Stressed?

When you change your mind about stress, you can change your body's response to stress. I like how someone who was helping people get rid of stress for ten years completely changed her outlook after a discovering a few profound studies on stress. I definitely knew that certain stress could be good- it can help motivate and push you to be better or to get things done. But I wasn't aware of the actual physical implications stress had on us. The fact that people who spend much of their time caring for and helping others are at almost no risk for early death due to stress is very interesting, and I like the twist she made by including that information. She compared the compassionate heart to the physical heart, and it definitely made me think. We have much more control over our body's response to certain situations than we are aware of.

Conflict
I have two jobs and go to school full time, and sometimes that gets to be too much. I work 40+ hours a week, most of the time working more than 40 hours in that week. Its nice because the pay off is great, but its taxing because I don't even get overtime or full time benefits. I'm conflicted over choosing which job I would be able to work 40 hours at and not go insane, because I like being able to go between jobs every other day and have a change of pace, different tasks to do. Summer is coming up and I know i have to make a decision soon, but i'm trying to put it off for as long as I can. on one hand, I love all of my coworkers at Imo's and i work with my boyfriend. Its much more relaxed at Imo's and i do love working there. On the other hand, I've worked at Family video for nearly a year now and its become so familiar to me. I have the best manager there who really believes in me and wants me to progress within the company, but that would mean making even more huge life decisions that i'm nowhere near ready to make. I can't even choose a major.. although I do have an idea of what i wanna do with the rest of my life and it does not include selling and renting out movies to sometimes nasty and mean customers. i need to make a decision soon, I know, but i am queen of procrastination and I don't even want to think about how making the wrong decision might negatively affect me.

What do you value more- time or money? A lot of the time, people with a plan can't balance the two out. A busy schedule can be hard to work around when it comes to spending time with loved ones and getting things done that need to be done.

Some people aren't lucky enough to have two jobs that they enjoy and are praised at by their managers. When you're used to being excellent, that can tend to cloud your perspective. I know that having such a busy schedule can be stressful and a little exhausting at times, but would you rather spend your time working towards nothing and not moving forward in life? Choosing between two jobs is a hard decision but you can make the answer simple if you so choose to do so.

Pigeon vs Agent

When I looked out the window, I saw a man almost run into a tree across the street. It made me laugh. This man was carrying a briefcase and eating a bagel, and he caught my interest immediately. I noticed that a pigeon was trying to get his bagel, and when he tried to shoo the pesky bird away, the bird got caught in his breifcase! Thats when a bunch of crazy stuff started happening. The brief case started flying around in the air, and it was firing bullets! The man was dragged down the road aways, so I lost sight of him, but not even 3 minutes later there was a huge explosion. I'm not sure what I just saw but it was crazy. I'll never forget that random man I saw sitting outside my coffee shop one day.

Happiness

Happiness can mean a lot of different things. Where one person would define happiness as having huge houses on every coast and the most expensive cars, another person might define happiness as living off of the land and having a huge family. Some of us know exactly what it is that makes us happy, and some of us are just trying to figure that out. I fall under the category in which we are still trying to figure out all the things that make us happy. I’m sure of a few things: my beautiful family, my crazy and rambunctious dog, music, travelling. But there are other aspects of my life, such as work and school, which only make me happy because I’m aware of the long-term implications of them. Working makes it so that I can have money to do things, thus resulting in the freedom that I so avidly crave. School makes it so that I have something to work towards, a certain future, and while going to school doesn’t necessarily make me the happiest person in the world, it does make me happy knowing that it’ll all be worth it one day. The things that make us happy are always subject to change though. What makes us happy one week might not make us happy the following week. 

This I believe...

There are many things that I believe in, many things that others believe in that I may believe in to an extent, and a lot of beliefs that i don't agree with. I don't believe in putting money before your loved ones, which is a common misconstrued belief, partially due to the rising popularity of vulgar and insensitive rap artists. I believe in practicing compassion with every aspect of your life. I believe that music is a lifeline to some people. I believe, very strongly, in many things but I am not closed-minded and stubborn when it comes to those values and beliefs. I'm open minded enough to listen to your argument, if you can form one that is worth my time to hear. I'm not sure how you could argue AGAINST music acting as a lifeline for some, because i'm living proof.
I've met people who think practicing music and listening to it is a waste. I've met money greedy lawyers who probably listen to talk radio, and I've sat there quietly while they tell their children to turn down their music and finish their homework. What some people don't get is that music is therapeutic to those who are constantly in their minds. You can argue whether or not being in your head a lot is a good or bad thing, but either way, listening to my favorite band on my way to school or work puts me in a good mood for that class or shift. For those of us who's lives revolve around planning for the next show they have tickets to, we can pretty much say we would be lost without music. I fall into that category whole-heartedly.

She may have been lying....

She may have been lying just to create an even larger wedge between my father and I. I wouldn't put it past her to do something like that. A big part of me wanted to believe that he was, in fact, lying to make dad look bad. But an even bigger part of me knew she wasn't lying. If I had been given a choice, I would've chosen to live with my mom. I'm glad that was the way things turned out, but I still miss dad more and more the longer i'm away from him. I haven't worn that dress in a few months now; its collecting dust in the way back of my closet. And I can't imagine wearing it ever again.

Blessed Burden

Being the only child of a single parent for a majority of my life, I know what it’s like to feel obligated to look after that parent. For me, it’s my mom. She’s my best friend and I love her more than anything, but there was a time when I loathed her with every inch of my existence. I used to be afraid of going out with friends, or even going to school and leaving her alone. I was so afraid to leave her by herself because of what she might do with that free time. I tried spending time with her, but I soon found that sadness was contagious. And her sadness was so immense, I found myself bowing under the weight of it more often than I’d like to admit. When she was coherent enough to process that what I was displaying was anger, my mother did not understand that anger. She didn’t know that she was fucking me up beyond repair, and she didn’t care. Her parents were always around when she was growing up and they would never have left her alone to make her own food at age 10, never would have forced her to grow up so fast that she could feel her childhood being ripped away from her. So how could she fathom that what she was doing to me was making me hate her? I understand that depression, when you have it, is like a black hole sucking you in, or a blanket of fog suffocating your thoughts. And I understood, at age 10, that I was all my mom had. I was it. It was my responsibility to take care of her; I was the only one who could even try to ease her pain, pull her back down to Earth, and clear the fog.

Worn Out Minds

If I could have the hands of someone else, I would want to acquire the hands of an artist. I’ve never lacked in terms of creativity, but I’ve also never had the patience, or humiliation, to create a painting or drawing that I’m happy with and confident enough about to share with others. If I had the hands of a painter, I would be able to experience, with certainty and confidence in my work, creating something that would be able to convey exactly what I want it to convey. I remember reading a quote somewhere that said, “An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.” At the time, I recall being blown away by how true of a statement that was. I’m not calling myself an intellectual by any means, but I know if I were to choose a side, I would fall more so on the side involving expression by means of letters and words, sentences and conversations.