. But now I sort of think it's just me subconsciously preparing for leaping out of the metaphorical nest. It's a lot easier to jump if the things that hold you back aren't holding on quite so tightly anymore.

I figured this out when I noticed myself becoming irrationally annoyed at the few things that haven't really changed. It seems as though they're stuck in the past, and they need to hurry up and join us in the future. I couldn't really pinpoint why they became annoying; they just were.

It is still a little depressing though. I don't talk to the same people I used to talk to every day, and if I do, conversation seems superficial, separate, obligatory. It's only natural to miss people, and it's perfectly possible to miss somebody you see every day. It's like my relationships are preparing themselves to downgrade to the Christmas card level they'll soon be reduced to.

Tonight, I sat at my grandma's kitchen table and looked through the photo albums that captured three generations' worth of life. In the pictures of my dad's youth, he was surrounded by people he never talks to anymore. The people are so happy in the pictures, so unaware of the diverging paths they're about to walk down. The closeness of the relationships are captured on the photo album's page even if they don't exist in Dad's current reality.

Most of the pictures had a story behind them. These are the parts that truly matter. All of these people left some sort of impression on Dad, whether it's an anecdote he still tells from time to time or a life lesson learned hard. I suppose the people, for the most part, are making the transition from my reality to my photo album. They're anecdotes and lessons learned. Through that, they'll always exist at their full intimacy in my life. I will remember them for what they were then, and only partially for what they are now and what they will become.

I'm sad, but I'm happy. I know I'll find a new set of people to make their own invaluable impressions and create their own memories; I know the ones I've got now are permanent and strong. A successful life, perhaps, should be measured by weight of the photo albums stacked in the bottom drawer of the bureau in the living room.

In a Box

The older I get, the more I feel like life is most akin to one of those money machines they have on game shows--those machines where the contestant stands in a little glass elevator-shaped contraption. Money, in various denominations, flies around them in a hectic furry and the poor person tries to grab as much as they can and stuff it anywhere they can until time runs out and it all disappears.

I'm standing in the middle of my own machine, perpetually grabbing at the little slips of paper around me. Written on those papers is everything important to me. Some have short term goals, scholastic things, stuff I have to get done, finish Christmas shopping. Some have people's names, family and friends that I want around. Others have long term goals. Get into college.

I'm standing in the middle of this chaos, grabbing at all of these things. There isn't enough time and they aren't slow enough to prioritize. I just have to snatch at them as they fly around, hoping I manage to grab something worth keeping.

And even once I do get hold of something I want or need, it's even harder to hold onto it. I try to put it in my pocket, but the wind sweeps it out again. It's a constant struggle, a constant fight against elements I can't control.

That's the worst part. I can't control it.

I hate not being in control. I can't control it when the Carolina admissions people lose my transcript three days before they want to seal my fate. I can't control what people think of me, how they interpret my actions. I can't control schedules made by others or the weather or the law.

I can only control my feeble little arm, reaching out into the uncontrollable, grasping for something worth it.

Some people believe if you grab one of those things, all the rest of them won't matter. For some people, it's God. I never got the hang of that one. For others, it's love. That one's out of my reach too. Others find it in their work. Well, my transcript's lost in translation.

Is my vital piece of paper still swirling undetected over my head? Or have I missed it completely? Has the thing I need to make life worth it slipped through my fingers already?

Growing Pains

On the first day of sixth grade, I sat beside a girl in homeroom. We talked. We became friends. We talked on the phone endlessly, even though I always hated talking on the phone. We killed half the Amazon Rain Forest writing notes, including one of the true cementing factors to our friendship: The Notebook. We passed the The Notebook back and forth every day at school after writing in it each night. We made up symbols for the names we didn't want exposed in case it fell into the wrong hands, and confessed our deepest worries in that black binder.

Always a private person, I found I could open up to her, and even now seven years later, I still tell her things I can't tell anyone else. Even though we never really had the most in common, we've remained friends through it all.

I don't know what I'd do without her. But the realization came crashing down tonight--I might have to.

I know there's the internet and letters and telephones, but it's not the same. It's not the same as being able to meet up at Talquepaque for lunch and the rain that always seems to accompany these trips. How do I survive without seeing her name pop up on my messenger list every day, and the typing style I've come to know so well spill out the worries of her day?

Even though I'm 18, applying to college, and generally on the threshold of adulthood, it never really seemed that real to me until my best friend from sixth grade tells me she's contemplating marriage and moving halfway across the country, away from everything she's known, away from me. I told her a million times in middle school that her beloved would come around and see her for the amazing girl she is, and now my prophecy is coming true to a dizzying degree.

But I'm also so excited for her. I'm excited that she gets a new and exciting life. Truly, there is not much here for her. She could reach her higher potential somewhere else, and maybe help her maybe-husband reach his too. There is room to grow outside of the little world she's always lived in, and it would be a shame if fear kept her from inhabiting this new life.

Just last week, we were sitting in my floor playing board games, one of which was Life. As we moved the cars through the rapidly progression lifetime, I never imagined her real life would move as quickly so soon.

But I wish her a little plastic husband who is devoted and loving, a career card that she enjoys with a salary card she doesn't want to trade, Life Tiles full of things she's always dreamed of, and maybe, someday, a plastic car full of beautiful plastic peg children. And when she gets to the end of the gameboard, I hope she takes it all at Millionaire Acres.

But most of all, I hope we can still mail back and forth our secrets and dreams and hopes in a proverbial The Notebook.

Another Letter

Dear Aunt Janice,

I didn't know you very well, and now I never will, but I'm not sad about it.

I know this sounds horrible, but you never did anything to deserve my tears.

All my life, your name was synonymous with fights, grudges, petty family feuds. You tortured my grandmother, and you did it on purpose. As my grandma likes to put it, you sunk your claws into my uncle while he was too young to realize what he was getting into, and you didn't release him until yesterday. But worst of all, you tore apart her relationship with her brother.

They were once very close and you very jealous. She even named one of her children after him, a child who probably won't even bother making the drive to your funeral. Having two Uncle Dougs, I distinguished between them by "the one with the mean wife" and the one without.

As I grew up and learned more about your conflicts with the rest of the family, the more you became a picture of what a life shouldn't be. When I die, I don't want my nieces and nephews to bow out of my funeral. I don't want to only be remembered for the grief I caused.

I've always thought that grudges are a waste of time, and you prove that. Months and years of silent treatment is ridiculous and immature, especially when you're over twelve years old.

I hate to say it, but the world might be better with you not in it. You've shunned your children and cut your husband off from his family. Maybe now my grandmother and her brother can renew the relationship you tore away, and forgiveness can mend the wounds you caused.

But I'm afraid the scars you left on Grandma's fragile conscious will be hard to erase. She will feel guilty for the nature of your relationship, even if it was your own fault. That is because she is a better person, a bigger person, than you ever where.

So I guess I should thank you for leading by example and showing me how not to be. I hope you're happy now.

Samantha

(This is my 100th post. I wish it were happier.)

Fate

When my mom gets drunk enough (I can usually tell when this point has been reached because her left eye closes.), she likes to talk about fate. It has annoyed me most of my life, but I have to admit, there's some interest in it for the sober person.

My mom has never been completely happy with where we have lived. She always finds something wrong with it. With the exception of one place, I've always tried to find the good parts about the area and embrace them. In our current town, she swears the people "are just weird here." I try to tell her that people are weird everywhere, and the people of this town closely resemble those of her beloved and often romanticized hometown, but she'll have none of it.

Anyway, during her fate conversations, she always wonders what would have happened if Dad, while in the Air Force, had gotten orders somewhere else, or other things that would change the course of events that led to me sitting here in this house, in this town, in this state, in this country. Playing with what ifs is kind of fun.

What if my grandfather hadn't fallen dangerously ill in the months preceding my birth? Living in Japan, Mom wasn't qualified to fly or something while she was pregnant with me, and couldn't come home to Virginia and her ailing father, but I was born three months early and they were able to fly home with me to see him in his last months. If that hadn't have happened, I might have grown up in Japan. How different my life would have been! Perhaps if my grandpa hadn't smoked all his life, or worked in the coal mines, or had a better genetically engineered heart, I would live in Japan right now.

Or what if my dad hadn't joined the Air Force? I would still have been born, but I would reside in my parents' hometown. I wouldn't have the childhood I'm now grateful for. I would have been subjected much more strongly to the religious throes of my grandmother. I would probably be sheltered and devout and slightly redneck.

I could sit here all day and play out the what ifs. A lot of things had to happen in order for me to arrive here the person I am. It's easy to say I'm glad what happened happened because I'm grateful of any good qualities I've come to possess and can tolerate all my faults.

But perhaps there's a far better version of myself lost to the hands of chance.

A song goes "some believe in destiny and some believe in fate, but I believe that happiness is something we create, and you best believe that I'm not gonna wait." I love that line. It's so true, and something perhaps my mother should embrace. It's not about where we moved to, the people and places that shaped me. It's about what I choose to do with what I have, and creating my own happiness. I'm only doomed to be unhappy if I condemn myself to it.

No fate about it.

Infinite Discontinuity

The three words I've probably said the most in my life:

I hate math.

There's always been something in the numbers sprawled across the page that I find incredibly elusive. Always beyond my comprehension.
No matter how good a teacher or textbook may be, I still always fail to completely grasp it and understand it in the full, self-doubtless way I want to. Plus, it adds a lot of B's to my transcript...

But lately, I haven't hated it quite so much. I thought I would despise the obligatory PreCalc class I finally couldn't put off any longer. I don't. I'm not saying I enjoy it (I will never ever enjoy math, especially math with any variation of the word "calculus" in it).

But there's a certain certainty in the numbers that I kind of like. For example, some days during the week, I go to Precalc after a literature class. In this literature class, we discuss enormous topics above human comprehension and are expected to formulate articulate on-the-spot opinions about it. All this does is frustrate me.

While a quadratic equation also frustrates me, there's always the hope of conquering it. I know there's a definite answer and I know it's in the back of the book. There's always a method. Somebody has done the real discovering for you. All you have to do is learn how they did it and remember.

There's no answers to "what's the meaning of life?" no matter how many times my professor asks me. It truly is beyond my comprehension. You cannot graph humanity's inability to "approach the sublime" about the y-axis. We do search books for the answers, but even Thoreau, with all his footnotes, couldn't tell us. Nobody can.

At this age, this time in my life, there is nothing if not uncertainty. I may not have to provide my opinion on the meaning of life (excluding 9:30-10:50 on Mondays and Wednesdays) but I do have to decide what I want the meaning of my life to be. That's no easy task and I can't control a lot of what is going to happen, no matter how I much I may want to.

But I can control the x's and y's in my Precalc homework, ever certain and ever sure, clipped safely into my binder. I go into that class and when I leave, I decidedly know one more mathematical principle. I'm definitely not going to switch to a math major, but I can more greatly appreciate the steadfast consistency of numbers.

My Silverbacked Gorillas

In a recent video posted by my favorite vloggers, one of them brought up the concept of "silverbacked gorillas." I have no idea why he termed them this, but I do like the concept behind it.

He was trying to explain why people seek fame. One of the oft-referenced explanations is that we want attention. Not just any attention, but attention from people we consider important to us.

He also said that this attention-seeking behavior is not inherently destructive, but only destructive if we're looking towards the wrong "silverbacked gorillas." This, in turn, caused me to evaluate my own gorillas. Who do I want attention and respect from?

My thoughts first lie on my father. All my life, I've pretty much been a classic case of "Daddy's girl." His approval is what I seek above all else. But as I grow older, I see more and more that he is not infallible. Though I don't consider his opinion entirely absolute anymore, I still value it so highly that he is the only person in my life who can make me cry. Just knowing he is unhappy with me in any way shakes me. Is this healthy? I'm guessing no.

Reaching out from my family, I want the respect of my teachers. I just want to prove that I am competent and trustworthy. Many events recently have jeopardized this image of myself I wish to project. I know they do not even begin to know the true me, the real me, the me that my friends and family know. Why should I let these people judge me when they simply do not have the time to evaluate fairly? Why should I care?

On a broader scale, I want approval as a writer. I want somebody out there to tell me (somebody that doesn't have to, and somebody with real experience and authority) that I'm not crazy in wanting to be a writer. I want to be considered good on my own merit, not in comparison to anybody else or for the circumstances under which I am writing. I want to be deemed worthy and justified in all my endeavors. Perhaps this is actually a positive gorilla.

I'm sure there are more people from whom I desire attention, and maybe there are some people from whom I should and don't currently. One pointed difference between me and my peers is that I seem not to care so much about approval from the opposite sex. This renders me at a disadvantage in the dating game that's supposed to be so important to me at this stage in my life, but it's not. Just a distant bleep on the radar. Does this make me deficient in some capacity? Many view it at some sort of immaturity, but I don't buy into this logic. I've yet to see a mature high school relationship.

There's so many people out there, all seeking the approval of somebody else. Today in psychology, my professor said that there are no true "human instincts" because there isn't one universal behavior all humans adhere to. If there ever was one, I think the need of attention is a pretty good candidate.

My "silverbacked gorillas" are sure to change many times throughout my life, and hopefully I will learn to discern the positive ones from the negative.