None knows the weight of another's burden

The tremendous pressures and stresses of the past two weeks are finally relieved for a while, and I can breathe, relax, and sleep.Well, for a few days anyway, before the craziness picks up again next week. This has actually been a really rough semester for me. I anticipated it would be, due to the nature of the classes I was signed up for, but I wasn't quite prepared for how hard it's been in a variety of ways.Things build up over time, and it gets hard to deal with it all. I'm  getting really tired of bearing this burden. You know, there are two ways things can go. A burden can seem lighter over time as you grow more able to bear it, or over time the burden can wear you down and become too much to bear. Carrying a burden over an extended period of time can result in growth and a greater endurance and ability to bear it. But, in opposition to that, even the lightest burden can wear a person down if carried long enough. Everyone knows that though their own arms are by no means heavy, but if they extend them out in front of themselves, or to the side, and hold that position for a while, they will get really tired after a period of time and will not be able to sustain the weight of their own arms any more.

I guess I'm in an odd place of simultaneously experiencing both aspects, or the two have become converged somehow. I have become accustomed to my burden to an extent. I'm used to carrying it, I'm used to all that it entails, and many aspects of it are automatic or habitual for me now. But at the same time, I'm getting so tired of it all. So worn down, so burnt out. But like the child being disciplined, I have to keep my arms up, I have to continue to bear the burden, no matter how much it's breaking me down.

Let it all out
get it all out
rip it out remove it
don't be alarmed
when the wound begins to bleed

cause we're so scared to find out
what this life's all about
so scared we're going to lose it
not knowing all along
that's exactly what we need

and today I will trust you with the confidence
of a man who's never known defeat
but tomorrow, upon hearing what I did
I will stare at you in disbelief
oh, inconsistent me
crying out for consistency

and you said I know that this will hurt
but if I don't break your heart then things will just get worse
If the burden seems too much to bear
Remember
the end will justify the pain it took to get us there

and I'll let it be known
at times I have shown
signs of all my weakness
but somewhere in me
there is strength

and you promise me
that you believe
in time I will defeat this
cause somewhere in me
there is strength

Sticking to the path.

I know I just wrote earlier this evening, but I'm taking a little break from my paper to ease my heart and mind. I have started on a journey. Well, I suppose I've been on it for a while now. It's part of the whole puzzle thing I've talked about a couple times now. Thing is, though I know I need to be on this path, I can't see where it's going or what's ahead of me. I don't like that. I like to know what's coming and I like to plan. I like to organize and know what's going on, if not be somewhat in control of it all. Those things aren't a part of my journey. Actually, the absence of those things is part of the point of the whole journey. The times of trial are when another path connects with mine for a while, then branches off, or I come to a break in the path,.I desperately want to go down the other path, though I know I need to stick to my own. I don't like my path. It's hard, confusing, I don't know where I'm going, and I can't see my way. When those other paths show up, though they belong to another person, I just want to quit mine and divert down the other one. Maybe they'll lead to the same place.... or maybe they'll reconnect later down the road.... Oh it's so hard to keep to the path I'm on. Once again, that difficult act of denying myself and carrying that cross daily.

Chocolate!!!!

So I just got back from an all-you-can-eat chocolate buffet. I kindof hurt now. This weekend is relay for life, and a restaurant down on the square had an all-you-can-eat chocolate buffet for $10. I'm not sure how much of the proceeds is going to relay for life, but I'm pretty sure it's a pretty large percentage. I think it's a great way to get people to contribute. There was so much chocolate there! And it was all so rich! We even got to fill up a take home container. I can't think of touching any of it right now, but I'll be very glad to have it tomorrow. It also makes up for my lack of cake yesterday. Haha, more than makes up for it. Hopefully now I will have the energy I've been missing all day so that I can get a good amount of my paper done tonight. Anyway, there's my little blurb, but now something's come up that I gotta take care of, so I'll have to post this without rambling on and on about stuff like I usually do.

Yay all-nighters

So..... yeah, I didn't go to bed until 6 this morning, and even then I hardly slept at all due to the constant cycle of information and analysis going through my head. At least I finally finished the great big time line for my symphonic lit class (finished that at 2 am), and created my entire presentation (which kept me busy until 6 am) . I think it went pretty well, despite the technological problems I always have. It was definitely rather intimidating to have the other prof sitting in on the class, but I felt pretty confidant in my materials. (but, meh, my prof made me wear my sandals.... she's noticed that I go barefoot everywhere, has commented on it, but when I showed up to class today she said I needed to put some shoes on. I was very sad at that.) I've discovered that I can stay up all night very successfully. All I have to do is make it past a certain point, usually right around 2 or a little later, and then I get my second wind and I'm alert and good to go the rest of the night. But yeah, I have a couple more super late nights ahead of me. There's still that huge paper due on Friday that I haven't started yet, and my psychology quiz tomorrow. I'm actually intending to get some sleep tonight so that I can survive an all-nighter Thursday night. I probably shouldn't be blogging right now, but I'm rather burnt out and don't want to jump back into any more studying just yet. At least I'll mix things up a bit by studying for psych first, and then spend a couple hours on my paper before sleeping. Tomorrow I'm sure that I will have to stay up all night and morning writing the rest of the paper. Unless....... I can get an extension..... I have never asked for an extension on anything before. It's just not something I think about doing. But I've had several people tell me I should ask my prof for an extension on this so I can actually sleep a little. I know my prof pretty well and he's one of my absolute favorite people here, so I think he'll give me an extension..... but it still feels weird to ask. Makes me feel like I'm not working as hard, or not performing up to par or something. I dunno, it just doesn't feel right. But, I definitely want to sleep, and be able to put more time into this paper. I emailed my prof..... I don't know if he'll check his email before tomorrow, so I will continue with my plan of spending a few hours on the paper tonight before sleeping, then tomorrow I'll find out if I have to do an all-nighter or not.

Actually, want to know a secret? Well, it's not much of a secret really, but I haven't exactly made it public knowledge. It's my birthday today. My 21st, in fact. Of course, my family knows, and many people from back home know through the church newsletter (it contains the birthdays for each month), but I took my birthdate off facebook last year after my birthday and only my closest friends here actually know my birthdate. Knowing that I'd be turning 21, I didn't want all the pressure from everyone about going out to party and drink and all that, so I figured the easiest thing would be to just remove the information.

I suppose you could say (and you'd be right) that today has been the lamest 21st birthday, or just birthday in general. Who wants to spend the first several hours of their special day still up from a night of working on projects? Who wants to go to all their classes, turn in a project and deliver a presentation on their birthday, all while trying to exist on approx. 3 hours of very restless sleep? And then, there's no party, so special dinner, just the normal routine of grabbing food at the hub, and no cake. :( And, haha, I'm not going out for my first "adult" drinks. At least the weather was really nice today, and though I didn't have any special dinner, I didn't have to sit alone but ended up sitting with a friend and talking about our respective plans for the future. (Yay for thinking about grad schools and jobs in the future.) I have gotten several birthday wishes on fb (which I must confess I reactivated solely so that Daddy could tag me in his now traditional birthday tribute album, and so that I can wish him happy birthday tomorrow. After that I will deactivate it again.), was tagged in a really sweet album from when I was young and cute, received birthday texts from my brother and sister, and received a package in the mail from my sister! :) That definitely made my day.

Anyway, I should stop procrastinating and get to work on stuff now. I'll just have to come back to the topic of the oh-so-grand 21st birthday and how I remain individual and independant of the traditional mold another time. And guess what? I just got an email back from my prof saying I can send in my paper on Saturday instead of Friday!!! YESSS! Oh sleep! Wonderful wonderful sleep! We shall become reacquainted and I shall strive to get on better terms with you.

Long Week

It's been a long week, and I have a much longer one ahead of me. I have a presentation in class on Wednesday, the materials for which I need to turn in to my prof tomorrow so she can go over them with me. (I haven't really started on all that yet.) Turns out another prof will be visiting our class that day. yay. Extra pressure. Whatever I come up with for my presentation will end up being time wasted though, since I know my prof will completely change the direction of all of it and I'll have to redo it all. (that's what she did for my earlier presentation, and what she's done for most everyone else in the class.) I also have a giant timeline due on Wednesday for which I've been gathering information most of this week and all weekend. Thursday I have a quiz in Psych, and Friday I have a big paper due for Symphonic Lit. Next week on Tuesday the rough draft for my final paper in Psych is due.... so I will have to work on that this week as well. Oy.

I'm feeling rather burnt out. I have actually been spending a lot of time this week studying and doing my homework, which is good. But the problem is that when I stay up really late working on things, especially score study to prepare for class and such, I just don't sleep well when I go to bed. I tend to have strange dreams anyway, but they seem to be getting more and more restless over the past year or so. Sometimes when the weather is nice, or if I just really need it, I'll go outside and walk around or just sit for a while. Across the way from the set of duplexes I live in is this little athletic park/trail place. I love that little area. I can't tell you how many evenings in the past couple weeks I have gone and just sat on the little slope leading into whatever field that is (field hockey maybe?), or gone and walked through the labyrinth. Actually, I've been spending a lot of time outside. I've been replacing my facebook time with being outside and actually studying more. I don't think a day has gone by in a while that I haven't spent at least half an hour just sitting by the mushroom fountain or somewhere in the athletic park. It's just so much easier to think and pray outside. I've been doing a whole lot of that lately, but I still haven't found the answers I'm looking for.

Remember that puzzle I mentioned earlier? It's hard to say sometimes (and now is one of those times), but I think I've been finding several pieces lately. (Actually, it's probably more like they've been laid out for me to find.) Sometimes I'm just not sure if what I'm finding is a piece or not, and I still don't have a clear idea of how to fit them all together. I will keep working on it all, though I may feel like despairing now and then. It's just so hard to deny oneself, and pick up that cross which must be borne daily.

Formal happenings.

So I went to a fraternity formal in St. Louis yesterday evening, that was an interesting experience. The only formal I've been to before was actually a sorority formal with my evil twin last semester. Little different. For one thing, I was going with a girl, to a formal run by girls, at a place just over an hour away. This time I went with a guy, to a formal run by guys, at a hotel four hours away, in which we stayed overnight afterward. It was a lot of fun, but tiring. I'm not a big social person. I prefer small groups of people, and even then, after a while I just want to escape and be alone. There are actually very few people whose company I could stand and even desire to have for hours at a time. So even though it was a small group, about 30 or less people total, it was still too much for me after a while. I'm also not a big dancer. I'm not ashamed to admit it- I'm awkward, uncoordinated, and have a very poor sense of balance. So unless I'm with some really good friends, I hardly dance at all. Now of course, being a music major, I love music, so I always wind up grooving to the beat in my chair or as I stand, singing along if I know the song, but I rarely actually full-out dance. It was fun watching others dance and just observing, as I do wherever I am, but I got tired of that after a while too. I kinda wanted to dance, but I also didn't want to make a fool of myself in front of a lot of people I don't really know, and I knew that about halfway through the song, though I would have had fun for a while, I'd tire of looking ridiculous and moving around in all the silly motions known as dancing, and would want to sit again. I did dance a few times though. My date made me dance a few songs with him, and then I danced to a couple line dances (which I love), and to another song with one of my girl friends there.

As usual at any social event containing people I know and am at least semi close to, there were things that frustrated and upset me last night. Things people did, words that were said, the thoughts behind words, or just the lack of thought, and by the time the night was over I was rather disappointed, frustrated, and just tired. The whole evening wasn't terrible or anything, despite all the negative thoughts I've put forth so far. The food was great, and I had a really good table of people to share it with. A lot of good laughs, and for the most part I really enjoyed watching the people there, listening to most of the music, and even dancing to some of it. I also enjoyed getting to know the girl I was sharing a room with a little better. But I guess overall the whole experience just left me tired, physically, emotionally, and socially. I just can't take that many people (esp when I know less than half of them) for that length of time, am not a party-type, and was definitely ready for it to be over. Then to top it off, after all the socializing was finally over, I went to bed and ended up laying awake for most of the night. I don't sleep well in new beds, and I was sharing this one, which also makes things tough for me. But my mind was also incredibly full, so I ended up just laying awake from about quarter of two in the morning until about five in the morning before I finally slept, kindof. We got up at 8:30 in order to get back to school in time for a concert I was performing in, so I am quite exhausted now from the events of last night and the lack of sleep. However, since it is only just about 9 here, it's far too early to be going to bed yet. I decided to update my blog, even though now I realize this is rather cryptic and negative, and though I am quite often cryptic I usually strive to remain positive, or at least only show my positive side.... Oh well. I'm going to call home soon since I haven't done so in close to two weeks, and then I'm going to go sit outside in one of my favorite spots and wrestle through stuff. It does help a bit just to write about some stuff.

Being productive?

Now that I am without facebook I turn on my computer, check both my emails and sign into chat..... then realize that I have nothing else to do. I'm so used to signing into facebook, checking my notifications, using my stalker feed to find out everything everyone has done since the last time I was on, and doing more detailed stalking of specific people. Of course, I sign into the chat there too, and see if anyone gets on that I can talk with. The problem with facebook is that I can't just check it and be good. It's a live-updating thing..... so I stay on..... and keep refreshing and stalking people.... and keep checking on new things that come up.... and go back over old stuff..... and it just eats all my time. Now, I check my emails and I'm done. I feel like I may start being more prodcutive. I guess I was a bit more focused last night as I was preparing my sources for my final paper. Now that I don't have anything else to do on my computer, I have the feeling that I will be able to actually start on work I need to do and focus on it without the distraction of constantly refreshing my facebook page. Actually, I'm feeling good about not having facebook, if you can believe it. I miss it, but at the same time, I feel good and even relieved. This is good. This is what I need. I'm still a little lost without facebook, but I'm finding my way. And now I know that if I get too dependant on facebook again, I can survive without it and will deactivate it again.

Hmm, I never did talk about why I decided to deactivate in the first place. Well, you can kinda get part of the picture from what I said earlier about how much time I spend just stalking and following up on everything on there. And obsessing about refreshing and checking for new stuff. It just ate so much of my time and I really fell into quite an unproductive rut. I would also end up getting almost depressed, in a sense, because either no one was interacting with me, no one had noticed or said anything about rough times I was going through, or one of the biggest depressing factors was seeing all the stuff going on in my friends' lives. There are a lot of upsetting things to be seen in people's news feeds. I won't explain in detail, but I was just getting upset over things I was seeing, and especially things going on with people I care about. I was getting too involved and it wasn't good for me. So I removed myself from it all. Definitely needed a break and time to refocus.

Now I must be off to studio class and then actually do some studying! (and sleep..... I get to sleep tonight..... Mmmm, that will be wonderful.)

A time of divesting and refocusing.

I haven't been here for a while.... I may.... no guarantees, but just may blog more over the next two weeks. I have deactivated my facebook and intend to remain without out it for these next two weeks. Depending on how this goes, I may do similar things now and then, or after i get back on I may turn right around and deactivate it for another several weeks. I won't get rid of it permanently. It's such a good tool to stay connected with a wide range of people, and let's face it, I like to stalk! I like to find out what's going on in everybody's lives. But right now, I have too much to deal with and am in the process of removing a lot of things and trying to fix my focus on where it needs to be. Yes I'm going to be pretty vague (and by that I mean very), but I do want to write about things a bit. Plus I'm going to miss updating facebook whenever something happens or I just feel like sharing something. Not that it matters so much here, since pretty much nobody actually reads this.... but who knows, if I make a habit of deactivating facebook for a while, I can let people know about my blog and maybe more people will read it. That would be nice. I'll just have to be careful not to treat it too much like my journal... can't get too personal, ya know. ~_^ I was thinking the other day.... journaling is such a strange concept. I don't know about most people and how they approach it, but to me it feels like I'm talking to myself. I mean, I'm talking, I'm opening up and spilling what's on my heart and mind, but to whom? The book is inanimate, so it's kinda weird to address the book. But it's not like a letter to another person, because generally they aren't for anyone else's eyes. (at least I know mine isn't.) So yeah, I feel like it's just another way for me to talk with myself, and that way is sanctioned by the general populace. See, I'm one of those people who talks to themself all the time. Like literally, out loud, pretty much everywhere. I'll be talking as I walk around and catch myself just as people are passing within earshot, restrain the flow until they've past, then continue with a so anyways.... It's kindof a bad habit I fear. I can't help but think that journaling enhances that though. It's just talking to myself about what's going on and reliving conversations and situations on paper instead of out loud.

But anyway, I kindof digressed, and now I have to shower and go see a concert, so I'll have to get back to my main point in a later post.