I AM ACTUALLY THE HAPPIEST GIRL ALIVE. 90 DAYS FROM THIS DAY I WILL BE A BEAUTIFUL BRIDE AND WIFE.

LIFE IS WONDERFUL.  

Chin up

There's been a lot of messy things I've been thinking about lately, and it really all stemmed from an observation Ethan made about my eating habits. He was poking fun at the fact that I'm content with eating a quesadilla every single night for dinner; and I responded by saying I'm actually pretty content eating the same thing for every meal every day: yogurt or cereal for breakfast, celery and a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, snacks of apples or some fruit, and quesadilla for dinner (with obviously popcorn for after dinner). I like to think it's because I'm no longer a food driven person. My day doesn't really revolve around what I'm going to eat next (although at one time it did).

But, the more I thought about it, the more I asked myself "Am I really that boring? Has my life become such that I'm complacent to eat and do the same thing every day? Birth school work death?" It's unfathomably true. I miss the days of fullness and adventure that I once had--it's ironic that I lived in the same place my whole life and found many adventures and happiness, but when I moved across the country (thinking that I would find some huge adventure to explore and create a new identity) I've become really...insipid. It's embarrassing to admit that I'm no longer the vivacious bubbly girl I once was. I'm weird. I'm awkward. I go to work, school, come home, eat, practice or plan wedding stuff, watch Breaking Bad or play video games, workout, and then go to sleep. Repeat. 

What has become of me? Why has my insatiable desire for a full life suddenly run empty? 

I look too much into the past and now I'm sliding backwards. I was on top, shining brightly with so much potential and desire--so what's happened to it? Maybe I burned out from all of that energy. Maybe I've become so drugged that all of my exceptional ambition have been stomped out by heavy prescriptions. I can never have balance, can I? It must be crazy or dull. Ambitious or lazy. And sadly enough, I can't tell which I'd rather trade--sanity or effulgence. 

It's a fight between the selves, really. If you've ever read "The Inner Game of Music" by Barry Green (which everyone should, no matter if he or she is a musician), he talks a lot about the different "selves" which we all possess. The first self, "Self One", is our inner dialogue, our everyday voice that chatters incessantly about our downfalls, successes, decisions--basically everything you think to yourself is your "self one" directing you. It contains our concept about how things should or shouldn't be, or how things could have been.  Self  Two, on the other hand, is our "unthinking state"; this is the state of being that lives in the now, that knows its own potential and wants to be awakened. It contains our natural talents and abilities, and it is an unlimited resource that we can develop. How do you become aware of your Self Two without using Self One? Can we find freedom without using the chains that keep us from it? We must become aware of our unthinking state--this is the sensation we feel the minute we wake up, still slightly in our sleep cycle, or the unawareness we have when we are sick--and not kick it to the floor with the constant chatter in our minds...which I am constantly doing obviously. Self One is not just negative thinking, either. It is any praise, any criticism, any distraction from our current state of being. It is anything and everything that hinders us from our true potential--freedom from the mess that is ourselves. Self Two is the self that will give us inner peace. It won't direct or complain or change us. It lives and performs in the now. This is how we find peace within ourselves. Not from Self One. 

This is the heart of Taoism. If any of you knew me, I dabbled in Taoism for a while. I read the Tao te Ching and the books that accompanied it. I strove so hard to delve into the pages and find the meaning of why I was unhappy. I used too much of Self One trying to explore my Self Two. This was and is my bane. I think too much and try too hard to change my present state. 

And so here I am again. About to start another brave journey into myself to undercover the reasons for my unhappiness.  I want to find what is hindering my personal progress and what I can do to go beyond my self and into the realm of freedom. I want to be happy and positive, and it should be easy. It seems to come easy to others. I want to see myself for what I can become, not for what I was. I know I was great once. The true test is whether or not I can become that once again. 

Inhale. Exhale. Chin up. 

93 Days

Eeeep! Only 93 days until I'm married? What is this nonsense? I'm actually starting to get really freaked out---but not about the actual marriage part. I'm so glad that out of all the stresses and worries of a wedding I never ever have to doubt about marrying this guy. As long as I get married, the wedding has gone well.

Anyway, I have so many things left to do. Like...register for things, find bridesmaid dresses, send out invitations, find a cake, find suits,  find the music to be played, finish my dress, find centerpieces and decorations, plan food for the reception, talk to my officiator, finalize the guest list, find a groom's band...

To be honest, I feel like I haven't actually planned anything yet, and it's finally really really starting to stress me out. I try to knock something out each week but I feel like I'm going at a snail's pace, and I feel lost. I have a clear vision in mind, but it's hard to imagine what the finished product will look like.

But you know, I always knew I would never be one of those high maintenance brides that plans everything over a year in advance down to the smallest little detail like what color ribbon the flower girl will be wearing. I don't need big fabulous/impractical dresses for all my bridesmaids. Of course I want it beautifully done, but I just can't bring myself to go overboard. That's just not me.  It's one day. One day. It's a celebration of a union, that's it. Memories will last forever, but there's more to a marriage than one day. It's about promising to be happy together forever. And man am I happy with who I am marrying.

Really though, I'm freaking out. Under 100 days and I still have no idea what I'm going to do. Helpppp. Pleeeaaase.

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Waiting for sleep, I shut my eyes tightly to keep

the starry tears from floating away into the night,

upward into the darkness that envelops my restless senses.

I inhale, breathing in the crispness of my curse--

a method of the soul; a rich intake of

unquenchable wishes and miraculous destiny.

I drink it in, filled again with passions beyond fathom;

lustful and desirable like a Siren chained to her sins,

I exhale love-songs to enchant and ensnare, crooning to the heart,

beckoning to go into arms that will never hold requited love.

But like the falling sun I must return my splendor--gone is the starlight

dazzling ‘cross my face;

gone are the sprinkles of moonlight behind my eyes,

I am nothing—an empty shell with thistled and empty arms,

a heart that howls with unbridled passion.

I inhale, and the intoxication becomes me,

laced with the drunkenness of mania I stumble down the stairs

into madness.

Darkness.

I only wish to leave you,

forget you,

encounter dreams in which your presence is absent.

I yearn to be free from the 

 too-much

too-often,

and too-alive.

The truth of my existence.

I no longer miss the curves of desire that wrap around my naked being,

the ache of others to have my eyes sadistically turn them away.

I wish nothing more but to return to a clearer haven,

to flee from the horrors of my desolated caverns.

I must depart from the dreadful smile that shadows my every touch,

the one that captivates the world  but drives its owner mad,

for I know she will never let go.

I will begin a canvas with a softer stroke, a clearer

brush to dress the wounds. A portrait still untouched by darkness.

I have this journey in my hands—a palette with paint not yet muddled and torn by my own disaster.

And for the last time, I exhale you.

The actual best chocolate cake ever

I just made the best chocolate cake ever--and you'd be surprised about both what's in it and where I got it from.

The skeleton of this cake actually comes from the back of the unsweetened cocoa container. It's simple. However, my mother, the ingenuitive baker, added shredded zucchini to the recipe and it was delicious. I spent an entire summer one year making and decorating a million cupcakes, so I know my way around the market of taste.

So, here is my favorite favorite chocolate cake recipe. It totally breaks the laws of my healthiness but some days you need to crawl into your bell jar and eat cake.

Best chocolate and zucchini and jam and cream cheese cake

2 cups sugar
3/4 cups hershey's cocoa
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 tsp baking powder
1-1/2 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil**
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water
1/2 or 1 cup finely shredded zucchini (more zucchini=more moist)

**Because of the zucchini I reduce the oil to about 1/4 or 1/3 of a cup

Heat oven to 350 f, grease two 9-inch pans. Mix dry ingredients together, and then throw in the rest of the wet stuff, except the boiling water. Finely shred the zucchini and sit in a colander until all of the juices drain out. Once it is completely drained, mix it in and then add the boiling water and stir thoroughly. Pour into round pans and bake for 30 minutes.
After cooling the pans in the fridge (or freezer) for about 20 minutes, spread the top of one cake with your favorite jam (I suggest raspberry or strawberry). This will not only help the cake stick together, but makes it taste UNREAL. After you do this, stack the two cakes (with the one with jam on the bottom obviously). Then freeze until both cakes seem firm.

Frosting:

In reality, I make up my own frosting recipe. I'm a pretty decent frosting connoisseur so I know by taste what is good. So here's an approximation.

1/3 cup melted butter
3/4 cups hershey's cocoa
3+ cups powdered sugar (based upon which consistency you like)
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
LOTS OF CREAM CHEESE. TO TASTE. AND CONSISTENCY.

Melt butter, stir in cocoa, then alternate adding the sugar and milk. Next add vanilla. Then the cream cheese. Add more cream cheese and powdered sugar until you like the consistency. For this cake, I like the frosting to be firm but still fairly malleable. So...medium?

Apply the frosting to the cold cakes, use a flat utensil to spread on top and sides. The cream cheese will make this frosting the easiest thing to spread ever. Utilize it.
Chill cake in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

CONSUME ALL OF.

Wintersun is definitely coming on a US tour. I MUST go. I MUST. ABSOLUTELY.

-HAPPY HOBBIT DAY

Happy Birthday to the wonderful Bilbo and Frodo Baggins 

And Happy Hobbit Celebration Day to you all

Since I'm pretty much a hobbit anyway, I'll be spending the day eating seven meals, watching all three extended LOTR movies plus the 1977 version of The Hobbit and LOTR, drinking tea, and smoking fake pipes and drinking fake mead. I'll also be telling riddles and cooking up delicious hobbit food. Oh, my Hobbit Day will be fabulous, let me tell you. I'll even work on my magical elvish staff.  Well, okay, I'll do all of this after work and go grocery shopping and running, but it will be AWESOME. 

In true Bilbo form, here is a riddle for you:

It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,

Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.

It lies behind stars and under hills,

And empty holes it fills.

It comes first and follows after,

Ends life, kills laughter.

Answer below

Enjoy your inner hobbit and have a most happy day. 

Answer: Dark

Fitness Favorites

I love love love fitness apps, and I have...ahem...quite a few of them. Of course there is a lot of overlap with the various calorie-counter, exercise loggers, and distance determiners, but I find a use for all of them. In conclusion, here is list of my favorite health/fitness apps! And they're all free!

(I have an iPhone, but I'm pretty sure you can get these on anything?)

Weight and Calorie counters:

1. Lose It*
This is my daily go-to app. It's extremely simple: plug in your information, log your exercises, and    type in your daily meals for the day. It tells you roughly how many calories you need to eat daily to lose X lbs in X weeks. Cons: not a wide variety of food selection and limited exercise data. You can enter and create your own, but I'm lazy.

2. Fooducate
This is a really cute and thoroughly informative app that lets you browse from a zillion food products and even lets you scan the nutrition labels from your food! You pick a selected item from any of the categories and Fooducate gives them a "grade" based on nutrition; it gets really excited and !!!! when there's something really nutrient rich in it. It even tells you when there is tricky packaging afoot that leads to overeating. How great is that?
I absolutely absolutely absolutely love this app. It's soooo thorough in its explanations about fiber, vitamins, calcium, etc. Seriously, if you want to really keep track of what you're consuming I definitely recommend this. Cons: Not really any...

Running trackers:

3. FootPath
This is really just a simple GPS that tracks your time and distance of a run. I like it because of its simplicity, but there are better apps for running out there. Such as...

4. Runtastic
This is such a good app! There are so many amazing features to log your  runs throughout the world. (There are some extra features that cost, such as taking pictures during your run and geotagging them online). You can choose different cardio workouts and then track your time, distance, calories, elevation, etc. There's even a compass, a map, and a speed graph. You basically just tap through the first screen to change the view from mph to calories. (It took me longer than I'm willing to admit figuring that out). This one's great if you're serious about logging your miles and seeing progression. I really like it. Cons: difficult to use, it took me a few minutes to figure out all the gizmos and gadgets. So...that may take up some time from your workout.

Miscellaneous

5. Stress Check

This is really cool for those crazies like me out there--and I'm slightly obsessed with it. By placing your finger on the camera lens for a couple of minutes this app measures your current stress levels. The science: "analysis of the HRV requires heart pulse data to be measured continuously for a certain period of time. The more you use Stress Check, the better the app gets to know you and your heart". Anyway, it tracks your stress levels over a minute or two on a graph and lets you save it; you can then compare the graphs over a period of time and look for patterns of when you have the most highs and lows.  I constantly feel somewhat stressed out, so it's nice to see it physically on a screen--I think it helps me realize when I need to sit back and take some long, deep breaths. In conclusion, this app is really neat and addictive for the stressers in the world. I recommend doing it 2-3 times a day at a consistent time. Cons: Well, who knows how accurate it actually is. I like to believe it's fairly accurate.

    *Why aren't some of the more popular health apps on my list? Well, I've looked into a lot of them and I've come to realize I really don't like how they handle calorie counting. I'm actually pretty skeptical of all calorie counting apps. Why? Because they NEVER EVER take into consideration free foods. This is why I don't use MyFitnessPal. I used it for a while, but eventually got fed up with it. Oh, so you're on an allotted 1600 RDA? Too bad, because all of those fruits and vegetables you ate are going to count against you. Uhm....that's not how that works. You should eat basically half of your weight in vegetables every day (though fruit does contain a lot of natural sugar, so those should not be consumed as much). I plugged in a spinach and pure fruit smoothie and it's like "OH man you just ate 300 calories, you can't eat any more for breakfast."

   This is why even Weight Watchers is a better alternative--it tells you to eat as many fruits and vegetables as you want, and they don't count against you.

Also: If you want best results for your calorie-counting activities, I strongly recommend putting in your meals before you eat them. For example, early this morning I added "apple sauce, one egg, yogurt" even before I ate it. That way I felt I was accountable for sticking to it--it's much easier to stick to an already set plan than feel regret for something you ate after you plug it in.

My Personal Alice

Okay....so I was looking through my old portfolio trying to find inspiration for some new material I'm working on (edit: hope to be working on), and I came across this oddity. My senior year of high school I took an awesome creative writing class (props Mrs. Kaminsky) and forgot that I wrote this somewhat disturbing piece of literature. But hey, I guess this was my way of delving deeper into myself. I think this was my way of letting go of that childhood baggage and beginning anew. Reading back on this, I realize that this is no longer me--I no longer stare into a looking glass like one would stare into Wonderland. I'm definitely beyond this, and I'm glad.


          As my face peers into the looking glass my attention directs to the two large eye-lines peeking back. These are not the windows into my soul like the poets say, but instead they are indifferent (although not quite apathetic) and they raise questions in others as to whether or not I actually live in this accepted reality. They are wide and blank and blind but fairly comforting to me as I look into them. I see the shadow of twenty plus pounds recently shed from my skeleton, saggy and unused, cheeks hanging low like curtains.
          I do not see childhood in my face, although it is somewhat childlike; somehow the scar tissue in my brain has laid itself out like a map on my skin— opaque as to not let anyone in beneath its surface. The only remnant of my naivety is in my alien eyes, poking out behind the fragile surface and searching for a way to tear through reality; always wondering if what they see really exists or made up in some miraculous scheme.
        I dart away from the subject in the mirror—there is a reason artists avoid the self-portrait.
        My button nose, which caused me torment in my growing years, now sits pleasantly on my face. It nestles itself in between my cheeks for the long run, destined to bring me a lifetime youthfulness found in fantasy creatures.
        My other half (the half which resides in the looking glass) stares back unknowingly as its counterpart, the present resident of my mind, scrutinizes its every characteristic. Sometimes I wonder if the girl in the looking glass is who I am really meant to be, and I am here only as a pitiful shadow of its semblance. Am I the one masquerading behind the looking glass instead of she?
        I wish I could shake the looking glass, baring down on its form and begging it to tell me its secrets. I wish that the self looking back at me would drown itself in Alice’s Wonderland so I would no longer have to watch its foreign eyes dart about and point out not only my physical stress, but the mental madness which resides between the lines in my ever-changing figure.
        I walk away from the mirror, ready to delve into deeper pools of thought. My body is not meant to hang like a marionette being held by strings; it is a glove—a façade for my deeper soul and my concrete being. This mirror image is merely a glove for a more complex array of feelings. Simply the White Rabbit’s mitten.
       It’s odd peering back into that vacant eye-line. It screams and shakes the glass without lifting a finger; its face portrays more emotion than my quaking fists could ever muster. Why is so much time is spent mutilating and sculpting and prodding and poking this token of individuality? Does it really make a difference to the person staring back—or does it simply mock me in all my efforts to obtain perfection? Does it know that I have been trying to drown it in tears until it grows too big for the doorway out? Yes, certainly. I am eternally in the Wonderland of mirror-land, forever painting the roses of my lips red, forever peeling the skin from my face to find the person beneath. I believe that underneath my map of skin and lines and makeup I am nothing more than the reflection staring back. I am nothing but the Chesire cat, smiling sweetly from the looking glass below.

Things I love Sunday

Louis C.K

Cabin in the Woods

P90x Ab Ripper

Plunking out piano arrangements

Whole fruit smoothies

Early fall crispness

6:30am workdays

Payday

O thou Savior who wearest a crown

New perspectives on life

Well, gotta keep something interesting at work

Misinformed

I have come to realize that a lot of people are misinformed about Bipolar Disorder; they throw around the phrase "I'm so bipolar" as easily as they throw around "I'm so OCD". This really irks me, so I thought I would share this short interview with the great Stephen Fry on Manic Depression.

Something people don't understand is the control aspect of Bipolar. I hate when people say "stop being so negative, why are you so sad? Why can't you get over it? Why are you so angry/moody/etc?" It's not like most circumstances where you can just pick yourself and be happy again. Sometimes you just hurt, and you feel sick. Anger makes me feel nauseous, while happiness makes me feel jittery and out of control. These extremes are debilitating when dealing with people who don't understand the circumstances.


Although being bipolar has many many negative repercussions, there are also some positive qualities. Imagine being able to feel emotions with a greater threshold than anyone else. Yes, this means feeling anger, anxiety, and sadness more, but it also means feeling happier, extremely euphoric, etc. Feeling a wider range of emotions that most people will never get to experience is both thrilling and terrifying. You thrive off of emotions like one thrives off of mana. When you get creative, you really get creative. When you go running, you really go running; it's crazy because your mind and body will shut off until eventually you've completely strained your resources and collapse. Basically you do everything to the extreme. Nothing is mediocre. Oh, and you love more---seriously. You physically feel it. You actually feel your emotions.

Being in relationships is (was) hard. The inexplicable anger and frustration, sudden anxiety and sadness, and then instant euphoria and terrifying libido. All in one day? Every day? You better believe it. It's tiring to constantly feel everything at once; it's like having ten television sets turned in to different channels and trying to focus on only one sound. And I bet it's even more tiring having to deal with a partner who is constantly bouncing between depression and euphoria.

(Luckily I found an amazing guy who helps and understands what's going on with me; he knows my signs and how to keep me from spiraling).

There are some tips for those dealing with this: schedule, schedule, schedule. Form habits and stick with them. I am a routine person, I have my clear schedule and I fit very nicely into it. However, upon being thrown out of that regimen I go into sever anxiety and slowly spiral downward. I liked my schedule: wake up, exercise, eat breakfast, either work or school, practice, eat, relax, sleep. Unfortunately, going through a big life change kind of jumbled up my whole routine. Another tip: run or work out hard. Exercise is the best way to keep your mood stabilized. I'm so busy pushing my body to its full potential that I completely forget to think, and it's a really great feeling when you're so used to being trapped in your own mind.

In short, being moody and having a bad day is not being bipolar. Being scared of yourself is what it means to be manic depressive. It's being so terrified and uncertain about who you are and what you're capable of because of these emotions that are constantly in the way. A lot of relationships are ruined because of this, and it's hard to forgive yourself and feel like you deserve happiness. I guess I can't emphasize enough that it's scary--people don't seem to realize that being afraid of yourself exacerbates the whole emotionally challenged thing.  You feel constantly out-of-body, and being brought down to reality is hard.

So...uh...be nice to emotional people. Sometimes they can't control what they're feeling, and I guess like being drunk, they sometimes can't control what is being replicated on the outside.

We all deserve forgiveness and happiness no matter what happens. It's hard to remember that. But hey, we're all on this little journey of inner peace and stuff so we have time to work on it.

I hope this....is informative...or maybe it's just me rambling...

In short...

It's one of the cruel mysteries of the world that no matter how interesting, brilliant, or talented you are, the world will only notice you if you're beautiful. So, is it then right for me to say it's even stranger that most realize this and begin to focus and thrive on looks alone? When was the last time you cared about someone that wasn't, by definition, 'hot'? Do people even care about qualities anymore or are we all too obsessed with our weight and our bra size? Do you look at a really neat individual and think 'man if only they looked like....etc'? Do you think that about yourself? This can be quite the throttling problem, and it can really eat you up if you let it get out of control. Self image sucks, can I be a guy already?



PS it's hard to rant when you're writing on an iPhone.

Southern rain

Nothing lovelier than the sound of a southern rainstorm. It's so beautiful, thrashing wildly against the open screen door. We all wish we could capture the sonancy, ambiance, smell of rain and release it on some garishly bright day.

This night makes it all worth it--living here. To hear the rain calm my heart and mind. I yearn to drink it in and quench my soul with it. Roll backwards against the thunder and into the clouds.

Rebecca's Insane Running Mix

I am about to give you a piece of my running treasure: my insane running playlist. These are songs selected and specifically ordered to produce awesome results; if you want your running speed to increase by a million then go ahead and listen! I mix them up occasionally, but I always start with a song that increases to a pretty fast tempo, and I always use choruses to do sprint bursts. Don't forget to have a cool down song as well. These are some pretty great songs, guys; I am a firm believer in choosing correct music to run to!

Can I just have all of the Final Fantasy soundtrack as my wedding music? Seriously, I can't pick.

Let go

Once again I have no direction to this post, but I feel the need to type and let the world around me dissolve against the glow of my computer screen. This is for me right now. This is my cathartic release.

Okay, I'll face it candidly. I, Rebecca Almond, am homesick.

 I miss Idaho, and I miss my familiar lifestyle. Sure, other people have moved across the country and lived out fabulous and wonderful lives, but I guess I'm different. Maybe I became so used to the familiarity of who I was and what people expected of me that I assumed I would have the same reaction here.

But, is that really a bad thing? Or was it what I wanted all along? Was my true desire of moving across the country pressured by my desire to leave behind my demons? I often feel like a big motivating factor was my need to escape my mistakes and the people I had inflicted misery on. Maybe I wasn't trying to escape others' perception of me, maybe I was really just trying to escape the memories of my past self. To escape myself.  I'd like to think that my freshman year of college can be scrapped up as a mulligan year, but let's be honest, some wounds are too deep and some memories too strong. But what it comes down to is I'm running away from  my past self. I'm scrapping up who I was and finally kicking it out. I'm ready to be who I want to be. I want to start over with a new canvas and a new palette to splatter upon.

"You never step in the same river twice"

Maybe that's what moving out and moving on is about. It's not about relocating yourself to a new location. It's about evolving and creating a new persona in a new land--I am not, nor will ever be, the same person I was. I can no longer rely on my past qualities and expect to get the same results. We have to mold ourselves around new surroundings to test the waters to how people react to us. It takes a true test of confidence to determine which of our qualities are positive and which are hurting our quest to personal freedom. There are some of the cornerstone qualities--reliable, personable, vehement, dedicated---these are qualities that define who I am. I have molded these attributes into myself and can rely on them to keep me true on my journey.

But what about the other idiosyncrasies? Did I leave the old Rebecca behind in Idaho?
I think this is the most alarming aspect of my move across the country; who am I now? So cliche sounding, but really. Do I need to create a new identity? What would you do if suddenly you had a chance to start completely over? I need to think hard about this. What qualities do I love about myself? Do I miss some of those traits that made me a likable person? I relied on a lot of personality to get what I wanted; I feel like I have a pretty good social personality. I like how I can attract certain people. But there are definitely some I have discarded--some I have promised to never bring out again. This point is especially true when you have another person bound to you. I am no longer an "I", I am a "we"; this means that the qualities that screwed up all of my past relationships must be immediately discarded. But, what about some of those personal traits that brought him to me in the first place? It's a very fine line to walk between being personable and being...too personable.

I really do like me. And I'm still striving towards my ultimate goal of my own inner peace. But if I'm to build a foundation of personal freedom from hurtful qualities I need to pick what are my truly positive attributes and which ones are harmful. That includes self-deprecation; sarcasm can be funny and witty, but there's a fence between witty and flat-out negative. It's hard for me to see the difference, but so far I haven't seen any negative consequences. That also includes letting go.

Letting go. That's the hardest and truest aspect. That's what this move can be narrowed down to. I am letting go of an entire life---not just lifestyle. I am ready to get some new pages bent and torn, some new dog-ears in this chapter of my adventure. I will come to terms with my future mistakes, but I won't look back and harbor the old ones. I loved the ones I loved, but I can't take back the hurt. I can promise to change. I can promise to be different, and that's all. Happiness can be chalked up to letting go of past chains and moving on to make a change. Inhale the new, exhale the old. Change what must be changed, but forget what you can no longer control. If I can learn to find happiness---and feel like I deserve happiness--anyone can. I swear. At first it's an effort to identify what is missing in your life and what is harboring your inner peace; but soon it will become easy as breathing. Make a change.

 Inhale. Exhale.

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Mouth to mouth, she breathes in salty seawater

from each sailor’s lips,

drinking in the unquenchable thirst and lust

that bounds her to her craggy prison.

And oh, how desperately she clings to the passion that, for one moment,

holds him to her breast,

clawing at her eye-line;

desiring to know the curves of her lips, her hips,

her body swaying through his heart-strings.

But she knows he will not stay; her song

is the one they fear the most, the song of nightmares

that each man wants to hear, but none want to know.

She yearns for the man who will swim through her stream,

strumming her and singing the cry that stole his heart.

Beckoning her flaws into the chasm of his being.

And oh, if only the sailors knew

that the dreadful gypsy-love song of the Sirens

was a plea—a howl—to the stars, hoping only to be unchained

from the rock that will never allow

a heart to dwell.

Lovers calling.

She sucks him sideways into a flyaway dream,

his unsuspecting heart catches beneath the wave

and crashes hard upon the shore.

Like so many before, she will tear it apart,

leaving only his cries to croon him to sleep.

But

the soft wave of his eye catches beyond the

coils of her body, beyond the façade of monochromatic lusts.

He sees the splatter of stars behind her eye-line, and

for one instant she is saved.

No longer is she chained.

And like the morning starlight, her freckles wash her

face aglow with light, set wantonly across her starry face—

She heaves with the heaviness of unrequited love, torn inexorably from her chest.

All she wants is a heart to give.

A heart that will never be hers.

But like the morning starlight, her radiance shall fade,

and she will find her way back into his nightmares;

for she knows not where the stars lead her, only that someday she will spill the ocean of desire

and once again return to that cragged rock to which she was bound.

Why?

We all have some kind of valuable that requires immense time and money--cars, computers, instruments, video games, etc. We put so much time and effort into retaining perfect condition of these material possessions, so why do most people neglect literally the MOST IMPORTANT possession on Earth?

Ourselves. What is it that makes us forget that our bodies are the most important machine on Earth? We invest so much time and energy in keeping cars healthy and mechanically sound; we spend thousands of dollars on keeping computers up-to-date, and ensuring that our instruments are carefully polished and rehaired and restrung.

So, why do many people not care about the upkeep on their bodies? I've come to realize how important my body is, and I plan on keeping it in top shape for a very long time. You wouldn't put unleaded gas in a tank that requires premium, and therefore you shouldn't fill yourself with food that will waste and create massive issues to your own personal "engine". Unhealthy food makes us worse, and energy is wasted instead of gained. Keep your engine clean and fueled correctly!

I keep my "instrument" clean, polished, and make sure it always has the capacity to play according to its full potential. I invest time in making my body capable of so many things, because I know how much potential I have and I won't waste it--would you keep using a bow that had nasty greasy hair and expect to get a beautiful sound? 

Treat your body like you would treat any valuable--with care. If you are spending more energy and time fixing and updating a computer than you are making sure your body is healthy, then you need to get on that. Fix it. Fix yourself, and I promise you'll be happier. Get on a schedule, like you would a practice schedule. Oh, you have time to practice 6 hours a day or play video games all night but not go on a 30 minute jog? Or do a 30 minute Insanity video? Make some form of exercise every day your goal. Eat smart and get fit. 

If you need to, keep a regular check-up on yourself. In all honesty, I don't really do this. I don't believe in the numbers game of health--in fact, I haven't weighed myself in about two years--because it can truly become an obsession, and for me it has. I've reached a comfortable size and I feel incredibly fit. I can tell when I feel good, I listen to my engine and know when I've done something to erode it. Listen to your body, get to know its signals--it will let you know. 

I'm only saying all of this because I've only eaten a bowl of yogurt today and it's already 3:00; obviously I'm not fueling myself right because I have a massive headache and all I want to eat is cookies and cinnamon rolls.