“I was outnumbered, unarmed, weak, and screwed. In that order.” Jennifer Lynn Barnes' Raised by Wolves
Well, it’s sort of been a while since I’ve written, and I have a very good reason for stalling! It’s a big under-construction post that will be coming your way, I promise! Just a reminder, the poll is still going until July 1st! But…I’ll probably just extend it anyway.
With such a long time here at home away from school, I’ve been cleaning through my things to get rid of things that I don’t really use anymore, while having a very interesting experience looking at the middle school/high school me. I’ve already blazed through 3 years of college and it’s amazing how much I’ve changed and it’s sort of weird; time can feel so short and so long at the same time.
One of the things I found was this silly book called The Totally Righteous, Awesomely Cool, Simply Outrageous List Book. Yeah, blast from the past, huh? It’s a book where they have a bunch of lists of like top 10 this, all-time favorite that, most of which, if not all of them are just as corny as the title of said book. No wait, it gets better! It comes with stickers—with phrases like “the bomb!”, “as if!” “phat!” and “not even!” Let’s just say I never got around to really filling out every last list. It just floors me how much pleasure I get out of making lists—and if it’s a “to do” list, I get a kick out of crossing things off! Woot! One list that sort of floored me was this list I wrote in the back of things I wanted to be when I “grow up” or really, things I wanted to accomplish while I’m alive and ready to live. Here’s the list:
I want to be a:
- novelist
- mother/wife
- world traveller
- graduate
- musician
- missionary
- artist
However, now that I’m thinking about it, I feel like I need to update this list to make it slightly more specific and yet things I’ve been thinking about adding to the list. They’re not in any particular order, just in order of subconscious thinking:
- be the best sister missionary I can be
- not be frustrated while re-learning German
- publish DS [my affectionate nickname for my novel]
- be a [published] writer
- get a job as an editor, somehow wheedle myself into the publishing business
- graduate from college!
- keep this blog going
- get married/be an awesome mom & wife
- keep in touch with as many friends as I can
- keep travelling! I just cannot stop!
- be the best hip-hop dancer I can be
- go to a renaissance fair WITH a homemade costume!
- choreograph a full song’s worth of MOVES.
- Huske danske efter min mission, ellers lærne igen!
- try to not compare myself to others (there’s gotta be a plus for being a “jack-of-all-trades”)
- host more parties (when I get back to Provo)
- get far enough as a writer that people actually know who I am and yet don’t berate my work like so many people have with Twilight.
I think that’s a good start; I’m good at adding onto these sorts of things. Just after writing this past sentence, I added 2 or 3 to the list! I’m tellin’ you, it’s like a crazy twitch! Do you have a bucket list? If so, share it w/ me, it might give me some great ideas! It’s amazing that as kids we dream so big, and what’s even more amazing is how willpower can really get us there, despite how crazy the world and life can get.
P.S. I couldn’t end this blog w/o sharing a ridiculous list I wrote in the back of this book. I wrote it w/ a great friend of mine Karin Allred (affectionately called ‘Charlotte Blackwood’ as well) and it’s called:
Things NOT to do on a Plane:
- Move your seat back and forth when the person behind you has food on their tray.
- Open your carry-on and whisper loudly, “got enough air?”
- Get up frequently to go to the bathroom if seated by the window.
- “Test” the help button—just to make sure it works.
- Claim to your neighbor that you made the plane and keep saying, “it’s not supposed to do that!”
- Laugh constantly during the in-flight movie.
- Remind your neighbor, “As my mom always says, what comes up must come down!”
- Make a point of showing your neighbor your fake gun in your pocket.
- Constantly open and close the small tray in front of you.
- Bring a hamster
- Mimic the safety procedures
- Steal others’ bags of peanuts.
I'm not sure if we actually came up w/ all of these or were under the influence of the internet, but we were rather creative back in the day [if not still to this day!]
