Dream On!

It's not everyday that I am inspired to blog. It takes something striking that I experience or see to make me want to blog. It also takes something that I think is worth sharing with the masses (okay, maybe not the masses...). Today I would like to discuss dreams... No, not the ones Freud analyzed... I'm talking the fourth definition of the noun dream in Webster's Dictionary: a strongly desired goal or purpose dream of becoming president> b: something that fully satisfies a wish dream>.


My thoughts about dreams have been more frequent over the past year or so. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the "real world" is at a closer reach than ever before with graduation just months away. Whatever the reason, I have been thinking a lot about my own dreams lately. What made me take the step over the edge into blogging about dreams was watching "Working Girl", a 80's movie about a young secretary who has a dream of becoming something greater and finds her way up to the top in the business world complete with teased hair and shoulder pads and then watching "The Pursuit of Happiness" tonight. Some time last year when all this "dreamy thinking" began I started a 43 Things online. 43 Things is this great website where you can create an account and list 43 Things that you want to accomplish. You can check off what you have done and write about it, share stories with other people who share you goals, and cheer others goals and have your goals cheered. I highly recommend making a 43 Things to all those in need of tangibly seeing their goals and being able to keep track of them. I know that I am a visual person, so having my goals/dreams in a place where I can read them keeps me motivated to pursue them.

I think that it's so awesome that God gives us the ability to dream and gives us many of the dreams we have. As human beings, we're so unique in this world because of our dreams. They help to make us who we are and make us so unique. Because of this I think that the best way to work out our dreams is to acknowledge that we are created to dream and discuss our dreams with the one who created us. With dreaming in mind, here are a few dreams I have for my final semester of college...some of them are serious...most of them, not so much:

1.) Today I found one of my mom's old dresses in the attic. It's black with rhinestone straps. I really like it and I want to wear it somewhere before the end of next semester.
2.) I am trying to learn guitar. I have mastered one song so far, "Smelly Cat" from Friends. I would like to learn a song that is a little more challenging and perform it in a public place before I graduate.
3.) Knit ten caps for ten people. Today my friend Sarah W. sent me a website about how to knit caps. I started my first one tonight and if it goes well I would like to knit nine more (or more) before the end of the semester. I might even try my hand at selling a few!
4.) For my final project in cartooning class this semester (yes, I really took a class in cartooning...) I decided to make a line of greeting cards. Over the summer I met a woman who owns a gift shop in my town and talked with her about selling greeting cards at her shop. She said she'd love to see my work. At the time I didn't really have any, but now I do and I would love to sell what I have created at her shop and someday start up my own greeting card line...but for now, I'll stick with selling the greeting cards that I have made so far at her shop before the end of the school year.
5.) Read my Bible every day. I just don't read it as much as I'd like, so I want to challenge myself to do so every day. I know that when I do I feel a lot better and understand what exactly I'm doing here so much more.
6.) Go dancing because I now know how (somewhat) thanks to my ballroom dancing class!
7.) Make a music video. I've always wanted to, so why not now?
8.) I want to find a job...because I have to. I want to find a job that I'm passionate about and that gets me excited to go to every day. I'd love for it to have something to do with my major, because that's probably a good idea seeing as I've spent the last four years learning about graphic design related things, but I'd also like for it to be fun and for it to challenge me creatively.
9.) Since I have become more interested in music during my time in college, especially during my senior year, I would like to create a CD with my favorite songs from the year. I think this will be something that I'll play when I'm 40 and think, "Wow... wow." or something along those lines.
10.) Take a picture every day in 2008, put it on a blog, and write about why, where, and when I took it.

Well, I hope this blog post got you dreaming... or at least thinking about dreams. As Hall & Oates says..."I'm down on the daydream"... I hope that after reading this, you are a little bit more down on the daydream too.

Crazy Kids.

Today: A day that will live in infamy....
...at least for me.

Although I'm not normally one to admit it, I am a legal, no holds barred adult. In a few weeks it will be a full year that I have been this way. While most of young America cannot wait for the big 2-1, my 21st was not much different than any other birthday...except that I spent most of it on a plane home from Spain, but that's a different story... Anyway, the reason why today is a day that I feel is noteworthy and worth blogging about for my own records is because today is the day that I realized that I'm no longer a kid.
I started thinking about this on my way to babysitting this afternoon. I had just come from a class that always makes me think, so still being in that state of mind, I was thinking a lot...about my car, about winter break, and then I saw a skateboarding kid in the middle of the road...a very busy road, might I add. This got me to thinking about how kids always seem to do what they want, even if it's dangerous or not very thought out. This thought started me thinking about the things like this that I used to do when I was (according to my age) a kid. I can remember being told not to do things by adults and in return thinking that adults were not very fun at times and overall pretty boring. Like jumping on pillows...who didn't/doesn't love doing that??? But adults always seemed to think that jumping on a pillow in the living room would break the china in the kitchen or something... THEN I realized that the fact that I was thinking about my childhood had to mean something... that something being that because I was reflecting on my childhood and what I used to do, I must no longer be a child. In that moment I stood at a crossroad... childhood down one way and adulthood down the other. Now, if I saw adults as being no fun and kind of boring as a kid, what was that saying about me as an adult? Am I no fun? Am I boring? In order to answer this question I started making mental notes about what it was that I saw adults doing as a kid that I really didn't like. Here are a few of them:

1.) Pretending to laugh. Who does this? I have...I try not too that much, but I have and I'm not proud of it! The only adults who I can really remember being able to pin as fake laughers were my mom and dad because I was around them the most as a kid and heard all their various forms of laughter over many holiday gatherings and time spent at the playground with them. I vow here and now to not be a fake laugher... because kids never are. If it's funny, they laugh... if it's not, they don't. Simple as pie. Forget what's polite... Forget whats socially acceptable... Kids are real.
2.) Worrying too much. My roommate Sarah pointed this out to me when I was talking to her tonight. It's so true though... I can remember hearing my mom tell me about the things that she was worried about and feeling so helpless because all I could do was tell her that it was going to be alright. This worrying was over big things, but also little things... like cleaning up for company. Who cares if the corner hutch is dusted?? We're about to eat meatballs and pasta... no one will be looking up there anyway... I'm not saying that I have something against dusting (although my room doesn't always reflect this), but I am saying that worrying doesn't help anything. Kids are so good at just accepting things the way that they are and finding a way to work with them... or crying about it and then accepting it. Kids are also so great at always seeing things positively. I can't ever remember telling a worried adult that things wouldn't work out... I just never knew that side of things... except when it came to possibly not getting that Baby Born I wanted for Christmas.
3.) Forgetting to have fun. Maybe it's due to changing so many diapers or migraines or hot flashes, but for whatever reason I can recall being somewhere, most likely twirling, skipping or dancing, and wanting an adult to join in only to have my offer turned down. In my opinion there are no wrong places to twirl, skip or dance. In fact, I think there isn't enough twirling, skipping and dancing in the world. In fact, I'm dancing now! Okay... okay... I'm not... I'm an adult, remember? (But that won't stopping from dancing in front of the mirror later)... I'm not saying that adults never have fun. My dad is one of the biggest kids I know and he's always making things fun whether it's putting a bed pan on his head when my mom was in the hospital or dancing around the kitchen... but, I'm just saying that there are a lot of adults that I can remember seeing and who I still see who refuse to play along with their kids or be silly. I don't want to be this way.
4.) Losing sight of the adventure. I'm a strong believer in adventure. Whether it's a trip to a place I have never been before or an adventurous journey to the frozen foods aisle in the grocery store, I'm all about the adventure. I love making things fun and memorable, even when they are stupid or seem bad... Although I prefer not to, I like getting lost and finding my way with friends. I can remember taking a trip to White Plains, NY with my friend Lou and getting totally lost. This had to be at least five years ago now and we still talk about it. The thing I used to really dislike about some adults was the way that little calamities, such as getting lost, were always blown up into these big catastrophes that were yelled about and angrily handled as if they had no solution. Something that makes me laugh is remembering a phrase the my mom uses so well. Whenever one of these adventures would come up she would always tastefully say "f***ing shit" in a voice that I have never heard duplicated until this day. She still uses this phrase and it always makes me smile even though I know she is sometimes really upset... She always finds a way to laugh at herself about the way she reacts to things like this later, which makes her an adult that I look up to for finding the adventure in things that may seem sort of terrible at the time. The adults who I am referring to who have lost sight of the adventure are the ones who get so worked up about little things that they themselves feel that the world itself will end and as a result make everyone around them uneasy. I would much rather act like a kid in these sorts of situations and take the situation seriously, but make the situation fun at the same time... and maybe even take a few pictures along the way...
5.) Having such little faith. Maybe it was the whole Santa Claus thing that did them in, but for whatever reason adults seem to lack the faith that children have. I'm not saying that there aren't any faithful adults out there, but for the most part from what I know and now being on the other side of things (I gave up on the Santa thing when I was 14... I had some attachment issues...) adults are pretty skeptical about things. Now, there is nothing wrong with asking questions... I think the right to ask questions is one of the greatest rights that we have as human beings... but what I'm talking about is the way that adults have such a hard time believing things even when the evidence is there right in front of them. There is always that second notion of whatever the something is that you are trying to believe in being a scam or something. I am guilty of being suspicious of things in my life. Maybe adults have just been burned one too many times... or maybe kids are just sheltered from all the hurt that comes from being burned... But still, I think that there is a lot of good in the world... as much as there is bad...or more, but so much focus gets put on the bad (news anyone?). I say, take a step out on a limb... Take that leap of faith and believe in something that you haven't dared to before. I have and I couldn't be happier.


Well, that's all I have for now. I don't know who actually reads this blog, but if there are people out there who do, I would love to hear your feedback and see what you think about all this... and please no that regardless of what my age may say, I will always be a kid at heart and I hope that you will too :-D