Things I Learned This Summer

Well, I've moved into my room at school, almost all my textbooks are in, and classes start on Monday. This means only ONE THING: that it's time for Wild Card's List Of Things She Learned This Summer!

It is Acceptable to Have Fun at Your Older Brother's Wedding

It's supposed to be a good day. And if it is, HOORAY!

Try to Get a Summer Job

Even if it's working retail, you'll get some money and learn how to handle a lot of personalities and some kinds of stress that you may not be used to. If it's something you enjoy, like dressing up and telling stories, then even better!

Find Your Happy Place

I think this factors into a lifetime of work - if you can tolerate it most days, then HOORAY. If it's in a place you like, HOORAY!

If You're In a Position of Power...

During Gather at the River in early August, a particular bishop showed up. He has, apparently, a past filled with actions raging from "problematic if you look too hard" to "affecting at least one person's ordination process." He was not a welcome figure at Gather. But he came. And it was tense. But he said that he needed to hear what had been said.
I don't know much of his history with the LGBTQIA+ community, aside from his problems with it, but showing up at Gather at all had to take a lot of guts. If he was so moved, it can't have been for nothing.

Find A Good Series To Invest Your Fangirling Into

You don't have to watch or read EVERYTHING that gets recommended to you. You CAN, however, find a few things to geek out over if you want to. It's perfectly acceptable to find one or two REALLY GOOD THINGS.
It's also okay to move on from those things.
It's okay if those things are not the mainstream fun things. Just make sure you can summarize them for people who ask.

All-Nighters Suck

I think there's a reason that I don't study past 1:00 AM, as a rule. That reason is that all-nighters are AWFUL. They throw off your sleep schedule, and being tired and in class is not a good combination.






So these were just some of the things I learned this summer. If you learned anything cool, leave it in the comments!

Welcome to Blog Most Days Of The Week In July!

Greetings!
After a two-month hiatus, I'm back, and ready to actually blog! I'll be trying to post every weekday; the overall goal is to blog five days a week this month (except for this week, because there are only four days in July this week. But no matter.)

So the theme of this month is WRITE WHAT COMES TO MIND. And by "write what comes to mind," I mean "post about the thing I wrote in my planner yesterday when I was planning out the rest of my summer."

So today's topic is:

HOW TO SURVIVE A BORING SUMMER

Boring summers are kind of a drag.

Well, not 'kind of a drag.' They are, by definition, a drag. If you don't get a job or internship, AND you can't find anywhere to volunteer, and you're too old for camp, and you can't/ won't go on vacation, AND all your friends are out of down doing one of the above, then summer is basically 12 weeks of Netflix and pretending you can accomplish more than watching all 10 seasons of "Friends" in less than a week.

I know from experience.

So what should you do if you want REAL LIFE "friends" but don't have the means for summer adventures that happen in books and movies?

TRY THE FOLLOWING!

Find a place to go exercise. And then go exercise.

It counts extra if you only have to get yourself there through sheer force of will, and not driving or public transportation. If you're broke, you need to take advantage of these things.

Find free things, and then do them.

If it's free outdoor concerts, free books, free anything. Just go and find free things to do, and go do them. Bring a friend/ family member and food from home and then do cool things.

Try your hand at crafting.

If you get really good at your craft, you'll be able to watch "Friends" AND craft AT THE SAME TIME. This is how I'm getting through making my brother's wedding present. (Yes, the wedding that happened a month ago).

Read at least one book.

I don't know about you, but if I watch too much TV without SOME kind of literary interruption, I go insane. Try NOT going insane by reading more!

Get out of the house at least once a day.

This could be exercise. This could be going to hang out at someone's house. This could be going to a coffee shop. You could even (gasp) go to the library, where there are (gasp!) free things, and you can (GASP) read! AND THERE'S AIR CONDITIONING!

Start a blog and review things.

Review free things. Review not-free things. Review the free blog service that you're using. After a while, you can start putting ads on, and earn $5 by the end of the summer.

Old Friends in New Places

Today I went to a slightly different area from where I live to go check out some possible places to work/ volunteer for the rest of the summer. (If any of you have any ideas, please let me know.) It's not terribly far; only about half an hour by public transportation.
It was a long day. I got a lot of pretty yarn, two new books, an interesting lunch, and a tour of a historical place where I may volunteer later this summer. (Before you get on my back for buying new books, I did finish the book for this week. The review will be on Friday.)
The book shop was the last place I went - it was a spur of the moment sort of thing. I didn't know whether they were hiring. They hadn't posted anything saying they were. This was the first time I'd ever been in that used book shop in my life. I decided it was worth a shot because... well... USED BOOKS! It turned out to be a tiny store cramped with more books than could probably fit in the space. Well, let me rephrase that. Barnes and Noble probably has more books than this place, but this local shop is doing its level best to show how it can make up the difference. It's tiny, it's cramped, and I got two good-looking books for under $10 because USED BOOKS! (I may sell back old books there, actually).
Anyway, they don't need any help around there, but as I was finally heading back to the subway, someone said my name. Turns out it was one of my friends from the Turkey trip. By that, I don't mean he's a kid from my church or a kid from my college. He's from Turkey. He showed us around Istanbul last summer. And he's staying not terribly far away from me for a while during the summer.
It was one of the spectacular moments where I realized that if I hadn't taken the exact amount of time in the book shop that I did - if I hadn't gone into the bookstore at all - then I would have had no idea that he would be anywhere near me. THIS IS CRAZY.

That is my story for today. I hope you like it.

The end of Break

Well, once again, it's super late and I'm unsure about what to post about. Though this week has been quite nice - I've gotten a lot of things together, including summer ideas (the internship didn't work out) and other day-to-day things. I've also caught up on sleep, which is nice. I've also explored a lot of recipes that can be made in mugs. (Lime cake (based off of lemon cake because we don't have lemon extract) is good).

I think the main thing I need to realize is that I need to break out of my shell more. I know that's a really strange statement to make, but I think I've had a perpetual issue with shyness. I don't talk to people sometimes, even though I sometimes want to. I know my mother, at least, is frustrated with it and wants it to stop because it can sometimes hinder things (why don't I just go into the business office and ask about internships? IF I DO, THEN MY STOMACH WILL DROP OUT OF MY BODY AND I WON'T BE ABLE TO DIGEST ANYTHING AND DO YOU REALLY WANT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR MY INEVITABLE DEATH?). Knowing me, I'd much rather do stuff alone - a consequence of being an introvert, I guess.

As an example of how much we differ on this: Earlier in the week, she proposed the idea that I travel a lot over summer break to work on my writing and have some stories to possibly pitch to travel writing companies when I get back. I got excited and started looking into flights to Europe (fun fact: it's apparently really cheap to fly to Oslo).
I was thinking that she wanted me to do the whole discovering-oneself-as-one-treks-alone-and-learning-self-confidence type thing. She had in mind that I would find a tour group for college students and sign up with that. Neither one is wrong, per se - it just depends on what is right for the individual. For my mom, it would be great to have a group that's already planned and ready to go; half the adventure is meeting the people and seeing the sights with the group she's sharing it with. That's perfectly fine - if that's your adventure, go for it.
Though that can be fun, I think I need to take a different. For me, I think it would be a bigger adventure to fly into Oslo without any Norwegian in my head and to figure out my way from there. There's no way to conquer one's fears than to do it when there's absolutely no other choice. Isn't that what my mother wants, anyway - to let me be able to talk to people better?

There's a lot of different ways to travel. Traveling in a group is more of an extrovert's thing; since I'm an introvert, going around alone is better for me. There's nothing wrong with either or even a combination of both. I understand that going in a group allows for more accountability, but sometimes the leap is part of the growth. No matter what I wind up doing this summer, I hope to be able to open up more.