Sunday, March 20, 2011

acceptance vs rejection

Dear Rose,
Thank you for your interest in the peer leadership program!
While you were not selected, blahblahblahblah nothing else is important.

Being rejected hurts. Its also a little bit confounding.
What did i do wrong? What's wrong with me? Aren't I mature, responsible, happy enough?
Did i sound like an idiot in my interview? Did I come across as conceited? What should I have done/said/prayed for that I didn't?
With it comes a myriad of questions.
The truth of it is, however, that there really is no rhyme or reason to most things. Either we get in or we don't. We miss the bus or we don't. We're late or early, happy or sad, surrounded by a crowd or alone in our bedrooms.
All of life that is left to chance can be kind of unnerving.
Perhaps that is why some of us attempt to control life with booklets of numbers, meaningless numbers, and arbitrary judgements of the people who we are, or who we see ourselves to be.
In reality, most of life is a crapshoot. That's kind of hard to grasp.

I was prepared this weekend, folks.
I had prepared myself for a weekend of quasi-solitude, alone in my bedroom reading The Feminine Mystique and thinking about music and pictures and sunlight.
But then, something funny happened.
I got invited to a party. Just like that.
And I went.
And then yesterday, it happend again.
But this time I had two friends who wanted to hang out with me. I had to schedule them both in.
The same thing happened again today.

I hadn't been wallowing in any kind of self pity about my upcoming solitary weekend. In fact, I hadn't really given much thought to it at all. And then, poof. It seems as soon as I accepted my reality, my reality changed on me. Just like that.
Let's not take everything so seriously.

Rose

Sunday, March 13, 2011

A Dance (Post) of Craziness

Dance, when you're broken open.
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmi

Last night i had another one of those sucky Saturdays where my friends forget about me and I'm all alone at home.
i (luckily) had one of my creative "sparks" so to speak...
here's what happened.
I saw a picture of something cool. I decided to copy it.
A+ for creativity, am i right?

k but really...

decided to put some of my old Teen Vogues to use (basically i wanted to trash the bitchez)...
I mean,  TeenVogue kinda sucks.
I'm pretty sure the Editors were like:
Editor #1: Hey, do you wanna make a magazine that'll make young girls feel terrible about themsevles?!
Editor #2: Yeah, that sounds like a great idea! Oh, i know, we'll make them feel bad not only about the fact that they're not anorexic like all of our models, but lets make them feel bad about how they can't afford any of the clothes in our Magazine, too!
Editor #1: Great idea! Now...do you have any thoughts on teenage drinking? I think that'd be an original first article...

You get my point, right?
Yeah so i decided to massacre those babies and heres what resulted


Pretty sweet right?
It's from this poem by Swami Kripalu:
My beloved child, break your heart no longer.
Each time you judge yourself, you break your own heart.
You stop feeding on the love, which is the wellspring of your vitality.
The time has come. Your time. To live. To celebrate,
and to see the goodness that you are…
Do not fight the dark. Just turn on the light.
Let go, and breathe into the goodness that you are.

I know, I know, i'm just all full of the good quotations and funny lines today. ;)

Then, today, still on a "creative" roll, (ha!), i decided to bake cinnamon buns. 
OMG.

Honestly though... WTF was I thinking?! They're pretty freaking labor-intensive for a lazy girl like me! But, um, it's pretty cool how something as lame as that big ol' hunk o' dough up there can turn into these...


and then these


You know when bloggers are all like "AND THEN I ATE SIX OF THEM"    even though you know they're really lying and just trying to make you feel good about yourself in comparison to their non-existent piggishness?
Well, um, and then I ate three of them and that ain't no hyperbole ladies and gents. 
None at all.
I now know the definition of a sugar coma. Or maybe its just the reason why this post is so damn odd.
All i can say is, who cares? There are cinnamon buns in my kitchen and pretty words on my wall!
sweet!
Peace out
xo
Rose

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

where i have been

{a little post to let you know where the h*** i have been }

i've been watching the ice melt under my feet. 
(literally.)

i've been eating cookies


(and cupcakes)
i've been enjoying the little eccentricities of the city

i've been happy that spring has arrived

i've been indulging my shopping urges

check out those glasses!

most of all though, i've been working. a lot.


i've almost gotten so bogged down in the hum-drum no-stop pace of it all that i've forgotten where i've been, why i'm here, where i came from.
sometimes i find myself getting so wrapped up in all of this stuff.
Top 10 Colleges and SAT scores and History papers and test dates, 
and all of a sudden it becomes
really easy to just forget who that girl is who is sitting and
 holding the pencil (with her left hand, by the way-  but more on that later) because i become
so focused on the outcome or the product or the grade.
sometimes its good to get a reminder of who i am. why i'm doing all of this, rather than just going on autopilot with the hope that i can get it all done (w/ flying colors) 
and hope that the rest of my life will wait.
well, it wont.
i need to be a person. not just pieces of a person. 
not just a test grade, or a vocabulary word.
a person. a whole being. me.
this blog is part of that.
i'm back. 
sorry for the absence. i promise i'm here to stay. 
it's easy to lose yourself if you don't remind yourself who you are, why you're here.
i've learned that at least.
as for all that SAT junk...now that's a different story.
xo, Rose
have you ever gotten so caught up in something that you've lost yourself?
 how did you get 'you' back?