3 things I am grateful for #4

I noticed a lot of the things I write about being grateful for are foods. I do not think that is an issue because food is good and often taken for granted, but I am going to try to write about all non-food things today just to diversify things. Although I am eating my greek yogurt right now and it is so good that I started singing about how much I love yogurt.

  1. Graduation. I am very grateful for graduation coming soon, and I am grateful for my education, and also grateful to end one chapter of my life. My cousin has a sign in her room that says something along the lines of “Every beginning starts with an end.” I didn’t get it, and she explained to me that every time something ends, it signifies the beginning of something else. Every time something begins, it came at the cost of something else ending. I liked that a lot, because sometimes I get so excited for the next thing, not realizing it comes at the cost of the first thing ending. To me, it is a reminder to appreciate the things we have when we have them.
  2. Cups. Right now, I am drinking out of a metal cup with nature propaganda on it. I don’t understand what it is talking about but it has REI, North Face, Merrell, Patagonia, and Keen printed on it. I am grateful for it because it is a cute cup. 
  3. Mice. Mice are cute. Today, Rory showed me a poster that had the Mouse Grimace Scale. It is made by people who are trying to reduce animal testing. The poster is supposed be scientific and show different levels of various types of reactions by mice, but the poster looks like it is just a bunch of mouse faces.

Photo Credit: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/3rs-resources/grimace-scales/grimace-scale-mouse

debt blog

I am going to be in so much debt after college. I’ve gotten a good chunk of institutional aid, and I am still waiting on federal and state aid, but the way things are shaping up currently, I will likely be in six-figure debt at the end of my education. 

That’s pretty crazy. I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert in finances or anything, but I’m pretty sure 100k is a pretty unfavorable number of anything to owe.

Do I have it better than someone else? Of course. I know there are people out there paying the full sticker price of college or going to a school that charges a lot more in tuition. I’m grateful I am in the circumstances I am in. However, I’m still going to be in a lot of debt.

How did it get to this point? 

Yes, I chose to go to this school, being fairly aware of the cost. 

But I mean on a larger scale. In a news report, they said that in the past, a college education had a pretty big percent chance (I don’t remember what, but it was probably 80-90 percent) of helping the graduate make more in the future. However, today, college graduates have about a 50 percent chance of doing better, just because the cost of college is so high that the debt cancels out the benefit in the job market. Isn’t that crazy? You flip a coin. If it’s heads, your college education helped you in the long run. If it’s tails, you just shot yourself in the foot (financially).

Picture Credit: The Public Purpose

I am changing

I am changing and cannot understand the nature of my changes. At the beginning of the year, something happened to my consciousness, and I began to make decisions that I would have never made before. I gave up all my bad habits, which was not easy, but I managed to do it and continued to work on myself. I took up sports and started going to the pool again. But not only did my physical habits change, my consciousness began to undergo a kind of transformation.

I started to question again how I feel about myself in society and in my body. I realized that for a long time, I’ve been hiding a large part of my personality because it doesn’t fit into the society in which I currently find myself. I tried to assimilate and be part of society, but it just never worked for me. I am chasing something that doesn’t belong to me and just wasting energy on it. I shouldn’t chase; I should attract the people and events that I deserve.

Also, I once again questioned what I would like to do in the future. It’s a difficult question, but now I have something like a life plan for the next year. This pleases me, and my plans look intense, but I understand that it will not only be fun, I will have to work very hard again to achieve what I want. But I’m not afraid of hard work, so I’m ready to do everything I can to achieve my goals.

Also, I’m worried about my appearance. Living in California, I started dressing in hoodies and sports pants. This style doesn’t suit me, and I feel lazy and unattractive. Also, I stopped doing facial massages and taking care of my hair sufficiently for it to look the way I want. In short, I started taking care of my appearance again, I see the first results, and it cannot but please me.

In general, unexpectedly for myself, I am undergoing a kind of transformation, and everything is moving in a good direction.

pc: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/bb/f9/4d/bbf94d790c3e31177c4d9e1830891cd7.jpg

Usually i try to write

Usually, I try to write about something worthwhile, about my thoughts, feelings, or events that happened to me, and which would be interesting to share. But today is not that day; today, I want to talk about all sorts of nonsense that has been on my mind lately.

47 days. After precise calculations, I realized that I have exactly 47 days left to go to school. It seems like this number should be much larger, but definitely not in my case. I am the most vivid case of senioritis you can find on planet Earth. Immediately after receiving the acceptance letter from the university I wanted, unexpectedly even to myself, I just stopped worrying about what happens at school. I am absolutely calm about not doing homework, and it doesn’t bother me much. I won’t lie, I never really liked the process of studying in an American school, and the only reason why I truly strived and learned subjects was my admission to the university; now that the goal is achieved, the motivation is completely gone. In my case, trying to find opportunities to reduce my days spent in school buildings, I discovered that some camps take away as much as 5 days! I signed up for many, which significantly reduced my time spent at school this semester. I am glad that I have very little time left until the end of school. I won’t lie, I will be the happiest person on graduation day, during the ceremony I will definitely be crying, but not out of sadness but from overwhelming happiness.

The second thing I wanted to talk about is my sleep. Lately, I’ve been having terrible problems with sleep. I wake up every hour at night, and if I’m unlucky enough to start thinking about something that bothers me, then I can’t sleep for a couple of hours simply because I can’t stop thinking. It bothers me, but I can’t do anything about it.

PC: me

Overwhelmed

Lately, I have been struggling with keeping up with my homework. I have been sick for the past week and focusing on school has been really hard for me. I took the past two days of school off and now I am even more behind. I have an essay, project, and test due next week, along with all of the homework I haven’t done from this week and I don’t even know what to do. I am missing even more school next week to go on a mandatory camping trip with my school and I’m going to fall even more behind. I still feel exhausted and not fully healthy and thinking about starting the hours and hours of homework I need to catch up on is horrifying. I have only missed a day and a half of school this whole school year until this week and I feel like because I’ve been sick, I have mentally missed a week of school even though in reality I have only missed two days. I hope that I feel better before my camping trip or else my week will get so much worse.

Free stressful business woman working“/ CC0 1.0

Shooting Stars and Rising Sun, A Moment Suspended in Time

I remember walking along the edge of the pier, the sound of the sea drowning out my thoughts, and the warm breeze creeping under my T-shirt. It was 3 a.m., and I turned to my friends with the question, “Is anyone thinking of going home?” I could clearly see in their eyes the answer was “no.” I remember how soft music played from the speaker. I remember, as I gazed at the endless and clear sky, seeing a shooting star. That time, I made a wish to be happy, and to this day, every time I see a shooting star, I always wish for happiness. Although I had no plans to sleep, I still put in my night retainers (back then, I never knew where I’d end up at night, so I always carried the retainers in my purse). My lisping voice, due to the discomfort in my mouth, triggered a wave of laughter among us.

Dawn gradually claimed its rights, filling the quiet waterfront with sunlight. At exactly 5 a.m. I found myself in the warm Mediterranean Sea, watching the sunrise that ignited a new day with my best friends. I vividly remember the smell of the sea that day, it was bright and fresh. The wind blew in my face while I laughed as my friends tried to drag me under the water. At that moment, there was absolutely no one around us. We were the violators of silence in the early morning of a sleepy seaside town. Only the sun could judge us for our recklessness, as it became the sole witness to our mischief. At that moment, it seemed that all that existed in the world was us, the sea, the sun, and the music playing in the background.

We climbed out of the water as the song “Show Me The Way. by Vintage Culture” played for the tenth time. In a frenzy of laughter, happiness, and impunity, we began to dance, wet and slippery, stepping on each other’s feet.

I remember how my wet hair clung to my shoulders and face, how the mosquito bites on my legs hurt. I remember the look of happiness on my best friend’s face. I remember the smell of the sea mixed with a sense of carefreeness. I remember the dawn, the most beautiful dawn I had ever seen.

At that moment, wet and happy, I did not realize that it was my last evening with my friends, the people I loved so deeply. In the morning, when I returned home tired, wet, and salty, I received an email informing me that I had been accepted into a then-unknown small school in California.

To this day, I miss the fresh smell of the sea, the warm wind, and the music from the speaker. I miss the dawn terribly. I miss being happy.

PC: me

The Rain

Around where I live, supposedly there is a large storm coming. I don’t like the rain when forced to go to school. Rainy days are meant to be spent in bed watching a movie and drinking hot cocoa. I shouldn’t need to freeze, running away from the rain and going to school. My clothes, backpack, and hair get soaked and I’m uncomfortable and upset the whole day. I think that whenever it is raining where I live, which is pretty rare, school should get cancelled. It is absolutely brutal. At my school, there is a high chance that school will be cancelled due to the rain on Monday. I board at school, but this weekend I went home, so if school gets cancelled on Monday, I will be able to stay inside warm at my own house. I only love the rain when I can admire it from inside but I hate it when I need to be outside with it.

Raining Raindrops” by Reza Shayestehpour/ CC0 1.0

Time moves faster

Time is going by way too fast. 

How come we can’t remember memories from 5 years old and younger. Is it because it went by too fast?

Why does our memory go away? Where does it go?

I hate forgetting things, I never truly forget everything. I just forget what happened but never forget how it made me feel. It is more frustrating because people ask me what they specifically said or did to me and unless there’s a powerful emotion connected to the words I only remember the feeling.

I remember the feeling of starting school in elementary. I remember the feeling of the cold wind nipping at my skin as I ran around the playground. I remember the feeling of dancing with my dad and the frustration of forgetting a word in English or Spanish. I remember the feeling of listening and singing Bruno Mars songs at the top of my lungs.

I remember the first day of freshman year, but that seems so long ago. Sophomore and junior year went by too fast. Now I’m at the end of my senior year last sports season. I might have just had my final basketball game and ended it with a buzzer beater. This month was long and this week was even longer, but something tells me it won’t stay this way.

My final play, my final game, my last year.

Bye bye stock vector. Illustration of cartoon, people - 45256525
PC:https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=d07f85f75a168a72&q=bye+bye&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjju-Wrlo2EAxXSI0QIHXwnA9gQ0pQJegQIDBAB&biw=1440&bih=813&dpr=2#imgrc=QPJOkCUm6KLC5M

Silent Oranges, A City Soul’s Retreat


The pink mountains gazed down at me from above as I walked among rows of flourishing orange trees. A silence I had never experienced enveloped me.

In the residential area of the city where I grew up, I lived next to a metallurgical plant, so even in the depths of night, I could hear the humming of motors. In the cities where I lived, the concept of silence became relative. Even in the night, I could always hear a passing car or an ambulance. But at that moment, amidst the oranges, I heard only silence, the kind you read about in books, a deafening silence.

In the last six months, my life seemed to have come to a standstill. I ran from country to country all my life, trying to escape my problems or family. I flew across oceans, hoping that my past thoughts would leave me alone, but they always sat with me on the plane. And now, my life suddenly froze in its tracks. I, a city rat accustomed to dirt and noise, found myself in a small, sunny grove where it’s clean and quiet.

But unfortunately, I cannot find peace in the calmest place in California. My brain tells me to run across the continent as far as possible. I need the dirt, the noise, the people, the movement. But now, I am frozen, stuck in time, unable to understand what I am doing here. Days merge into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, and I gradually go insane among rows of juicy and bright orange bushes.

PC:me

A short story about waiting for the bus

Once upon a time, there was a man named Bill. He sat at the bus stop, and it was raining. He held of bouquet. It was a bouquet of roses. They were very pretty at one point, but he had been sitting and waiting at the bus stop for a while, and they were wilting. It was wet and cold outside, but he knew that it would be better when he got on the bus. He wore a dress shirt and pants that were not warm enough to shield him from the cold, wet, weather. Bill shivered. 

He stared out at the supermarket across the street. It would be dry and warm in the supermarket, but he was waiting for the bus. 

Bill looked out at the damp scenery, doing and thinking nothing. He was simply waiting in a cold, trance-like stupor. 

A woman walked along the sidewalk, holding an umbrella. She was walking her dog, and the dog was wearing a little raincoat. As she approached the bus stop, she could see a man sitting on the bench. She wondered if he was waiting for the bus, and she wondered if he knew that the bus had been decommissioned earlier that month. The woman hesitated. Should she tell him that the bus would not come? He looked quite still and content, waiting, and she did not want to intrude. And perhaps the bus was back in order. She was afraid to interrupt his day and afraid to be wrong, so she walked past the bus stop and said nothing.

Bill waited for the bus, but the bus never came. It continued to rain for years, and for years, the bus never came. Bill sat a the bus stop, waiting for the bus. Every year that passed watered the seedling of despair that Bill nurtured in him. His bouquet of roses died, and his clothes faded. With this despair, Bill clung to the hope that the bus was almost here and that when the bus came, it would restore the delicate life in his bouquet and the robust color of his clothes, and everything would be right again. Sometimes he thought he heard the hiss of an engine or the grumble of the wheels, but it was an illusion brought on by the rain.

Eventually, Bill grew old and died at the bus stop, waiting in the rain. 

Photo by Jana Shnipelson