Drowning in Music

recently i've fallen in love with the recording rooms they have on campus. i find myself locked in them when i'm not in class or doing coursework. i lose myself in the notes that escape me, smile as i immerse myself in the meanings of the lyrics, and listen for the harmonies i add in layers on the tracks.

i decided to go record myself when i realized that listening to myself on my phone to make adjustments wasn't great. there was a ton of distortion and i sounded nasally. my webcam is a piece of crap and would go out every other note. a friend told me to sing for them constantly, because they loved my loved my voice and due to the long distance nature of our relationship, i decided this was a great way. i've looked into more songs, covers and sheet music than i have all semester.

i also walk around campus with headphones and if its a vacant area, like an empty elevator, i sing :)

its uplifting.

look back at my last post, i was filled with so much spite at the time.

so much has happened since then.

my new routine is to sit outside of the engineering buildings and face the administration building every tuesday and thursday. i'm there for at least 30 mins and i just sit there, meditate, pray, think, relax. I love it.

Things I learned about myself:

• I love to workout.
• I'm pretty smart when I apply myself.
• I have a ton of free time that i didn't realize i had before.
• I have some awesome friends. Seriously.
• I love to dance.
• I look good without makeup (but i still love it)
• I love running... I keep wimping out right now. My goal is to run one mile without stopping.
• I forgot what going to church was like. I love it.

I feel like I've found balance in my life. Like emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. I'm am incredibly happy :) I have bad days, but for the most part I'm really happy :)

Apparently its a lot easier to move on than i thought it would be :)

bandages and broken dreams

its completely over. 3 years with some of the best and worst moments in my life will now fade completely into darkness.

as much as it hurts to say it, it should have been done sooner. instead, it took at least 2 years of unanswered prayers, pleading and begging before i admitted defeat.

it hasn't been the same since february of this year. he was up and down. i was demanding and moody. he had days where he is completely a romantic gentleman and days where he was the biggest douche-bag ever. he blamed me for things, taking them out of context, or he'd just bring up things that really shouldn't matter. so what if someone else "likes" my profile picture on facebook? i can't control that. i was a demanding bitch. i was content and happy, then i'd feel insecure.

we were both too stubborn to admit when we were wrong. he couldn't trust me. i had a lot of guy friends. i borderline flirted, but i knew not to take it too far. he thought i was naive. i thought he was jealous. i thought he was too by the book. he thought i was a feminist.

the flaws go on and on.

and instead of ending it quickly, i let it decay. we both took (metaphorical) pain pills and it would make everything good for a while, but as they wore off, we were back to the same sore spots. we didn't rip the bandage off quickly, we took our sweet time.

but with the ending of this story, i also lost another aspect of my life. i lost my best friend. normally i would still try to talk to him, but now i feel like the best thing to do is not to talk. if not forever then, for a really really long time. i lost the person i called to cuddle, to pray with, to love. to cook dinners for, watch movies with, and talk to everyday. to grab lunch with, to take me out, to surprise me with flowers. to kiss my nose, to massage my feet and hold hands with.

but i can't go back. i can't let myself hurt him. i can't keep letting him hurt me. thats love right? putting someone else above you? god knows i want nothing more right now than to sob into his chest and smell his cologne. to have him stroke my back, kiss my head and have him tell me it will be ok. but he won't. we won't.

i read on my friends blog : "why can’t I stop loving you?" its true right now. but maybe its because i'm afraid to let myself stop. where will everything from 3 years go? i know i will find someone else but my heart screams "where and when will i find love again?"

Sharing the Sisterhood

My sorority is holding recruitment through this week and next and I couldn't be more excited :) The idea of inviting more girls into our bond is truly a joyous thought.

Why am I so in love with my sorority?

I've known since my junior/senior year of high school that i would be in a sorority. Did I know who, how and when? Not at all. I remember looking at the sorority websites for my university and thinking that this was the niche that I wanted to be in. I can't explain why. Maybe it was the way each chapter wrote their descriptions of Philanthropy, Academics, Sisterhood and Social Life that lured me in. It looked like these organizations were the thing to be in and that appealed to my high school brain. I prejudged all the organizations based on their colors, mascots, flowers, symbols and othr things (btw, my favorite color is blue which is the colors for half the organizations.... including my own). Looking at the registration fee for recruitment tho i knew my parents would never go for it.... we weren't poor by any means, by i could see myself asking my parents for the $75 registration needed. I had the grades, the involvement and decent looks and social skills. Going in freshman year, it was bitter sweet to see all the girls with their doors decorated with various things from bid day. So i tried a different approach....

to make a long story not as long it failed.

Because I don't want to give too much info about myself away, I am a happy member of my organization. We have all kinds of girls: Ones that are really smart, and some not so smart (me being the lowest of the latter end of the spectrum), some that look like models, some that play sports, some that couldn't throw a ball. Everyone is different, but the amazing thing is we all get along. Last week i was walking around campus after a storm, ran into a sister, invited her to my apartment for a spontaneous dinner, and had a 3 hour conversation about politics, cheese, shirts, phones and cameras. and probably a bunch of other things i just can't remember right now. It was cool to see the bond me and some one, that I probably would never have met if this organization didn't exist, have.

Not just to people at my campus, but to people across the globe. The concept that a ritual, mottoes, and everything else that is unique to us binds us together for a lifetime is amazing. There are all kinds of sisters: atheists, theists, protestants, wiccans, lesbians, democrats, republicans, football lovers, dog lovers and everything else imaginable. I might not have anything else in common with one sister whom I've never met, but the fact that we are bound by vows would make me want to offer my hospitality if she needed a place to stay. or help in some other way if she needed it.

Basically I can't describe what my sorority is to me. When fraternity and sorority members say its for a life time, it truly is.

I hate pepperoni

Things you probably never knew about me

1. I've been singing since i was 3
2. I've never had a choir solo before college.
3. I've always loved dancing
4. I am a pretty good painter (or i love to do it :})
   
5. I am completely obsessed with makeup, even tho 85% of the time i do a natural/glowy look.
6. I love my major :)
7. I trust easy if i get a good vibe from the person.
8. I loosely practice Ayurveda
9. I love to workout
10. I'm a health nut
    
11. I want to find a way to work my engineering major into fashion.
    

Puzzle Pieces

How often do we try to fit ourselves into holes that we don't fit into?

I've been pondering the cliché phrase "Like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole" a lot recently.

So when and why do we do it?

I know i did with past relationships, education, even churches. Why do we want so desperately to find a place where we belong. Maybe not a necessarily place with like-minded people, but people that agree, support and nurture us. No matter how isolated we try to make ourselves, without these key human interactions it feels like something is missing...
Now i'm quite an outgoing and bubbly person, but often times I wonder if the people around me truly care. My family-yes, my few good friends- of course, my sorority sisters-for the most part they all care about my well being, my church at home-mostly, and the list of people and their levels of concern vary endlessly...

But why? Why

Catching Up.

Ok so I have about 3 posts waiting to be published but I haven't submitted them yet. Something always happens that keeps me from finishing.... Stupid Windows 7. I need to reinstall Ubuntu (on wubi), but my windows keeps crashing when i try to. d'oh.

Enough geek speak....

I miss my college town. Completely while I love the major city I'm near, I hate the suburb I'm in. In my college town, I feel freer. I've been looking at old pictures and seeing how far I've come, the people I grew to care about and love and the things I've done in 4 years. The sucky part is I have one more year (yaay for changing majors) and all my friends have graduated (but i get one more football season). I've been contacting people that I haven't talked to in a few years, planning to hang out with a few good friends and bonding with my cousins. It all seems so strange to think that with some of these people I used to see weekly and sometimes daily, those meetings will become all too rare. For example, I grabbed coffee once a week for 4 years with my roommate freshman year and honestly sometimes it was the only thing i had to look forward to in a week. Now my dear friend is moving to a different town, and moving on to bigger things. I'm proud of her and know she'll go far, but I'll definitely miss seeing her :(

Another random memory that makes me smile is freshman year I went to a friends house for dinner. My friend's parents, unsure of my religious beliefs and dietary restrictions were unsure of what to provide me. I remember after sitting down to dinner for lamb chops (I believe) my friend's mom said "I wasn't sure if you ate meat so I made pork too." It made no sense but it still makes me smile.

I remember singing Fall Out Boy at the top of out lungs (Are we going up or just doing down?), trying on dresses at the Mall. Cramming idk how many people in the back of a hatch back. Playing cards in the dorm lobby (spoons :) ) Running around campus (esp at night or really early in the day). Dealing with creepy stalkers (i still do this tho). Randomly making friends while working the front desk at the library. Helping to start my sorority :)

All in all, I wouldn't really change much about my past 4 years. Maybe just that I would study more freshman year :)

What are some of your favorite memories?

Return

Hello friends! :) I'm back from my 10 day trip to India.

While away I took a lot of time to think about this blog.... mostly in my 3 day hospital stay for food poisoning.... yaay ):

So I'm doing research on my next topic - The Standard.

until then a thought for you to ponder...
while I was in the hospital I began to wonder if I was taking care of my body properly. while in general I do, but I don't go out of my way to. So my goal is to get fit (well.... toned) and eat well for 2 weeks. I lost about 5 lbs since my hospital stint and i would like to get those lbs back.... in a healthy way. On the plus side, I lost the tiny bit of pudge that was on my abs...... so a six pack is within reach :)
So on the Lunch menu today:
Calcuim Enriched pasta with olive oil/garlic/lemon/peas and Cajun Style Fried Fish (more like seared, not deep fried), With strawberries and granola for dessert :)

Think away!

Let's Start Thinking...

Morality... Is it really as we see it?

This weekend while shopping at Express at the local mall, I left my phone in the dressing room. I left the store, walked about 3 minutes away and realized it wasn't in my purse. I RAN (yes RAN) back to see if it was there. To my dismay, it wasn't in the dressing room, the front desk or the lost and found. Someone stole my phone. Even now looking back I don't understand why... why would you take something that belongs to someone else, that has personal information, and pictures they'll never see again or get back just for no reason? It wasn't a fancy phone, just a plain samsung.... the only special thing about it was the grey zebra cover that it had. Wouldn't the right thing to do be to turn in the phone or contact the numbers on there like "Home," "Mom," "Dad" and get the phone back to me? They would have gotten a reward... but instead they focused on getting immediate benefits and in this case, the only negative would be a guilty conscience (if that). Then who is to say that the person acted wrongly? Where does our intrinsic value of right and wrong come from? Perhaps the person was acting in their version of morality.

But still something is lacking. For example, every major culture views murder as wrong, and we view murderers as sick individuals. If morality is subjective, isn't this person acting within their moral rights? If its relative, who's to say the murdered deserved the right to live? Where does this absolute morality come from? Why should a lover be hurt if his beloved cheated on him? She was acting in her sense of morality correct? So why do we feel hurt and pain when we've been wronged? Or when we witness something horrible happening? Is morality something we should hide under?

No my friends, morality is something that we should use to take action. It is because we have morality that life goes on in a normal manner. We shouldn't be complacent that everything is going well, we should be active to fix the wrongs in the world. Don't use religion of any kind to sit back knowing you "have it made" but use it to care for those who don't.

Next.... If Morality exists, where does it come from?

Now: How do you feel about morality? Is it necessary or a necessary evil? or just evil?

Think away!