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Long Time, New Blog?

Did that title even make sense?  No?  Well...I'm just going to go ahead and blame that on it being 1:21a.m....

Anywho, I know I've been missing here for close to an eternity, and my penchant for all things to be perfect and orderly led me to create a new blog.  I'd love if you'd come and follow me over there!

See you soon <3


An Open Letter to Snow

Here
Dear Snow,

Tuesday afternoon, and here you are again - just a few days after the sun came out for the first time in what feels like centuries and melted you.  I'll be honest...I wasn't too sad to see you go.  I was pretty upset to see you falling back down outside my window, though.

We've had some rough times, snow; but I think this winter has been the worst.  I just can't seem to go anywhere without finding you on the bottoms of my boots and tracking into my house.  You're cold, and pretty inconvenient.  The 10 inches last week?  It trapped me in my parents' house for two days, and I was going a little more than stir crazy.  It hasn't been a fun year for us, and we're only a month in.

Honestly, it's no secret that I prefer the sun.  But I want to apologize for making you sound all bad.  There was a time, snow, when I couldn't wait for you to come by.  A 10% chance of one inch had me smiling like an idiot with the thought that school might be canceled the next day.  I made snow women, snow angels, snow forts...snow everything, really.  You gave my friends and I hours of enjoyment when I was younger.

And do you remember freshman year of college?  I barely had class those first two weeks; coloring and watching movies on the projector with all my dorm-mates was pretty awesome, I'll admit.  So I know you're pretty great.

But snow, I think you and I are better off as "sometimes friends".  You know what I mean?  I love seeing you a couple times a year, but this every day thing - I think it's toxic for us.  Snow, I think we need to take a break from each other.  We can take another look in, say, nine months?


                                                                                                                                              Love always,
               

The First Sentence


It's the blank page that always gets me....I love it - its feel, its look, its endless possibilities - at the same time that I am terrified of it.  I never have any idea where to begin, so I don't.  For months, I put off writing anything rather than admitting to the possibility of writing something I'm not proud of.

With articles, I always start from the second paragraph, coming back at the end to write my lead.  I know the first two sentences are probably the easiest, but for me they hold the most potential for failure.
With blogging, I write a hundred beginnings, hardly settling on one even in the last seconds before hitting that orange "publish" button at the top of my screen.  Maybe I'm just indecisive, and maybe that's why this screen has stayed blank for so many months now.

Now, with the last few months of my life as a student looming out ahead of me like the proverbial 11th hour, I have no idea where to begin.  I can't seem to write that first sentence, that first paragraph of the rest of my life.  At the same moment that all the blank pages in front of me excite and encourage me - I could still do anything I want, just like my parents always told me - I am terrified almost to the point of inaction.  I have applied to hundreds of jobs, only to hear back from so few that an e-mail has me smiling for hours.  But as much as I want to go - to find myself at a desk, writing something that matters and wearing a blazer - I also want to stay here, in the town I've spent four years getting to know so well that it feels like home.

I've always wanted to move on.  Pennsylvania, the towns I've lived in here, have somehow never satisfied me for long.  After just a few years, I'm always ready to start over.  But that first day in a new town, new home, new school...it always catches in my throat, threatening to hold me back.

The first sentence always catches me.

Mind Vomit

I know I haven't posted in weeks, and yet here I'm sitting...looking at a blank screen and not having a single idea that I could turn into a comprehensible post.

So...what you're going to get today is basically word vomit....except mind vomit.  Is that a thing?

(1)
Conflict is unavoidable - we're all going to fight with our friends, family, coworkers...
I think the really important thing that we all need to learn is how to handle it.  We're all different people, who have been raised differently and have different personalities.  But there has to be some middle ground that we can all agree makes the best of a situation, right?

(2)
I don't know about you guys, but this semester is busy already.  Internship two days a week, class two days a week, and work four days a week makes Kiersten a crazy girl.
But it's good too, I think.  It forces me to schedule, and work on functioning under a busy schedule.  I imagine that's what being an adult will be like.

(3)
I'm an INTJ which, among other things, means I am introverted. 
I knew that already - absolutely did not need a test to tell me (and yet, I take the tests over and over again because I'm interested in what they say). 
The thing is, I don't always like that about myself; I feel that life, especially my social life, would be 1000X easier if I were more extroverted.
I want to want to go out, but when I'm invited out to the bar or something....I'd rather curl up in bed with Sherlock and a good book (or five consecutive episodes of Doctor Who). 
I don't know if this is something I can change about myself, but I really wish I could.

(4)
I'm working on being less judgmental, because I know I can be pretty bad.  I don't say things out loud, but I think things.  And when I hear anybody else voice those thoughts...I immediately realize how disgusting it is.
We all have our problems...things that I'm sure other people are judging me on (ahem, my inability to go out for more than an hour, to name just one); so why do I think it's okay to judge them? 
I know it's only human...but lately, I've been stopping myself.  Whenever I feel a judgement coming on, I've stopped myself.
Do you have any better ideas of what might help?  Please tell me I'm not the only one with this problem....

(5)
It's my last year of college, at a campus I've spent the last three years at.  I've met wonderful friends here, people I don't imagine I'll lose contact with; but there are also those people that I just see every day. 
The boy who holds to door to my building for everyone walking in and out of class.  He just does...every time I go to that building, he is there holding the door.  I see him in the library, in the dorm, at Starbucks...and he knows my name.  I don't know when he learned my name, but he knows it.  And yet I don't know his.
The incredibly sweet woman who runs the snack stand in my department's building.  I must have become familiar to her at some point, because we have conversations now.  She asked me today whether I'm a senior, and what I plan to do after graduation.
The professor in my department that I love.  I take him for anything I can, and it makes me slightly sad that after next semester - I won't be able to learn anything else from him.  Sad in the same way that I was leaving my favorite teachers behind in high-school.  Just one more person I'll have to say goodbye to in May.

(6)
Life, and all the little difficulties that come with it, are hard.  Hard enough to make me want to cry more often than not lately, and I think I need to find something to distract me from it.  Because my usual methods just aren't working, and I'm really stressed out.