dreaming

in the midst of a (too long) study break, i thought i would try an exercise: visualize my dream life, so i have something to work towards.

what kind of person do i want to be?

-i want to be someone that is calm, balanced, and nurturing. i want to do good work and be recognized for it, but not at the expense of relationships with my loved ones.

-i want to be a natural leader. the one that friends can turn to.

-i want to be reliable. never wavering in my resolve.

-i want to be witty and gregarious.

what do i want from my life?

-i want lots of space for creativity. either via my own creation (crafts, clothing, spaces), via career (osteopathy private practice), or via experiences (road trips, sight seeing, eating!)

-i want tons of love!! of the mammalian variety. human or feline preferably.

-i want to provide financially for my parents and brother, as a way of expressing the love i could never seem to show them otherwise.

-i would love to reforge connections that i so petulantly and pugnaciously burned in my younger years.

-i would love to teach, especially to those who are shy, uncomfortable with who they are, are in the process of changing who they are, and who are open to morally good possibilities. i want to be able to take lives hesitating at the fork in the road and make them great.

-i want to live in a calming, tranquil space.

what do i want, materially?

-a spare, hard-working, stylish and flattering wardrobe.

-to be fit.

-beer.

-good dental hygiene.

dude, this is hard (TWSS)

....in my defense, there is still no internet where i live. i'm only able to access the wonderful world of blogging when i'm at school or at a starbucks. which is totally good, less time wasted. but...still.

so what's happened in the last month? we finished the reproduction system (my 2nd fav) and then a week-long cranial course (my 1st FAV!!!). we started gastrointestinal (my 3rd most hated). i performed with the 5c dance company in claremont a couple times, and am totally loving working out with them. nothing like trying to keep up with a bunch of ladies nearly a decade younger than you! am still trying to get a leg turn. it's when you pirouette but while extending one leg all the way up by your head. i'm beginning to learn the limits of an aging body.

something happened this past month too. my clothes cravings completely stopped. every time i look in my closet i only think of what i can take out, not what i need to put in it. For the first time ever, i think i have a closet that is in complete homeostasis with my current life's demands. it's super bizarre and awesome.

AND! there's so much i have to look foward to. resuming studying for boards (i'm serious), a trip to lake arrowhead with old college kids, and a trip to disneyland with some besties!

...i just had a 3-hour nonstop dance rehearsal this morning...i think that's why i feel so goddamn happy right now. endorphins ftw.

giddy

after years of walking through the proverbial dating desert, i might have been just asked to dinner...?

it wasn't even a real invitation, it just organically kinda came up in conversation; don't even know if i like this guy. he seems normal, but could be a closet jerk, who knows! i might end up in a ditch somewhere in orange county...

...still. it's nice to get asked, right.

in the works: a pseudo-redo of a Geren Ford top that was generously gifted to me by a bestie. when i took the scissors to that thing it hurt just to think of what it cost full price....

on rotation:

overwhelming/underwhelming

lotsa personal ish bubbling to the surface today. mostly due to my failure as a person.

perhaps it was that feeling that compelled this:

excuse my hot mess of a room.

i recently became obsessed with the idea of owning a thin layering sweater. because believe it or not, a full closet and i don't have one. i was making a therapeutic trip to Goodwill when i saw this XXL polo. just made of the softest, most delicate merino wool i have ever felt in my LIFE. the tag is some italian name. picture does not do it justice. those crafty italians.

o hai, jennifer connelly

this is what's selling at american apparel at like $30-50 a pop. so, like Dane Cook in that comedy central special where he talks about snakes, i thought: "why not me...!!"

wow what an incredibly boring picture

body and sleeves resized, sewn into a raglan sweater pattern, original ribbing at the bottom. the collar material was the polo collar cut lengthwise then doubled over. this was the most difficult part because i foolishly did not work off a pattern and decided to wing it, thus resulting in huge miscalculations about the fabric drape and neck opening length. you can wing it with cooking, but not with sewing.

anyway. a couple hours later, $5 bucks, "new" "AA" sweater. go me. back to my patheticness. at least i'll be warm.

off-day

not even gonna try picture-taking today; there was a mandatory event at school so i had to wear the boring career-wear. then back home to study under the covers.

can i just say though...the kill bill movies get better and better with every watching! ...i really should move them off my hard drive so i stop watching them :( i like the attention to detail. though on occasion a glass poured only a quarter-full will appear in the next shot to be nearly full, stuff like that. what's the name of the person that takes care of continuity in movies? yeah that person kinda dropped the ball in a few places. ...am i totally placing myself in Comic Book Guy nerd-territory with that remark? i'm not an a-hole, i swear.

clothes talk

LOVE love loving: high waisted black silk shorts scored at goodwill for 4.50. finally!! i get some of the luck that so many thrift bloggers seem to have like every single day.

IRKED: please stop with the open toed booties. no matter what i do they always remind me of hobo shoes in old cartoons. the kind they stir into their mulligan soup over an oil-drum fire. stop dressing like a hobo!!!

dead like

in three, maybe four days, i finished the only two seasons of the 2003-4 show Dead Like Me, a dramedy about an 18-year-old girl who dies and comes back as a grim reaper who must harvest souls daily while simultaneously trying to lead an inconspicuous, innocuous American life. it was a terribly written show. great creativity and unique ideas, but clumsy storytelling, like a parent trying to give their tween The Talk.
i've noticed this theme in shows i've been watching lately: the theme of soul reapers. shinigami. specifically, in Bleach, Death Note. It is not surprising that this theme be prevalent among Japanese anime; the culture is deeply rooted in spirituality, and the blurring between the living world and the afterlife is a common subject of discourse. this is not so common in the america's puritan roots, which makes Dead Like Me somewhat of a surprise to the average american viewer. and i think that's part of why the show swings and misses so much. in japan, there is a relatively homogenous view of the afterlife, and what happens to souls after they die. here, in our proverbial melting pot, what direction to go? it's like launching a ship into outerspace. there are literally infinite number of courses to take, and the writers, i think, tried to reach for all of them, became overloaded, and ended up in limbo.
aside from pondering the cultural differences between this media's approach to life and death, i guess i wanted to try to learn something from all this television. the one universal thread upon which this conceit is based is this: what is our meaning in life? "chelsea, you aren't seriously trying to find the answer to your problems through tv, are you?" well, sure, why not? it would justify eating that entire bag of banana chips because i was sitting in front of my laptop all day. i found it to be a vehicle for thought experiments; bringing up of certain situations, and trying to apply them to my own life. looking at the characters in these stories and figuring out which qualities of the human condition i liked and disliked. wishing on and off that i could be dead like them.