smile like you mean it...

What does it mean to be responsible? Responsibility is something which is learned through experience and through gaining maturity. To be responsible, one must first of all have certain responsibilties and second of all do what it takes to fulfill your responsibilties, sacrificing yourself and the things you enjoy to meet the requirments of the obligations set on you. These obligations may come in the form of academics, work, sports (though sports are not as important as the first two), family obligations, etc. To be truly responsible one must handle all these obligations at once and with grace, making wise choices throughout the process. Unwise choices can screw up your life and erase all the hard work which you've accomplished, or at least set you back to some degree. Also, you must be mature.

Maturity is something which comes with experience, for most people. It is an awareness of yourself and how you should conduct yourself in situations. It is rising to the occasion and going beyond the expectations of others. It is doing your best in everything you do. It is knowing when to work and when to play. Life presents many situations in which maturity and responsibility can be gained. It is part of learning to develop these characteristics to identify these opportunities and learn from them rather than running away from them. Just because something stretches you doesn't mean it is a bad thing. One can only learn by going through things which you have not yet gone through. Life presents hard things and happy things both, and it is up to you how you deal with them. If you want to run and hide from them, you will never learn to grow from your experiences. If you choose to develop yourself and learn and grow, you will become a better, stronger person.

i'll sing this valley winter song for you...

If I knew I was going blind, there are many things I would want to see before I did. I would want to travel around the world and take in the beauty of it. I've lived here in America all my life and I've seen many parts of it, but there is much more to the world than America. I would want to travel to Asia and see its serenity and beauty. I would want to visit Australia and take in the incredible beaches and sunsets. I would want to see Paris and London, the countryside in Europe. but most of all, I think I would want to see the faces of my children. I don't have any children now, but one day I probably will, and I would hate to live my life never knowing what they looked like, if they looked like me, if they looked like their father, the gleam in their eyes when they laughed, the beauty of their smiles, the glisten of their tears, the happiness as they played...I would want to experience that and see it before my vision disappeared.
I would always want to remember the faces of my family and friends, my home, the immensity of the ocean, the power of a sunrise or a sunset...There are many things which one can feel, touch, and hear that blow the mind, but the gift of sight is beyond compare and I never want to take it for granted.

she said...

There have been several things in my life which I anticipated with great expectation which proved to be not exactly what I had expected. For example, I thought that once I turned a certain age, everything in my life would be perfect. Once I reached that age, it was nothing like I expected it to be. None of the privelidges and joys which I had hoped for came true, not at that time at least. They did eventually come true, but not in the way in which I expected. It taught me, though, that if I sit waiting for a certain time or a certain event to occur to change my life, to define me and give me happiness, happiness will never come, becuase fulfillment does not come in events or in being a certain age. It comes from inside. I can say that all I want, write it, speak it, think it, but that doens't mean that I fully understand it in my life. I still look forward to certain things that I think will make my life perfect, but it never does. I have to be happy inside and until I am, nothing on the outside will be fulfilling.

kuz I've seen the twilight...

Dropping my notebook onto the chair next to me, I collapsed into the black cushions of the chair beneath me. It had been a hard run, and sweat still drenched my shirt. It had been strange; sometimes it felt as though I was running away from something, that if I only made it a step farther it would be lost in the distance behind me. Today, though, it was like I was running toward something, not like a race or a finish line, but like I was chasing something; I was never quite sure what. It was though it was hiding just around every cuve in the road. Every turn, ever fork, every angle, hid it from my view, and I had to catch it before it escaped forever. I hadn't found it. It left me with a feeling of frustration which remained with me even as I sprawled in the chair. I grabbed my notebook and started scribbling down words as they came to my head. My pen scratched against the paper, making dark little marks, almost uninteligable to anyone but me. Nothing I was writing was making any sense. This just added to my frustration, and I threw back my head in defeat, anger, and rebellion, all at once. Whatever this force was that was driving me to press on, to write on, to find...what? It didn't matter anyways. Closing me eyes, I tried to clear my mind of the clutter of the day. I forced the lines of anger and frustration to smooth away from my features, leaving my face empty and devoid of emotion. I was fine. With that, I wadded up the piece of paper which had been the object of my dissasitsfaction and threw it at the chair beside me. There it rested, beside the Dr. Pepper stain.

and lifes not blowin her kisses thanks to you...

I felt the can slip from my fingers as though it suddenly was covered with jello and could no longer be confined to grasp of my hand. The brown liquid spilled forth from the can, it too hating the containment of its surroundings. As it oozed through my jeans to find me, my skin felt suddenly cold, and the dark stain which appeared on the washed denim stood out like a streak of ink across a perfectly white paper. It fizzed upon contact. I glanced down with apathy at the scene before me, in which I and the can of Dr. Pepper were the main figures (well, and the contents of the can, if you want to get technical about it). A sigh escaped my lips as I reached down to regain my control of the renegade can. The cool metal was now wet and somewhat sticky, and as I stood, I noticed that the brown liquid had found its way to the chair beneath me and was seeping into the cushions. I wiped the remainder on my jeans as I trudged to bathroom in search of papertowels. Shoving open the door, I quickly located the items to be procured and shoved a large wad of them into my open backpack, all the while using a handful to soak up the liquid penetrating my clothing. Back at the chair, my efforts were utterly futile to make amends with the chair cushions. The damage had already been done. I sighed again and plopped back down. The other occupants of the room may have eyed me with amusement, some with mocking, and perhaps a few even with pity, but I do not remember. All I remember is that my eyes looked out those windows, my thoughts were a million miles away again, and I was once again a disaster waiting to happen.

it's so beautiful when the boy smiles...

What is a situation in which i have had to smile and didn't want to?
There are many times in life when I am called on to smile and do not feel compelled to. One of these is when I'm at family gatherings of some sort and random relatives run up to me and are like, 'oh my goodness! i haven't seen you since you very tiny!' and this unknown stranger who claims to be related to me proceeds to throw there arms around me and be like, oh it's soo good to see you honey!! yeah. Not my favorite thing in the world. But of course, I smile. :)
Whats another one...? When I'm talking to someone who I don't really enjoy spending time with but who either i need to spend time with, because they need someone to spend time with them, or becuase i'm obligated by some outside force to spend time with them. In conversation, I often must smile and laugh at things I do not really think are funny, or must try to find funny, because it's kind to do so. That's kind of mean. lol.
I love to smile, so when I smile, it's usually genuine, of a nature. it may not be like, 'YAY i'm happy!' or like wow you just made me laugh kind of smile, but I smile when I'm happy and smiling makes me happy, so thats nice lol. If i'm in a bad mood or if I'm getting angry or impatient or something, I sometimes just like make myself smile so I won't get upset.
Sometimes I smile when I'm nervous, like i won't know what to do, or what to say in response to someone so i just smile, and that usually works out. Someone will ask me a question and i'll be thinking like uhhhh, so i just smile and laugh kind of and it works out. lol. I think its intersting in observation of other people. people who are confident will meet your eyes when you walk by them and will smile at you. People who are not confident will be too nervous to meet your eyes and definately won't smile at you. Ok. enough about smiling. :)

take my hand, live while you can...

I have had many excellent teachers of the years. The most memorable ones from my elementery years were Mrs. Lunceford and Mrs. Hunt. Actually, Mrs. Alderidge may have been even more memorable than those two, but definately not in a posative manner. lol. We had a small class, but she didn't know how to handle us becuase we were always rather rambunctous. She would whistle whenever we got loud (which was quite frequently) like one of those whistles that you can hear on tv at Turner field during a baseball game. Yeah. one of those. And our classroom wasn't very big, let me tell ya lol. So that was never fun. And she would yeeeelllll at us. a lot. She also loved to give us like huge tests, i'm talkin like twelve pages, pop test, and they would totally count. I was always a rather emotional child (still am sort of) and i would sit there and cry as i tried and tried to figure out the right answers to put down. anyways. she was the not so great one.

Mrs Lunceford taught me math and science and she was excellent. Very engaging, very fun, awesome experiments in science. We made volcanoes and they exploded. We made tons of stuff in her class. She was always changing her hair and nail color. We would walk in one day and she'd have like longish blonde hair, and the next day, she'd have cut it all off and dyed it dark red. it would stay red for a while til it grew out and then it would go blonde again. back and forth. She also used sunless tanner. one time, she put it on and then worked out. yeah. it streaked all down her legs. She wore pants for quite a while lol. Mrs Hunt was an awesome teacher, cute blonde hair, very petite, very stylish, very fun. She taught language arts and she was always just like, i don't know. we all wanted to be like ms hunt. In mrs lunceford's class, we had to make fossils out of shells one time, and we were supposed to have oil or something to go on our hands, but we didn't, so we had to mayonassaise, like coat our hands in mayonnaise. it was disguisting. i hate mayoinnase. lol. The fosills turned out cool though.

In middle school, I had Mrs Lee as a teacher. She was probably my all time favorite teacher (so far lol). She was awesome, always smiling, always happy, always encouraging, and i learned sooo much from her. She always helped you to do your best and stretch your limits and go beyond your currect status to reach your potential. She helped me a lot in my writing skills and also encouraged me a lot in public speaking, even though i never felt like i was good at public speaking. She thought i should be one professionally and i was like HA. (public speaking is not my thing, like i can do it, and i can do relatively ok at it, but im not comfortable with it). I really enjoyed learning from her and I'm very grateful that I had her as a teacher. During high school, i had excellent teachers as well. The Thaxtons taught me a lot and prepared me for life in a way which i would never have been if I had been in a different school. So those are my favorite teachers in years past. :)

summer has come and past....

My favorite food is Italian food. I love to eat at Macaronni grill. I like it there for a lot of reasons. one of them is that i like the atmosphere there, and also, i absolutely love the food. One problem with this, however, is that rich food makes me sick, so i always end up sick after i eat my favorite foods, which isn't very nice. but i enjoy them while i'm eating them at least. The atmosphere at macaronni grill is awesome because its like, makes you feel like your at home or something, without being at all like, hick. One of my friends works there too. If i'm eating fast food, my favorite restraunt is chick ful a. I like there chicken nuggets and their cool wraps. they also have excellent lemonade. If im going to a coffee place, I like to go to starbucks, or the senoia coffee company. I live in Senoia, and we have a little coffee shop thats really cool. its been talked about in like all sorts of magazines and people come from all over the place to see it. I guess i've never been like, awed by it because its always been within sight distance of my bedroom window and its less than a five minute walk away, but i still really like their coffee. frapuccinos are my favorite coffee beverage, in the summer at least, well since we live in GA like, most of the spring and half of the fall and all of the summer, becuase its hot during all those months. If its not hot, i love the pumpkin spice latte at starbucks. they just came out with a pumpkin spice frapuccino which i had for the first time the other day. it was very good. i think i still prefer the mocha frapuccinos though.

If i'm going to be eating at home, then i like to eat pizza or pasta or something like that. i'm not exactly the best cook in the world, but there a few things which i can cook, one of these being frozen pizza (lol) as long as i remember to take the cardboard off of the bottom before i put it into the oven. (this has happened before lol) but i'm actually very good at cooking chicken or shrimp alfredo. (not from a box or a package lol) from an actual recipe. I like to order pizza too. Mellow mushroom is my favorite, but they don't deliver. pizza hut is my favorite delivery place and then comes papa johns. they have awesome garlic sauce, but the crust is a little doughy at times. ok. thats enough about food. i love peaches!!!! peaches are awesome.

if i just breathe....

Hello. it's very hot in here. Unbearably so. I do not understand why one would consider this oppresive heat a condisive environment for learning. I'm tired today. I keep going to bed like either really late or at a decent time but either way it doesn't really matter because I dont' go to sleep. So anywayz. I don't have speech class today!!!! yes! lol. i don't mind speech class, but it's just like, sooo long, because it goes from six until eight forty five and then i have to drive home and it's just like ehh, because i had to get up at six in the morning in the first place, so yeah. I'm glad i don't have to go. I'm awake like right now though, at this moment, because i just drank like a huge pibb xtra. i'm so excited because i didn't think i was going to get to play soccer with my youth group, but i found out the other day that we get to play! so i'm going to get every saturday too, as well as tuesdays and thursdays. so thata nice. i'm going to be so very physically fit by the end of this semester lol. carrying that huge backpack is going to help too, sadly enough lol. dr koch is singing to us. scary. lol. oh oh! i got a ninety two on my humanities test. which is really awesome because there weren't very many good grades in the class so i'm really happy about that. :) the average of the class was a c minus so i was like yayyy. ok i'm done now

i'll spread my wings and i'll learn how to fly...

I played soccer today. Rachel is sitting by me. I keep getting people's names mixed up. I don't normally do that very often, but in the last couple of days, it hasn't been so great lol. I think I just like reversed to of my friends names, and they're like ummm lol. So anywayz, about soccer. We played on the real field today. taht was fun, except it was like way harder because it's so much bigger. it was still fun though. I'm continuing in my streak of knocking people over. I knocked over another guy today. I was like, "i'm sorry I knocked you over," and he like acted like he'd done it on purpose, i was like no. lol. but anywayz. we went to subway after soccer. that was fun. I like, wasn't hungry though, so i ordered this whole sandwich and then like ate three bites of it. and plus, I like ordered tomatoes, and then i sat down i was like, "i don't even like tomatoes!' so i took them off. i'm so tired. I had to two tests today. One was in Humanities and the other was in Math. I feel ok about both of them, because I studied and all and I wasn't like shcoked by any of the questions, except for one of humanities, but it shouldn't count for too much. So it'll be ok. Anywayz, I hope that I did well on those. Tests are alwayz a challenge, but they're over with for now, so yay! lol.

i look really horrible right now, as i'm sitting in english class. because we went out to subway, i didn't exactly get to change, so yeah. haha. I wrote my reflective letter and all last night. lol. that was ok. ok i'm runing out of things to ramble about. I had like the best day ever yesterday. i worked with my friend heather and then we like went to roly polys and heather got dinner, and we like sat in the car and she ate and we just like listened to music and it was just really fun. doing stuff that's just like, not really anything important is so fun sometimes, because it feels like i'm doing so much important stuff all the time with work and school and teaching and studying and all sorts of stuff that its just like, cool when I can relax with my friends and have fun. ok i'm done now.

There are times when it seems to me that life is very unfair.
And then there are times when all I see is beauty everywhere.
As life rolls on, I understand that it is always as it seems,
for as i wait to take the next step, it seems that this step takes forever.
I'm happy here to smile and laugh and grow and become so much better,
but somehow as I'm standing here I could look deeper.
I grow so tired of waiting away for something to come and awake me,
for within me lies the will to be all that i could ever dream

In his essay on listening, Copeland brings out three types of listening. The first of these three types is 1) the sensuous plane. The second of these is 2) expressive. The third is 3) the purely musical plane. The first of these two are relatively easy to describe. The first is listneing just for the pleasure of listening. You can be distracted and still listen in this form. When you turn the radio on in the car and just listen while you drive or as you clean your house or write a paper, or anything. The second of the of these planes is the expressive planes. This plane encomasses the actual meaning behind the music. Does music have meaning? Copeland thinks it does. I do too. Music means different things to different people making it very universal. All cultures through history have had music with which they expressed themselves. Not all of these people's advanced their music very far. However, almost all people have used music. Some people do not feel that music has meaning. I do not agree with this. I believe that music has meaning and which is very personal. The third of these is the purely musical plane. This plane is rather difficult to explain and the author does not go into in great detail. When I listen to music, I think I often listen n the expressive form, but I know I combine all the forms.