An Addendum

Just last night, I wrote a list of goals here - things I plan to push myself to do over the next few months that make up my fall semester.  One of those things was to post more regularly, and here I am not even 12 hours later with not the slightest idea what to write about.

Go me, huh?

Here's the thing, though.  Life's busy, especially lately.  And I can only see it getting more so.  Pair that with the fact that we all know I'm not that great at posting regularly under the best of circumstances and, well...come mid-week and I'm telling myself a post isn't really that important today; especially when I have no idea what to say. 

So here's my addendum to yesterday's blogging goal:
- I'm going to post regularly, just not daily.  I think, at least for now, I'm going to stick to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday posting schedule.  My hope is that with fewer days out of the week to think of content for, I'll have something better to say on the days I do post.
Maybe this will change, and maybe it won't - but for now, I think it's going to make things easier.  And even better than that, I hope that it will make what I say here more worth reading.

Let's See if I Actually Complete Any of These

I've always loved beginnings - New Year, new month, new book, new sheet of loose-leaf (for notes I've already written and re-written at least three times), new semester.  I think it's the feeling that any mistakes I've made are, in a way, erased; I can start with a blank page so to speak.

Beginnings give me the chance to make goals - to change, to make myself who I'd ultimately like to be.  Even if "eat healthy" ultimately turns into eating Cap'n Crunch for dinner.  Even if my goals come to very little, I think they still accomplish something; whether or not there's a noticeable change, goals make a difference in who we are.

So this semester, I have goals for each piece of my life: School, Internship, Work, Blog, Personal Life; and I'm going to share them here both for accountability, and for a record that I can make myself look at come November 3 when I never want to open another textbook.

School
- Make Dean's List, which at my school means a 3.67 GPA.  I've only made it once in my college career, and I want to again, because as weird as it sounds, it was a really awesome feeling to know I did that well.

Internship
- Create a portfolio I'm proud of, and will be excited to show to potential employers.  The newspaper I'm working for is offering me the opportunity to write for them, rather than to bring the staff-writers coffee and mail.  I want to make sure I take full advantage of that, because I know finding an internship like that is difficult.
- Leave a mark.  Make my supervisor remember me in a good way, one that makes him want to hire me full-time when I graduate.

Work
- Earn employee of the week at least once
- Top three server sales at least two weeks a month

Personal
- Create and follow at least some semblance of a budget.  Knock it off with the Starbucks every time I go to work or class, and try to remember that I'm working, at best, half as much as I did over the summer.  That means half the income.
- Work out at least twice a week - whether it be running, going to the gym, or attending the group fitness classes my school offers for free to students (I'm not going to even bother telling myself to eat healthy.  I think after nearly 22 years, it's clear that that particular ship has sailed).
- Read at least 4 books for pleasure.  I know that class readings, articles, text-books, and essays are going to keep me busy for the most part.  But I'd like to get in the habit of reading every night before bed, even if it's only a few pages.  Right now, my reading list includes:
          ~ Edelweiss Pirates by Mark A. Cooper
          ~ I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak
          ~ Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver (I'm reading this right now...even if it is soaked in wonton
             soup from the great lunch-box massacre of 10 hours ago) 
          ~ Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
          ~ Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Got any good suggestions to add to that list?

Blog
- Start posting regularly again.  None of this three times a week crap with only a couple hours left in the day (ahem, 10:13PM right now).  Regular might mean three times a week, as long as they are consistently the same three days.
- Consistently read the blogs I enjoy following.  And don't follow blogs just for the hell of it - every time I do that, I get overwhelmed when I go to my Bloglovin' feed and find 127 unread blog posts.  All that accomplishes is that I don't read any blogs.


For right now - that's it.  What about you; do you make goals?  What are they? 

I'm Hungover because of a Book

Have you ever loved a book so much that when you finish it, you don't know how to move on to something new?  That's where I'm at right now.

This morning before work, I sat on a bench down the street from my restaurant, sobbing over The Book Thief.  Every time I started to calm down, I remembered that even though Liesel and all of the other characters were fictional, the story was not.  Hitler, at least, existed.  Even now, thinking about certain lines in the last 50 pages of that book, I want to curl into a ball and sob for hours (and this is when I realize that my inability to take Holocaust Studies is probably for everyone's benefit). 

"I have loved the words, and I have hated them. And I hope that I have made them right."

- The Book Thief

In retrospect, I should have seen it coming.  Any allusion to the Holocaust has always made me feel this way; I still remember sitting in my 10th grade classroom, crying hysterically at Schindler's List.  Years later, when I read Milkweed and then The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, I cried again.  This particular piece of history has always, and will always shock and horrify me in a way that I can't find words to describe.  Only tears.

I came out of this particular experience not knowing how to move on from it.  When I close a book that good, I never know how to read another book, one that I'm sure will never live up to my new expectations.  So my question is this...what books have left you speechless and unable to move on?  What books have left you hungover the next morning, the next week?

Haven't we all Been in Miley's Place?

I've never been the type of person to watch the VMA's, or anything like it.  In high-school, when Kanye informed T Swift she was undeserving of the award she'd been given, it took me a few days to catch up  (I suppose that fact also tells you that I pay little attention to any form of entertainment media).  My primary source of celebrity information is the front page of tabloids while I wait in line at the grocery

So this past weekend, when Miley decided to pretend the stage was a frat party and Robin Thicke was her drunken crush-for-a-night college buddy, I continued to obliviously serve tables.  It wasn't until Tuesday that my professor walked into class and asked a question, and I learned exactly what it was that had happened over the weekend:

"For weeks, the situation in Syria has been deepening.  The United States and our allies are considering war.  And what is on the front page, so to speak, of CNN's website?  Miley Cyrus twerking."

here

Since then, I've seen countless blog posts, and several more articles bemoaning and excusing Miley.  My Facebook feed could think of nothing more worthy of posting for at least two days after the fact  (well, that and a small discussion of Lady Gaga's apparent irrelevance in comparison).  Thought Catalog has at least a few articles about the situation, both for and against Miley's recent life decisions.  My father, my professors, my classmates all had opinions on the matter - primarily negative.

It can certainly be universally agreed upon that Miley is being, for lack of a better word, stupid.  But she is young and entitled to the same opportunity for bad decision-making that we were all given.  That I am being given now, whether or not I seize it in the way that she is.  

What I think is important is that we take this as an opportunity not just for Miley to learn (as she probably won't for years to come), but for our society to learn.  What the media has seemed to disregard is Robin Thicke's place in the weekend's events.  Miley may have made a bad decision, but she did not make it alone; and what I think we need to be focused on is the difference in people's reactions.

Here

No, Thicke was not more-than-half naked on stage at the VMA's, but he was dancing with a girl more than half his age who was.  Several weeks ago, he released a song and a video that is nothing less than creepy.  And for the most part, with pockets of the internet being an exception, the internet said nothing to or about him for that.  Instead, they gave the video over 15million views on Youtube.  They played it on every radio station and in every night club.  They turned it into a commercial.

As a society, we've made it incredibly far in the fight to end sexism - but I think Miley's recent life decisions, particularly what she chose to do at the VMAs - prove that we have not made it far enough.  How is a 20-year-old girl vulgar and deserving of reproach for something that her 40-something male counterpart is not?  If one is responsible, certainly they both are.