The rain outside of my window just tricked me.

You know those split seconds where something reminds you so strongly of some place or some time or some... something? I felt for the briefest moment like I was lying in my bed listening to a rain storm dragging spring along. Like it had been a long winter and I was hearing the first sign of spring with all of its blossoming and warmth and sunshine along with rain. And then a split second later my mind caught up with my feelings and reminded me of the fact that it's November and that spring is a long time away, and I've got to go through winter before I can get to my favorite season again.

I don't know. For a moment I felt content. I felt like I was where I wanted to be. And yeah, that's still true here in November. I am content. Things aren't perfect by any means, but when are they ever? I'm here and that's not going away and certain parts of my life are really great. I don't even know what I'm saying anymore. I guess I felt some hope for a split second in the midst of the kinda not so great things going on in my life. And it felt good.

September, 2010

I'm not sure how well I explained this undertaking in previous posts. I had told Aaron that I was in a photo slump and not feeling very creative, and then I found this website that basically just came up with lists of photo concepts for you to do in a month and then you were supposed to upload what you got to the website. Unfortunately, the site hadn't been updated in about a year so I was still kinda stuck. But thennnn Aaron said "I'll make you a list!" and then gave me a list of 15 things to do in a month.

You'll notice that there are only nine. This is because I'm a failure as a girlfriend and a human being. And a photographer. But I hope you can forgive me, because I did try. It's just easy to get caught up and forget about things until it's too late and everyone's all sad... but there's nothing you can do about it.

So anyway, here's what I got:

There was a guy drawing the statue of Lord Botetourt that's in front of the Wren Building here, so I didn't feel too creepy taking this picture. Though for some reason having a camera in Williamsburg usually makes me feel like a total stalker. I don't know why. It's not weird to take pictures. But it feels as though it is here. It's odd.
Oh yeah, after this some jogger came up to me and asked me how far it was between the Wren Building and the Governor's Mansion. Yeah. I'm a William and Mary student, therefore I know stuff like that. Not?

The wonders of photo editing. This picture was dead. Boring. It still is pretty boring. Which makes me sad. But it was like 100 times more boring before I played around with it. So just imagine that.
This one was really fun to do. Although I felt like the biggest creep ever taking it. Sitting on a picnic bench not too late at night with people walking around... undoubtedly watching me sitting there with a camera in the dark taking 3-second-long pictures. I should probably get over that.
Ooh, this one has an amusing story too! So obviously when you take pictures of stuff on the ground, they're going to suck unless you get close to the ground, right? I was crouching to take these pictures (with people walking around staring at me, of course) and then I stood up and started walking away... when this girl comes up to me and goes "oh good, I thought you'd fallen or something" once she sees I was just taking pictures. Nervous laugh. Ugh.
This, of course, is the beautiful cocoa. You know this story already.
The School of Education is a sweet sweet building. Too bad we couldn't get in it that day. The banisters feel like air. I don't even know how to describe it. But they feel beautiful.
Don't really have much to say about this one except that I got in the most secluded spot I could find to take this. Score.
I wish there wasn't construction constantly going on by my dorm, or this would have been much better.
Feets.

The End.

Fall Break

Fall break. Was. Entirely. Too. Short.

What I Did Over Fall Break
-Went to New York to visit my great aunt
-Bought jeans!
-Wrote my American Lit paper
-Found and brought back a bunch of stuff (including winter coat yayyyyy now I won't have to freeze my ass off)
-Watched a shitload of TV

What I Didn't Do Over Fall Break That I Meant To Do Over Fall Break
-Get a haircut
-Go to Noodles & Co.
-Hang out with Christine
-Finish a book (I did listen to The Blind Side on CD on the ride home from NY. But that doesn't really count.)
-Find my ipod headphones and shorts that my sister stole
-Go on a run or two
-Sleep in (Seriously. Didn't get to sleep in once. Boo.)
-Finish watching a shitload of TV
-Go grocery shopping
-Buy rain boots

So basically I am a gigantic failure. But I really like that photo up there. So I guess it's ok? I'm becoming more comfortable with taking pictures of people, although it's usually their backs. I've been getting all sorts of inspired by portraits lately. Maybe I'll actually get my act together one of these days and find someone who likes getting their picture taken and then shoot the shit out of them. With a camera, of course.
Let's see... what else is new. I still need to put up all of the fall pictures I took last month, I swear I'll get around to it... I've just been meaning to photoshop them a little to make them look a bit better and I've had absolutely no time to do anything. I have no time now. But I'm still in fall break mode and completely in denial that I have to go to class tomorrow. So maybe I'll edit and upload those pictures tonight.

Have I even talked about William and Mary? I'll just say that I really like it (although I might like it less in a month or so because my closest friend here besides Aaron is leaving) and that it's a lot of work, but of course I like that as well. I've learned that I'm an INFJ. And some more stuff. You know. Anyway, I'd better get going if I'm gonna have time to play around with photo editing tonight. Later.

Facebook is down again- October 6, 2010

The World Is Coming To An End!

It's official.

Ps my blog is fucking adorable now. Maybe I'll actually update it now ;)

(Aaron says I fuckin' better...eeks)

Chocolate.

Yesterday, Aaron and I went a little crazy.
It started out pretty normal. We went grocery shopping. We went to the school of education so I could take some photos (more about that later). We ate dinner.

Then we got bored. The idea of going to the candy store was somehow brought up. It was deemed acceptable. I had been craving a candy apple, so I went in with the intention of us getting that and then something for Aaron and then leaving. Aaron apparently had something else in mind. We ended up with $30 worth of candy... a pound and a half of jelly beans, mint chocolate sticks, truffles, gourmet hot chocolate, and a fancy apple. It was ridiculous.

I've been in kind of a photo slump ("I haven't noticed," you sarcastically remark), so Aaron offered to assign me photo homework. Which was really sweet of him, and it has forced me to go out and explore campus and look kind of sketch while taking photos, but I have a big procrastination problem. There are 15 things on the list to be completed... by the end of the month. Wow. I kinda just realized how behind I am. Anyway, the hot cocoa was shoved in my face by my caring boyfriend as a reminder that I needed to take more pictures. So I relented. We wanted it to be the prettiest picture of cocoa I've ever taken (not that I've taken any pictures of cocoa, I don't think, but whatever), so we went to the grocery store again and bought even more fattening items- whipped cream and whipping cream. So we got home, and I got all over-analytical and stressed out about making this cocoa pretty while also making it taste good... and I think I did well in the pretty department, at least. Despite the chocolate sticks falling in our drinks. Twice. And melting all over the handle.

So yeah, yesterday was very sugar-filled, as I'm sure every day until this pile of candy is gone will be. Not that I mind... I'll just have to make sure to schedule extra trips to the gym in the near future ;).

So. So. So. Excited.

Yeah, this news is a tiny bit late. But it's awesome all the same. And I'm STILL fucking excited about it. (ps try to figure out my address from THAT. Hah.)

I GOT IN!!!!! BOTH SCHOOLS!!!!!!!!!!! Goodbye, VCU. Hello, uhh... either UVA or William and Mary. I still have no idea. I'm visiting both schools this weekend. But I am absolutely ecstatic. It's like a whole new exciting chapter in my life has been opened, and I haven't been this happy in a long time. This post is probably going to be really full of me praising myself, but I'm really really proud of myself. I just feel like this is a huge accomplishment... usually when it comes to things like this I just resign myself to failure, but this time I kept at it and worked my ass off and it paid off, and it's really awesome. I'm going into next year with a 4.0... not expecting to come out of it with that GPA though, haha. But I'm okay with that. I can't wait to get to school and be surrounded by intelligent people all the time who push me to try hard and who I don't feel uncomfortable talking about grades to. This year, every time someone asked me how I did on something I usually told them I did 10 whole points worse than I did. And people were usually still impressed. Next year... I may be lying in the opposite direction, but I don't think I'll mind. I can't wait for challenging classes and learning and nerdy friends and weird people... which I think will be easier to find at WM. So score 1 for WM, I guess.

But yeah. For once I find myself hoping that summer flies by so I can get to school and meet people and have fun and hopefully have more of a college experience than I did this year... because this year sucked. And granted, I will miss a few people, and if I end up going to UVA, I'll end up missing Aaron a lot. I just want my new life to start NOW. I've been longing for something that I can't really explain for so long, and I think I've found it, and I want to fill it so badly. So I hope I can make this decision soon.

Let's break the walls and find how to live, 'cause you and I have so much to give.

Suffice it to say, it's been a rough week.
What's awesome though is that all the crappy feelings and butterflies in the stomach and other things made me and Christine spend a LOT of time together. Which made me really happy, because we hadn't spent that much time together in... God knows how long. I love Christine so much, and I'm going to miss her a lot when I transfer. She's just... a really wonderful person. I'mmm gonna try to hold my tears in now. Hold on a second.

Ok. I'm good. Anyway, on Saturday she took me to this pipeline in/on the James River, and it was really cool when there were railings (such as in this photo) and really scary when there weren't (and thus I was focusing on not falling into the water and soaking all of my valuables, and not taking pictures). And I didn't really get many good ones, probably because I'm ridiculously rusty because I haven't gone on a photoshoot since... AP Photo. I take so many pictures like this one, and get so excited because for me, there's something really intriguing about lots of lines leading to one point. But I always, always forget a focal point, something for the eye to be drawn to, or else it's just... a background. And I think that says a lot about me. I think about the future in general, the fact that it's there, the fact that the things I'm doing are leading to it, but I find it hard to think of something concrete in there. Like I know I'm going to grow up and do something, but I have no idea what. I have little to no idea what I want to major in, much less what I actually want to do with my life. I know that I want to be happy and make the people around me happy, but I don't know how to accomplish this. I know a lot of the people I get close to will most likely drift away due to distance or differences, but I have a hard time imagining it or accepting it when it comes.

So yeah, that's actually one of the first thoughts that came to my mind when I looked at that picture. I didn't try to BS something thoughtful to say so I could use it in a blog post.

As for last week, I'm trying my hardest to accept what life throws at me and trying not to think too much about the past and trying to look at things with different perspectives. Trying not to be so self-centered. Trying to get these goddamn butterflies in my stomach to settle.

No picture, just talking

Sorry. I've just thought a lot today.

I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to have friends.
First, there's college. And the whole horrible experience of being in classes with people, living in this huge building with hundreds of people, eating lunch surrounded by these people and not finding one single person to be friends with. Not one fucking person in this whole goddamn 20,000-plus-student campus.
Then, there's everything else. I've had so many "best friends" throughout my lifetime. Very few of them have actually been good friends. Most of them were people who I had fun times with, sure, but if I was to ever be stuck with them in a one-on-one setting, I panicked... because there was nothing to talk about. Inside jokes don't really happen unless you're with a group of silly people. So those relationships faded as soon as someone else caught their attention, or a change of location got in the way, or if we simply drifted.
The rest of the close friends I have had, with a couple of exceptions, have either left or been taken from me. There is something about me that causes people to know me for a couple of years, have good times with me, and then just leave. And I don't understand what makes me so unworthy of having someone who can stick with me for the long term. I try really hard not to be an awful person. The worst thing is, I used to pride myself on how great of a friend I was. I recently wrote an essay on how one of the worst years of high school (ironically caused by a best friend ditching me in favor of another group of people) caused me to turn it into something positive where I tried to be the best friend I could possibly be and care about everyone who came into my life and blah blah blah. I don't know if I'm that great of a friend anymore. I'm probably not. There's probably no excuse for it, either.

This isn't to say that I don't consider Aaron my friend. I do, he's my best friend and I can tell him everything, and I do tell him everything. There's just something about me that needs multiple people to lean on, though... different opinions, different perspectives. I guess I've also grown up with the idea that girls should have their best friends... blame Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants or The Year of Secret Assignments or basically any young adult book for girls, which I've read a large quantity of.
I'm afraid, too, that it's coming up to that second-year mark... around the time where the people I considered myself close to leave. I'm afraid that I'll do something wrong, or I'll become too boring or too annoying or too clingy or too something, and he'll be gone.

I don't know. This actually wasn't supposed to be so depressing or whatever it is... and it's really not pointed towards anyone in particular. Yes, there was something that sort of set off this thinking in earnest, but it's been mulling around my head for a long time now. I just felt like tonight was the night to get it off my chest.