I'm not posting much

Sorry about that, but I have about three ideas for posts. Hopefully I will work on them this afternoon. Currently I am in bed and typing on my iPod. I want to sleep more but I need to get up so this is my attempt to keep myself stimulated... XD

I just realised I haven't charged my phone in a while. Whoops. Well, there is my reason to get out of bed.

God, let this be a good day that honours you through my words and actions and thoughts.
AMEN

I will survive

School starts again tomorrow. New campus, only one in-class class... and one less class than last time, though last time two of my classes felt half as time consuming as the others.

I'll have to work out scheduling based on how things go. Last time I made a plan to study each thing at a specific time, but there are so many unknowns in this situation that I need more experience.

Well, I've gotta be up at six to catch a bus at 7:45, so I have about nine minutes left on the computer before I finish up a few more things and go to bed... No more 11 hour nights. (Hee hee, Eleventh Hour, Doctor Who, okay okay never mind.) 

I watched an anime movie today and it wasn't terrible but it wasn't great. Anyway, it was probably my last chance to veg out for a while.

Good luck to me and Bethany and Emma and Justin and everyone else who begins COLLEGE CLASSES this week. And good luck to everyone who already started normal school or already started college or WELL GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE but especially me.

What's your One Direction? (ahaha this has nothing to do with a band)

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.

-Oh, the Places You'll Go, Dr. Seuss 

 Doesn't it seem like at times people expect you to know where your life is going? Some of us have known since we were kids. Some of us keep changing our minds. Some of us have a pretty good idea. Some of us just don't know.

It's kind of a laugh that people say you get to make your own decisions once you're an adult. Well, to some extent that's true, but if you want to do art for a living those same people are quick to jump in and tell you that's completely ridiculous; go get a real job.

What if you've got a calling and it doesn't conform to "how life is supposed to work?"
I was wondering the other day about John the Baptist. He was dedicated from birth to be set apart in his lifestyle for God. His mother was told while still pregnant with him that he was supposed to abstain from alcohol. This wasn't TOO uncommon, but it was the least of his abnormalities.
The fact that he was named "John" probably made some people wonder. That was the name God gave his parents, but tradition was to name a son after his father.
What was really weird was how he went off and lived in the desert and ate bugs and wild honey. He didn't wear "normal" clothes. His occupation was preaching to people--he didn't have a "trade." I'm sure plenty of his neighbors asked him what the heck he thought he was doing with his life.

Hey, if God is calling you to do something, that's awesome, and usually (in my experience) other believers will support you in that if they're pretty sure it's genuine.
But I also wondered... what if John the Baptist just wanted to be a blacksmith when he was 12?
What if what God has for you is something you don't want to do at all?!
Now, I'm not sure if such a clash of personality and calling would even happen completely. Your interests might seem very extraneous at times, but who God created you to be will surely line up somehow with what He made you to do. I don't think God would create someone with a sciencey smart personality, shape her life experiences to this, give her great scholarships and wonderful teachers, and then decide her calling is to... I dunno, write dramas for TV. I'm pretty sure that if God is leading you somewhere and you're in step with that, you'll be okay with it, and He'll prepare you for the parts you just aren't sure about.

I never had an answer to "what are you going to be when you grow up?" I liked drawing and writing but they were just hobbies. When i was young, my media was very closely monitored. When I started choosing for myself what I watched and read, I was appalled to find cursing and sexual stuff littering  cool stories with great characters. I would watch things like The Sound of Music and wonder why "clean" media is no longer made for everyone. One day I was praying and it just clicked. Since then I've been convinced that I'm supposed to be involved in making wholesome media that anyone can enjoy, whether they're grown up or still innocent.

There is possibly a second part to my direction in life that seemed way out of my league at first, but God is teaching me ways to fulfill it. However, I'm not ready to publicly share what that is yet.

Well, I'm not entirely sure where this is going. It was supposed to be based on my John the Baptist musings. But basically, here's some encouragement: Whether you think that you know where you're going or not, you can trust God to show you where you should be and to help you get there.

T-Shirts Are Stupid

Okay, so I actually should have titled this "T-Shirts can be really dumb a lot of the time" but that doesn't make for an eye-catching title. Nothing like a little hyperbolic opinion throwing to rake in attention!

In fact, this leads into my point.

I see the dumbest t-shirts in stores.

So I mean, there are still some cool ones and alright ones

And some "oh, okay, not offensive but kinda dumb in my opinion" ones

And some that are in my opinion inappropriate  (no pictures)

And some that are just plain mean!

Okay, there's no reason to insult everyone who even looks at you. I see a lot of mean spirited things like this both in male and female shirts. It's not okay, alright?

Another thing that annoys me (but isn't offensive) is all the "swag" and "yolo" etc. These silly little trends come around and everyone jumps on the bandwagon and the t-shirts get printed but soon enough the herd will move onto something else. I'm a little tired of seeing something become "a thing" and watch everyone like it for about two weeks... I just... I don't like how the whole popularity system works. It doesn't feel genuine. Things that might actually be good seem like they are being devalued by this (and of course there's plenty of stuff that was dumb in the first place). I could touch on this being an "issue" but mostly it's just me complaining so disregard this paragraph if you like. 

But let's end this not-very-deep post on a positive note. Girls are getting more geeky shirts now too. c:

(I admit this is a rather poor example. I mean things like Mario and superheroes...)

Jeans (and the bus)

I have learned the hard way that stretchy jeans wear out in weird ways, and also, ever since this summer when I got my first pair, I have liked skinny jeans. ^o^

So with only one pair of wearable-in-most-situations jeans (the grey ones I got this summer), my mom and I went to find some more.

I guess I'm hard to shop for. I get scared of price tags bigger than 10-15 dollars, I do not want shiny rhinestones or sequins on my pockets, thank you, and.... okay those are the two main things.

I was seeing basically the same skinny jean colors at every store--some neons plus a sliiiiightly greenish blue, teal, purple, and yellow. Target had a bunch of patterned ones, but I couldn't convince myself that I wanted or needed any of those. XD

It was a good day to shop for jeans though because pretty much every store had a lot of clearance. My mom almost forgot Sears, but I mentioned it, and all their jeans were 50 purr scent off. It was quite convenient and I found a pair of black ones that fit in my size which is weird because the grey ones I have now are a few sizes up. The button is a rhinestone (bluh) but my shirt will cover that up usually. XD I don't often tuck in my shirts.

We went to about a billion stores after that but finally on the way home we went into Bealls and I found some plain old denim ones that fit! These ones were a size a bit up.

Both of these pairs are actually relatively close fitting (but I made sure I could crouch down completely in them) whereas my grey ones are kind of loose and my white ones (which didn't count as wearable in most situations) are pleeennnnty loose.  The new ones are slightly stretchy, but probably not as stretchy as my old bootcut jeans which just wear out weiiiiirdly.

I think the grey ones will remain my favorite, but I just needed some other options. XD



Oh yeah, I forgot to mention my BUS ADVENTURES.

I rode the bus all the way to the campus and then I walked around and found where all the important stuff was and school starts on Monday and AHHHHH but at least my history book came and now I'm just waiting on my last writing book.