Nostalgic

I had every opportunity to be in bed early tonight, but of course I got sidetracked and ended up staying up as usual. I finally got my room clean to where I can actually stand to be in here. Since there was nothing on tv, I decided to dig through all of my cabinets in my room. For those of you who haven't known me forever or been to my house, my mom went through a period in time where she was obsessed with built in cabinets...I have a lot of cabinets. The last time I had gone through them was prior to leaving for college last year. I haven't opened them since then until tonight. There is still a lot of junk to deal with. While I was digging, I came across my old journal...

My big plans to journal have always failed until I started to blog instead. This journal was from winter of senior year. At that point I would've told you that that was a very trying time in my life. That was when I was dealing with my first real heartbreak and my stage when I decided to act like a teenager for once in my life. It was humorous/embarrassing to read. I picked out a really beautiful deep red snake skin cover journal to write in and I don't mean that sarcastically, I really do think it is a beautiful journal. I had big plans of this being a really inspiring journal where people would find it after I died and they would publish it because it was so brilliant. Not quite so brilliant after re-reading it, I actually find myself to be quite arrogant and narcissistic.  Maybe it's because it was me expressing everything that I didn't want to burden others with or it's the only child complex spilling out on paper.  Since those events in my journal it's amazing how some things have changed tremendously and others have stayed pretty much the same in my life. After reading the journal, I remembered that I went through a stage where I would post notes on Facebook that I thought was quite brilliant at the time. Remember the time when we all went through and wrote 25 things about ourselves, then tagged 25 friends, those 25 friends would have to do the same thing. It was quite a big deal at Tahlequah High School at the time. I decided to name mine 25 Love Affairs. I still think it's a fabulous title, I went through and read it and I am pretty much the same person according to that. I remember being really proud of that post as well as one I posted almost a year ago my Lessons Learned note. 

Lessons Learned

I have grown as a person tremendously my senior year of high school. So much has happened. But fortunetely I've been able to take the bad things and turned them into a lesson learned.
1. No one can truly mature until they have been hurt by someone they care for and thought they cared for you too.
2. The nice guy won't win until the end.
3. There are always two sides of a story, and I can never seem to get the two to match up.
4. It is nearly impossible to just to get the facts.
5. Once you develope feelings for a person, the tendency is to stop being honest with that person.
6. All through school we are taught that there are consequences to our mistakes and carelessness, but in the real world, there are government programs to "fix" any of those mishaps.
7. Is life always going to be a popularity contest?
8. Everyone can benefit from taking a psychology class.
9. Bad timing has been a reaccuring relationship set-back.
10. You get from it what you put into it.
11. Life is what you make it.
12. Does it really matter if God exists? It is comforting to just have faith in something that is greater than life itself. Why does it really have to be proven as fact?
13. Most restrictions in life that come from religion are usually done for ones own good.
14. Nobility usually goes unnoticed.
15. Life is a balancing act.
16. Troubles come from doubting your own instincts.
17. Has anything ever gotten accomplished without drive and passion?
18. Too bad it is a bad thing to love blindly.
19. Less is more.
20. No one ever got anywhere by blending into the crowd.
I don't know if these are even true, I'm sure some people will disagree with me. This is just what I've gathered from my short 18 years of life.

I love this to this day, I can't believe a forgot all about it. There might be a few to add to the list now that I have finished my first year of college away from home. I'll have to think about it and get back to you next time. So unitl then...

It's not a hobby, it's a privilege.

Here I go on another rant. Lately I have been seeing a few campaign signs popping up around town. The signs around town are all the same people who have been running for the same office practically every term. Lots of them are running for re-election or currently in an office but are running for another office. Most of them don't really seem like they make too much impact on our daily like. Inez Peace has been our county treasurer for as long as I can remember. I'm not even sure what all of the county offices are, I suppose that's something we didn't cover in civics or at Girls State. What really astounds me is that I have only seen several Re-elect Dan Boren signs up and one Jim Wilson sign (both Dems) for US Congress. Not really a huge deal except primaries are in a week. I had no idea who was even running as a republican. Once I realized this, I went on Google and searched who all was actually going to be on the ballot next Tuesday. For one, I had no idea primaries were next Tuesday, if I didn't Google it I would have never known. So that means that your average Tahlequah citizen neither knows or cares that there is an election going on. What average citizen even takes the time to Googles their candidates? More Americans vote for American Idol and Dancing With the Stars than they do for the President, let alone smaller elections. Ridiculous.

Our founding fathers did not come over here to passively end up with a leader. They fought hard for the power of the people to chose their leaders. Does anyone really understand when they mean when they tell us to thank the troops for  fighting for our freedoms? No one cares if their freedoms are slowly being taken away. No one really understands that they can chose who their leaders are, no one really understands that if they don't like the leader that is currently in power, they can work to change it. As long as their food stamps are renewed every month, the unemployment check is directly deposited in their bank accounts, Cherokee Nation gives them a place to live, and they can go to Hastings to pop out their babies for free, Cherokee county is happy.

My interest in politics is by no means entertainment for myself, it's actually quite frustrating. It's not a hobby, it's a privilege. Unlike many other countries, we are not designed to have some power hungry monster just take over power without anyone's say in it. Power hungry monsters are put in power in our country by the small percentage of people who do get out to vote. Now lets think about how many people actually vote for someone because they themselves believe in them. How many people go out and just do a straight ticket to whatever party they are registered under. How many people vote for whoever is more attractive, has more money, appears on MTV, is endorsed by your favorite celebrity, the list goes on and on. I'm blaming the entire system for this one. We're are not educated in school about our country anymore, history books twist the events of the past, civics classes seem irrelevant when they are actually very relevant, it is not being stressed to vote, and there is no encouragement to establish your own personal values, ethics, morals, and opinions. Think about it, what do you believe in?

I know this isn't a fun topic or one that anyone cares to discuss, but I think Americans would be happier with their country and their leaders if they actually played a role in it like it is designed. At this point, I don't even care if you have different political views than I do, I just urge you to have a view on it. Ignorance is what gets societies into trouble, stop being ignorant. I don't believe that I have any more resources than any of you out there. Take advantage of the free resources around you. Go expand your mind on something.

That is all for now, until next time..

Favorite Things...

I am doing one of my favorite things as we speak. Sitting in the sun room, listening to music, and blogging with the sun shining in through the windows. The only thing missing is a tall glass of water with a twist of lemon or lime. It doesn't take much to make me happy obviously. It's the little things in life that counts.

Maybe you knew that I just had a birthday a few days ago. I am 19 and I feel pretty much the same. Is that how birthdays go from now on? If it is thats fine with me, I like any reason to entertain, eat cake, put on a dress, and hang out with my favorite people. I had big plans for my birthday party, I wanted to get fancy light other fancy things. None of those bigs plans played out and it didn't make a single difference. Pretty much everyone that makes an effort to see me and I make an effort to see them came to my party. My mom grilled food and we ate outside on our new deck. It was great except for the bugs, which I guess is just life. The tiki torches didn't really seem to bother the flies, they feasted on my party food regardless. The funny thing about this year's birthday party was that babies, families, and weddings were a hot topic...at least for half of the crowd. Emily brought her baby Declan and her husband, strange. And Misty and Kyle are getting married Saturday! Slowly weddings and babies are going to be a big part of my life I think. Theres still some time before I will be going to weddings every weekend but it is going to be in the near future.

I figured out why I was feeling a little down for awhile. Exercising really brightens my mood, a lot. It's true what they say. I had quit going to the gym since my instructor went on vacation but I started doing "INSANITY" with Marc and Evan the other day. It is insanely hard, I'm sore, but in such a good mood. It's time to get back to the gym, Kim should be back from vacation now. So for those of you who are a little down in spirits, try getting active. Just a little exercise makes a difference. Do some stretching, take your dog out for a stroll, I'm not a big believer in treadmills or cardio machines anymore. It's much more fun to do other things than stare at the calorie counter. I have also noticed that I can't really handle eating junk food anymore. It's too hot to eat heavy food and it's just not a good feeling afterwards.

I miss taking pictures. I really need to replace my camera that I dropped in the Walmart parking lot somewhere in Massachusetts a few months back. I don't have a single picture from this summer. I look at Rae's Facebook pictures and I just want to die. Whoever would like to contribute to my new camera fund, please let me know, I would appreciate it greatly.

That's a piece of what's running through my mind lately, until next time...

Long Time No Blog

Hello all, I apologize for not blogging lately. I wish I could say I was just way too busy but that would be very false. I actually have had extended amount of free time. Just over a week ago I got the opportunity to go to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to go to a NACA Concert Management Institute. It was great. The Mindiola's returned the favor for staying at my house for a week by meeting me at the airport and taking me to where I needed to be as well as pick me up and drop me off at the airport for my departure. We stayed at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. I met some great people, learned some extensive things about major concerts, got to tour several different concert venues, and go to Summerfest (the largest music festival in "the world") courtesy of Johnson and Wales University. I even got to see the lovely Katelyn Spurr. Katelyn is doing her internship in Chicago at a talent agency for the summer, so she drove up to meet up with to at Summerfest. There weren't any bands at Summerfest that I was just dying to see but it was very fun going from stage to stage and people watching. There are some freaks that attend music festivals, there could be a whole blog just about music festival people. Coincidently the people that I had been hanging out with at the institute, a few of them had gone the year before and were friends with Kate too. Another coincidence was that my suite mate, Jamie, is the new main stage coordinator at Quinnipiac Univerisity in Connecticut who took the place of Meg Doyle, Katelyn's roommate from the institute last summer. Key highlights from Wisconsin would be: scavenger hunt, The Fonz, Pabst Theaters, drunk people on the way, at, and coming back from Summerfest, Noodles & Co, frozen custard, and Alterra Coffee.

On the plane back I did some extensive amount of thinking. Due to a crazy thunderstorm at home, the dinky little Delta Connection plane was in no hurry to get me back to Oklahoma. I have some big plans for UIB next year. I would like to re-brand UIB, make our posters simpler, less graphics, and straight to the point. I would like to advertise and reach out to other students who major in other things besides Hospitality to get involved with UIB. We are in need of some Business and Technology students, they're major plays a big part in UIB, it's more than event planning. We need some advertising and marketing students to effectively reach the student body and we need some tech students to make some more promo videos and maybe an UIB App in the future. I need to get that message out clearly to everyone this coming year. As for Wahoo, I am interested in getting some sponsorships, 1) they mean free stuff or 2) they give us more money to get a bigger name performer to appeal to our painfully mainstream student body.

At the beginning of school last year, I signed up to be a campus representative for TOMS Shoes in hopes of starting some sort of TOMS Campus Club, fail. Elise from TOMS shoes has contacted me letting me know that the Cultural Life Committee has gotten Blake Mycoskie (TOMS Creator) to speak at JWU this coming fall. This would be a great way to spread awareness on our campus about TOMS shoes. It is definitely not as big of a deal in the northeast, TOMS shoes that is. Of course out of the 5 or 6 campus reps at JWU that received the same email, 2 of us emailed back expressing interest and excitement. Great, I needed another responsibility to take on! Hopefully I can get some support and hopefully someone else more capable than me and head this one. I love TOMS and would love to do an internship with them one day, but I'm afraid of spreading myself out too thin. I have an education to get on top of all my extra curriculars too.

So much nothing has happened at home since I've been back from Wisconsin. My life pretty much consists of gym, class, wedding talk with Misty, watching The Bachelorette, Secret Life, Gilmore Girls, Arrested Development, Mad Men, and Pushing Daisies, and some working at the restaurant is sprinkled into the mix too. I am enjoying my time off, but you know me, I get restless and a bit depressed due to lack of activity, I must get it from my mother. Sorry for the long post, I'll try to get back in the habit of blogging more often so I can keep them brief.

That's all for now! Until next time...