Why I Write Everyday

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA.

Wait. Hold on.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA.

Ok, I'm almost--

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA.

Okay. I'm composed.

Today, I looked at my old MySpace. All I can say is...

HHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAA.

Honestly, guys. What the HELL was that all about? Remember the days when everyone was a computer programmer all of a sudden and knew how to pimp their page, custom backgrounds and theme music galore? It was saaoooo cool to LyKe ToTaLLy x-PrEsS UrSeLf ThrU Ur PaGe.

Ugh. I can't even read that. I feel like I just had a stroke.

I think seeing my MySpace was particularly hilarious because the last time I did anything to it was when I was a senior in high school. Now, let me tell you, 18 year old Angie was a special kind of Angie.

This is what I looked like:



Pretty much the same. I don't really chew gum anymore.

But MySpace has more to offer than that. I browsed through old comments and they make NO sense.

Example:

"I'm glad you remembered my birthday. Yes, I did come to school today. I also semi enjoyed the note you left on my back window. It made me want to be a real magician."

I just can't make that shit up.

But even beyond the ridiculous teenage conversations about magicians and that epic night when we had, like, a beer, I absolutely LOVED reading my "about me" section. I was immediately sucked back in time--as awkward and "misunderstood" as ever.



Oh, teenage angst. I was such an asshole. Thinking about me as a teenager makes me want to give birth to a 25 year old so I can skip all those years of misdirected anger and...bodily changes.

Gross.

I love what I wrote about myself because you can tell how confused I was when writing it. I was confused but honest.

"About Me:

Id like to say Im simple but Im not. I might be one of the most complicated people you meet but i think thats what makes me so intriguing. i love music but dont like to dance. i think like an athlete but act like a noob. i value friendship and my family above anything except the big man, G-O-D. i learn from my mistakes but months after its happened. i love electronic stuff. im a really big nerd. i read scientific american. i like knowing random facts. i like to think im a bad ass, but im not. i give myself too much time to think. im emotional. i like to talk but i like listening better. i hate talking on the phone. i live to text. my little brother is one of my best friends and im not ashamed to admit it. im always willing to fix a problem. i feel naked without my cell phone. my favorite color is tiffany blue. i like to pick up the check. i want to join the peace corps. i believe that the only reason we die is because otherwise, people wouldnt value life or take it seriously. i want to be like my sister. i crave attention. ive made 'people watching' a professional sport. i love to sit on my deck and listen to jack johnson under the stars. i have parties but i dont drink very often. i tend to judge people but im working on it. im loud when i first meet you, then i mellow out when we become friends. i have a "parent face". im more spiritual than religious. my favorite food is potatoes. i have stress induced insomnia. awkwardness is my worst enemy. i cant live without my friends and i hope everyday, they think the same thing."

Conceited yet insecure. Intimate but superficial. Incorrect punctuation. Punctuation is for conformists.

And so fucking accurate.

I clearly don't understand a thing about myself. I have a pile of puzzle pieces, but I don't know what it's supposed to look like. It was a jumbled mess that my baby brain just couldn't figure out.

This is why I write EVERYDAY.

I recently had a conversation with my roommate about measuring how far we've come in the past couple of years. Pictures and awards can only say so much. Nothing beats reading your own writing.

Yeah, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but when you have a line like "I'd like to say I'm simple, but I'm not," I'll take quality over quantity any day.

Who I am today, right now, is what I was looking for when I wrote those words. When I try to look back and figure out how far I've come, I try not to think about what I've accomplished or where I've succeeded--I look at how much I've come to understand myself.

Every moment in our lives, success and failure included, helps us to get to know ourselves that much better and bring us that much closer to truly understanding what we have to offer the world. How we react when faced with a challenge speaks more to our character than if we won or lost.

I write everyday to document my fears, my assumptions, my confusion, because the only way I know that I've gotten close to finding myself is by looking at how lost I once was.

I encourage you to write everyday. Doesn't have to be long. Even just a snippet on a napkin. People think journals are for pussies, but I promise you won't regret it. There's more to it than just remembering what you did that day. It's remembering that day through the lens of a younger, sometimes stupider, you.

So, write as often as possible. Share some, keep most for yourself.

Sometimes there are things we can't say. But you can write everything.



Stay classy, luvbugz :)

I need training wheels.

I didn’t think it was possible to fail so many times in a week. Most of the time, we have an off day or two; maybe one thing in particular doesn’t go as planned.

Last week, this was not the case. At the peak of my 7 days of rejection, disappointment, and an inordinate amount of physical pain was the moment I just gave up.

I fell off my bike. I fell off my bike in my driveway before I even started moving.

After waking up to my dad yelling at me on the phone that morning, I got on my bike to ride to school. I figured a nice ride would take my mind off all the negativity of the morning, so I stepped on the right pedal and pushed down for a nice, smooth send off.

Whoops. The chain didn’t catch.

I somehow got pushed between gears and it didn’t catch the chain, sending my foot straight into the ground and toppling my bike (and all of its pointy, metal objects) onto my entire right side.

So, my bike is a little old school and has these thingys called downtube shifters.

You change gears by moving the paddles up and down, but it doesn’t click like most bikes when you change gears. You have to move it gradually and feel when the chain switches into the next gear. Sometimes you skip a gear, sometimes your come up short, and (apparently) you sometimes get stuck in between gears. You simply just don’t know.

So, completely fed up and terrified of getting back on the saddle, I pushed both the gear paddles down all the way just to be in a gear, any gear. I was just afraid of the chain not catching again.

Of course, I send it into the hardest gear, which was GREAT for these Berkeley hills. I figured showing up to class sweating like a prostitute in church was better than getting there covered in my (and probably some helpless victim’s) blood.

I spent the rest of the day laboring on my bike, fighting the toughest gears because I was too chicken to try to change gears again. I just couldn’t take yet another failure, and I just didn’t know if it would catch.

The fear of failure, or simply not knowing what the future holds, is what triggers any obstacle in our lives. Friends, family, work, school, anything. No matter what the conflict, the fear of disappointment turns us against ourselves, making us our own worst enemies.

Since graduation is rapidly approaching, it’s natural for my fellow seniors and I to, you know, FREAK THE FUCK OUT. People keep asking “So, what are your plans?” or “Well, now what?” I’ve even gotten the occasional, “Man, leaving college is gonna suck.”

But, as much as I may try to convince myself that I’ll totally use my beer pong skills in the real world, I need to face the reality that a big step in my life is right around the corner...and I don’t know what the fack I’m doing.

At the end of last year, I tried to reach out and grab anything that looked like it was “good for my future.” I latched onto anything that would give me the stability that I thought I needed to be successful. I looked at internships and volunteer opportunities that I had no connection to but thought would look good on a résumé.

This pathetic attempt at forced clarity was like frantically shoving my bike into gear just to get moving. Just doing whatever I thought was safe or would give me definitive answers just made it so much harder to move forward. My fear of the unknown kept me from building the future I actually wanted for myself.

At the end of that painfully disappointing day, I decided to give up. I sat in my snuggie and watched Mad Men until I fell asleep. I figured I couldn’t fail if I didn’t try to do anything.

Hours later, it wasn’t until the buzz of a text message scared me awake that I managed to peel myself off the couch. It was a text from a friend who wanted to come over and hang out. I met up with her expecting to be a pooper and just talk about my shitty day.

LoLz ^^ Pooper. Shitty. Ha.

But instead, in that very short time, the world was different. We sat in her living room and just laughed. I think we were laughing about frozen fruit or something, but we laughed away all the bullshit that I let rent space in my mind.

Hanging out with a friend, laughing your ass off, doing anything you love is like that perfect shift—when you push the paddle just enough to get that perfect catch where the chain smoothly snaps into place, helping you adjust to the road, and making the ride that much easier. Most of all, it’s times like these that make the ride just plain fun.

Downtube shifters show no mercy. Sometimes the chain slips. Sometimes you get stuck between gears. But sometimes, when you ease into it, when you practice, when you let go of your fear of failing, you get that perfect catch.

We fear our futures for the same reason children (or wussy ass adults) fear the dark. We just don’t know what’s waiting for us.

Cal’s school motto is fiat lux, or “let there be light.” You can spend your time trying to force clarity, doing what you’re told, and doing whatever possible to get out of the dark. But don’t forget that it’s only in the complete darkness that we can fully see the stars.

With that starlight, the universe is ours to traverse, to explore, to discover.

These past couple of weeks, I’ve learned to let go of my fear of failure and the temptation to worry about what I cannot change. At Cal, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting new friends and the privilege of getting closer to old ones. It’s through these relationships that I’ve been able to experience Cal, and life in general, from a number of different perspectives. They’ve helped me realize that there is more than one path to success and no two are alike.

I look forward to navigating this freakin’ abyss that is my future because I know that I have absolutely incredible people who are helping me along the way, and who make every second that much easier. Cal has taught me so much and given me the tools I need to succeed in the real world, but, most of all, Cal has given me some of the greatest people I think I’ll ever know.

These people—the people who make me live for Sunday nights, who make me feel 18 again, who make me want to be better—are my light. They’re the light I need to find my way to happiness.

So, the SparkNotes for my little rant?

1. Don’t sit there and bitch about how things are scary or difficult. You’ll end up on the couch for 6 hours with nothing but a sweaty snuggie and shame.

2. Embrace the unknown because when nothing is defined, anything is possible.

3. Make sure your friends and family know how thankful you are to have them in your life everyday because without them, you’ll end up in your driveway with a bike on top of you.

That last one might not be completely accurate. You know better than to trust SparkNotes.