So, I recently started a new job working at Vivint (which is fantastic, btw. They give you free lunches, their burgers are from grass-fed cows so they're cruelty-free, 2-3 fifteen minute breaks, and they have a sand volleyball court and exercise equipment). In training, we'll have guests come in to speak with us about certain aspects of the job.
Yesterday, a guy named Levi came in to speak with us. He's half black, half Tongan, and 100% amazing. He asked us to share our dreams with him, our future careers. He said we need to beat fear if we want to succeed, we need to share our dreams with people who we trust and who will support us. We need people who will talk us out of our fears and help us take our dreams. We need to write our dreams down.
There was a kid in a training class Levi told us about. He wanted to be a writer. He didn't write consistently, and he only wrote in short bursts. There was another boy, in a different training class. Levi asked him how often he wrote. "I write for six hours, every day." The training class was floored by his answer. Six hours? How could anybody write for six hours every single day? "When I get stuck, I start a new story, and a new story, and then I go back to an older story and continue on from there." Levi asked if he could read something of what the kid wrote, and it was fantastic. He talked to the kid more and learned that it was his dream to meet with Brandon Sanderson. Levi knew a girl who worked for Brandon Sanderson as a TA, and called to see if the kid could meet with him. The girl said he was busy and didn't have time to meet him. But one day, about six months later, the girl called back saying she'd mentioned it in passing, and Brandon was excited to meet with him. So Levi asked the kid what he'd do if Brandon Sanderson wanted to have lunch with him later that day. The kid said he'd love to, but when he realized Levi was serious, he began to come up with excuses. His manager wouldn't let him leave, he couldn't leave Vivint, his loyalty to the company would be questions. Levi talked his fears down, and the kid met with Brandon. It was amazing, the kid said, Brandon read some of what he'd written and was introducing the kid to his publisher to sign a contract.
I want to work at a zoo. I want to be a zoo keeper. And I realized I had fears that I was allowing to get in the way of me and my dream. I was letting the distance to the zoo be a barrier. I was allowing lack of money to be a barrier. I was allowing the lack of trainers to be a barrier. I was letting the expiration of my TB (tuberculosis) test to be a barrier. I was allowing my two part-time jobs to be a barrier.
My determination is carrying me through, though. I got the TB shot yesterday, and it just needs to be checked tomorrow. I'm going to the zoo this Saturday to clean up the animal resource center where our handling animals live. I will see the new exhibit and set up some training dates so that I can get my Animal Handler's permit and be a handler on my own. If I have a free day that a trainer can't work with me on, I'm going to go up to the zoo to be a regular volunteer with biofacts. I won't let my fears get in my way. Summer isn't an excuse to slack off. I'm reviewing my biology textbook and reading the second half of it that's covered this fall in my 1620 class. I'm going to stop wasting my time on Facebook and Netflix.
I'm
going to focus EVERYTHING on my dream. Levi spoke a lot more to us
yesterday, but I'll leave you with his motto, now my motto. 'This world
belongs to me. Everything in it is for my success or my failure. This
world is mine.'
What's your dream? What are you doing to get there? Start now. Don't stop.
~CrimsonRuin
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Monday, March 17, 2014
Summer of 2012
Ryan said something today that kind of surprised me. He said it was weird to think that I could drive up to SLC so nonchalantly over the weekend (which I did, to see a friend), that I was so grown up and different from 2012. I had to pause and think about this for a minute.
I couldn’t write about all of the changes since 2012 in a single sentence.
The me in 2012 was a high school junior. She didn’t know how she would handle so many of her friends graduating high school, or her brother leaving. She didn’t know how she’d face AP classes and tests, and not making the cast of the fall musical. She didn’t know how she would manage to be a director over seven high school students, or whether her play would be a huge success. She wouldn’t imagine she would be threatened to be kicked out of the house at graduation or how she would feel at graduation. She couldn’t imagine working 13 hour days at a duplex she hardly knew existed, or being kicked out of her mother’s volleyball group, or the dynamics of living in a family of four, or being functionally the oldest sibling of the house. She couldn’t imagine not getting accepted into BYU, the crisis of finding a college, enjoying UVU, being a college freshman, getting a D on a test for the first time in her life, working at Savers, going through a car accident, volunteering at a zoo working with the public, handling zoo animals, winning a Women’s B UOVA (volleyball) competition, completing a 100-page novel, writing a long fan fiction with a fantastic ending, having financial worries, driving three hours away by herself, writing guys that she didn’t even know, writing e-mails that were functionally journal entries every week for a year and a half, or what a singles’ ward would be like.
Wow.
I could, however, say in a single breath that I have changed immensely and not at all.
Many of my close friends are still the same people I would’ve counted as a junior. My older brother is still my favorite person, I live a few houses away from my longest and bestest friend (now 19 years old!) and in the same house, I’m going to school, I still want to be a zoo worker and a published author, I love volleyball, I love cosplaying, I read books and obsess over fan fiction, I have the same nicknames, I’m overly-optimistic about the future, and I still can’t wait for my big brother to get home from his mission.
The 2012 junior would be awed, surprised, dazed, disappointed, and euphoric to learn all of the changes about 2014 me. Two years is a crazy amount of time, and I’m not even all the way through it yet.
D8 (lean head to the right to see the correct expression)
O.O
That’s a rather scary, but actually pretty uplifting thought. In the last year and a half (Summer 2012) or somewhere around there, what’s changed in your life? What would you as a junior in a high school be blown away by? And what has stayed the same?
~Crimson
I couldn’t write about all of the changes since 2012 in a single sentence.
The me in 2012 was a high school junior. She didn’t know how she would handle so many of her friends graduating high school, or her brother leaving. She didn’t know how she’d face AP classes and tests, and not making the cast of the fall musical. She didn’t know how she would manage to be a director over seven high school students, or whether her play would be a huge success. She wouldn’t imagine she would be threatened to be kicked out of the house at graduation or how she would feel at graduation. She couldn’t imagine working 13 hour days at a duplex she hardly knew existed, or being kicked out of her mother’s volleyball group, or the dynamics of living in a family of four, or being functionally the oldest sibling of the house. She couldn’t imagine not getting accepted into BYU, the crisis of finding a college, enjoying UVU, being a college freshman, getting a D on a test for the first time in her life, working at Savers, going through a car accident, volunteering at a zoo working with the public, handling zoo animals, winning a Women’s B UOVA (volleyball) competition, completing a 100-page novel, writing a long fan fiction with a fantastic ending, having financial worries, driving three hours away by herself, writing guys that she didn’t even know, writing e-mails that were functionally journal entries every week for a year and a half, or what a singles’ ward would be like.
Wow.
I could, however, say in a single breath that I have changed immensely and not at all.
Many of my close friends are still the same people I would’ve counted as a junior. My older brother is still my favorite person, I live a few houses away from my longest and bestest friend (now 19 years old!) and in the same house, I’m going to school, I still want to be a zoo worker and a published author, I love volleyball, I love cosplaying, I read books and obsess over fan fiction, I have the same nicknames, I’m overly-optimistic about the future, and I still can’t wait for my big brother to get home from his mission.
The 2012 junior would be awed, surprised, dazed, disappointed, and euphoric to learn all of the changes about 2014 me. Two years is a crazy amount of time, and I’m not even all the way through it yet.
D8 (lean head to the right to see the correct expression)
O.O
That’s a rather scary, but actually pretty uplifting thought. In the last year and a half (Summer 2012) or somewhere around there, what’s changed in your life? What would you as a junior in a high school be blown away by? And what has stayed the same?
~Crimson
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Stay On the Sunny Side
Today's been pretty much the first sunny, slightly warm day since winter began! Ack, it's just so pretty that my heart skips a beat. Summer is not far away, my friends!
8D
Last Monday was a holiday, so of course it meant working a 10 hour shift at Savers. But good news! I've just been hired on at Zupas, a sandwich/panini (I dare you to spell that right without looking it up), soup, and salad place. It was really shocking because the girl interviewing me didn't know she had an interview with me, and I thought that the person who contacted me (who works at another store) was supposed to be the interviewer. But the girl did the interview anyways, and it turns out she likes me, and we both play volleyball (I totally want to play in an outdoor tournament with her this summer), and so she hired me on! I have a feeling working there is going to be really demanding but fun.
Also, the volunteer coordinator at the zoo told me I can finish up my animal handling training in April, no problem. So I won't have to restart from the beginning like I was afraid I might have to! I look forward to working with these beautiful animals and the animal-nerd-o people like myself~.
I can hardly wait for summer to come!
-Crimson
Writing-related: I got a new story idea, wrote the first chapter, and I'm super super excited for it. Now, how to once again make time to write...?
8D
Last Monday was a holiday, so of course it meant working a 10 hour shift at Savers. But good news! I've just been hired on at Zupas, a sandwich/panini (I dare you to spell that right without looking it up), soup, and salad place. It was really shocking because the girl interviewing me didn't know she had an interview with me, and I thought that the person who contacted me (who works at another store) was supposed to be the interviewer. But the girl did the interview anyways, and it turns out she likes me, and we both play volleyball (I totally want to play in an outdoor tournament with her this summer), and so she hired me on! I have a feeling working there is going to be really demanding but fun.
Also, the volunteer coordinator at the zoo told me I can finish up my animal handling training in April, no problem. So I won't have to restart from the beginning like I was afraid I might have to! I look forward to working with these beautiful animals and the animal-nerd-o people like myself~.
I can hardly wait for summer to come!
-Crimson
Writing-related: I got a new story idea, wrote the first chapter, and I'm super super excited for it. Now, how to once again make time to write...?
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
I Killed A Man... With Dis Thumb
Uh, yeah... so I played Halo for the first time a couple days ago. And I killed a guy. On the opposite team. Yusss. (Okay, so I managed to kill people on my own team on several occasions, and I killed my little brother's character more than once, but that's not important, right? Hey, I only played for about fifteen minutes.) Yeah, I probably won't play it much. My problem was that you constantly have to change where you're looking, which gets in the way of taking out the opponents. Really annoying, but hey, family time with my little brother is always good, right?
Better news: I am in a Volleyball 1 class. I expected it to be pretty basic, pretty slow, let's-relearn-how-to-pass-for-the-fifteenth-time kind of speed. And while we did re-learn how to pass the ball, the teacher of this class shocked me right down from my head to my yellow sneakers when he told us that we were going to learn to jump serve today. Jump serve. He hasn't even re-taught us how to set or how to hit, but he had us learn how to jump serve.
Just for clarification: only a few girls on a high school varsity team can jump serve. Jump serves are more of a college-level volleyball skill.
I knew the theory behind jump serves, but the way he taught it and the practices he had us doing had me jump serving before I realized I was jump serving. How cool is that? I am stoked. I can't wait to use it in a real game.
Best News: I got my car back, fixed and drive-able. The guy who fixed it is my HERO. Not many people would be willing to fix a wrecked car for free in the three coldest months of the year. He's my home teacher, and he's flipping amazing. He deserves all the sugar cookies the world has to offer.
I'm so incredibly grateful to have it back. It's a bit daunting to be on the road again, but I'll be careful. With any luck, I won't have to crash another car for many, many years. The first thing I'm going to do with my car is drive it to places that are hiring, since I'm not getting hardly any hours at my work. Wish me luck! And if you see any job openings, send a message my way!
~Crimson
Better news: I am in a Volleyball 1 class. I expected it to be pretty basic, pretty slow, let's-relearn-how-to-pass-for-the-fifteenth-time kind of speed. And while we did re-learn how to pass the ball, the teacher of this class shocked me right down from my head to my yellow sneakers when he told us that we were going to learn to jump serve today. Jump serve. He hasn't even re-taught us how to set or how to hit, but he had us learn how to jump serve.
Just for clarification: only a few girls on a high school varsity team can jump serve. Jump serves are more of a college-level volleyball skill.
I knew the theory behind jump serves, but the way he taught it and the practices he had us doing had me jump serving before I realized I was jump serving. How cool is that? I am stoked. I can't wait to use it in a real game.
Best News: I got my car back, fixed and drive-able. The guy who fixed it is my HERO. Not many people would be willing to fix a wrecked car for free in the three coldest months of the year. He's my home teacher, and he's flipping amazing. He deserves all the sugar cookies the world has to offer.
I'm so incredibly grateful to have it back. It's a bit daunting to be on the road again, but I'll be careful. With any luck, I won't have to crash another car for many, many years. The first thing I'm going to do with my car is drive it to places that are hiring, since I'm not getting hardly any hours at my work. Wish me luck! And if you see any job openings, send a message my way!
~Crimson
Monday, December 23, 2013
Magical Girl Sweater Contest
Friday, December 20, 2013
At Least I Can Write About This Authentically
Yesterday was the last day of finals. It also happens to be the day I woke up to intense agony. No, not the I've-been-studying-myself-to-death pain, but the pain of my body being on fire (especially by my bladder and kidneys), my stomach roiling with nausea, and an acute stabbing feeling in the right side of the back.
This was about six thirty in the morning. My mom handed me two ibuprofen, which I puked up about fifteen minutes later. And continued to puke, at fifteen-minute intervals. The sad thing was that it felt good to upchuck, because then I wasn't feeling the pain in my back. My mom thought it was a kidney infection and my dad thought it was a stone, but we'd have to take me to the doc either way.
Luckily for me, I got to wait three and a half hours to be taken anywhere. My dad had to be at home because some guy was coming to fix our broken garage door, and my mom had to go to first period of class and arrange for a sub for the rest of the day. On a scale of one to ten, I started at a pain level of eight. It went up by one number every hour. The only thing that helped at all was to pace around the house between throwing up. It was all I could do to not scream from the pain, and/or throttle my dad for not driving me to the flipping hospital already.
Finally, my mom and I went to the Instacare place in Provo. On the TV was Tinkerbell, Secret of the Wings. Watching that helped a little. When the doctor got in, he asked if I wanted my mom to be there for some 'invasive questions' he was going to ask me. He really should've been more blunt, because I was in immense pain and not reading into things. I thought he was going to ask about how many times a day I use the restroom. Instead he was asking 'might you be pregnant' and other such nonsense. 'Are you sure?' he asked twice. Seriously, I think I would know if I was pregnant. Then he made a joke about how we were celebrating the only women to get pregnant without doing 'it' in all of history. It took me about two minutes to figure out through the pain that he meant Mary. Seriously, I was dying here, and he was cracking jokes? I didn't like this doctor.
Finally he left, and a nurse came in with a shot for pain meds. I'd thrown up three times in the hospital room since I'd gotten in, so there was no way I'd be able to keep any pills down. The nurse told me it would take about half an hour to kick in. That was the longest half-hour of my life. The doc told us it was either an infection or a stone, he needed me to go to the radiology place and get scanned. By the time we got to the radiology section of the hospital, I was downright cheerful.
I was no longer in pain. That was all I'd wanted in the first place. I nearly fell asleep at the radiology check-in place. I almost fell asleep when I had to lay down on the bed-thing that they put you on to run you through the UV scanner.
It turned out to be a kidney stone, 2 millimeters large. I was like, 'What? I thought only older people got kidney stones.' I was wrong. Anyways, my kidney stone was half the size of a pencil eraser, and it was causing me so much pain? Lame. I got a nausea med prescription, and pain meds, and I was good to go. We picked up Jack Frost from Redbox and got me a gigantic Slurpee to help pass the stone. I caught a look at myself in the mirror at the store. I looked pretty good for being in my PJs and having retched my heart out earlier.
All I need is to pass the stupid stone, and I'll be pain-free again. The only final I missed was for Creative Writing, which I'm kind of mad about. All I would've been doing was reading part of my ten-page project and eating a bunch of awesome sweets. I submitted my project through e-mail.
*Sigh* I'm coming off the pain meds I took this morning, and I'm not feeling any pain, so maybe I have passed it now. In any case, at least now I can give one of my characters a kidney stone and write about it effectively. Please, friends, drink lots of liquids and if you feel the pain I've just mentioned, get yourself to Instacare, preferably without waiting hours.
This was about six thirty in the morning. My mom handed me two ibuprofen, which I puked up about fifteen minutes later. And continued to puke, at fifteen-minute intervals. The sad thing was that it felt good to upchuck, because then I wasn't feeling the pain in my back. My mom thought it was a kidney infection and my dad thought it was a stone, but we'd have to take me to the doc either way.
Luckily for me, I got to wait three and a half hours to be taken anywhere. My dad had to be at home because some guy was coming to fix our broken garage door, and my mom had to go to first period of class and arrange for a sub for the rest of the day. On a scale of one to ten, I started at a pain level of eight. It went up by one number every hour. The only thing that helped at all was to pace around the house between throwing up. It was all I could do to not scream from the pain, and/or throttle my dad for not driving me to the flipping hospital already.
Finally, my mom and I went to the Instacare place in Provo. On the TV was Tinkerbell, Secret of the Wings. Watching that helped a little. When the doctor got in, he asked if I wanted my mom to be there for some 'invasive questions' he was going to ask me. He really should've been more blunt, because I was in immense pain and not reading into things. I thought he was going to ask about how many times a day I use the restroom. Instead he was asking 'might you be pregnant' and other such nonsense. 'Are you sure?' he asked twice. Seriously, I think I would know if I was pregnant. Then he made a joke about how we were celebrating the only women to get pregnant without doing 'it' in all of history. It took me about two minutes to figure out through the pain that he meant Mary. Seriously, I was dying here, and he was cracking jokes? I didn't like this doctor.
Finally he left, and a nurse came in with a shot for pain meds. I'd thrown up three times in the hospital room since I'd gotten in, so there was no way I'd be able to keep any pills down. The nurse told me it would take about half an hour to kick in. That was the longest half-hour of my life. The doc told us it was either an infection or a stone, he needed me to go to the radiology place and get scanned. By the time we got to the radiology section of the hospital, I was downright cheerful.
I was no longer in pain. That was all I'd wanted in the first place. I nearly fell asleep at the radiology check-in place. I almost fell asleep when I had to lay down on the bed-thing that they put you on to run you through the UV scanner.
It turned out to be a kidney stone, 2 millimeters large. I was like, 'What? I thought only older people got kidney stones.' I was wrong. Anyways, my kidney stone was half the size of a pencil eraser, and it was causing me so much pain? Lame. I got a nausea med prescription, and pain meds, and I was good to go. We picked up Jack Frost from Redbox and got me a gigantic Slurpee to help pass the stone. I caught a look at myself in the mirror at the store. I looked pretty good for being in my PJs and having retched my heart out earlier.
All I need is to pass the stupid stone, and I'll be pain-free again. The only final I missed was for Creative Writing, which I'm kind of mad about. All I would've been doing was reading part of my ten-page project and eating a bunch of awesome sweets. I submitted my project through e-mail.
*Sigh* I'm coming off the pain meds I took this morning, and I'm not feeling any pain, so maybe I have passed it now. In any case, at least now I can give one of my characters a kidney stone and write about it effectively. Please, friends, drink lots of liquids and if you feel the pain I've just mentioned, get yourself to Instacare, preferably without waiting hours.
Monday, December 2, 2013
Mahou Shoujo and My Laptop
So, my laptop has been on the brink of death for the last week. Incredibly slow, as in I-take-five-minutes-to-load-one-page-and-only-if-it-pleases-me-foolish-mortal slow. I pulled out my ipod today and found a tip to make my laptop speed up. All I had to do was shut down my laptop, hold the left shift, option, and apple buttons down for ten seconds, and presto! I had a laptop again. It was like magic (mahou shoujo being its latin name). I raced into the kitchen to inform my brother of this magical feat. His response? "That's the RAM, Kayla. Resetting the RAM makes your computer faster," he explained in his best simplify-it-for-the-technologically-inept voice.
I disagree.
I think it's a magical girl team fighting an evil techno-mastermind inside my computer, and holding down those three buttons sent out an SOS to the magical girl team alerting them of my distress.
Wherever they are out there, I thank the magical girl team for their tremendous help. I'll leave snickerdoodles out for you guys tonight; eat them at your pleasure.
~CrimsonRuin
I disagree.
I think it's a magical girl team fighting an evil techno-mastermind inside my computer, and holding down those three buttons sent out an SOS to the magical girl team alerting them of my distress.
Wherever they are out there, I thank the magical girl team for their tremendous help. I'll leave snickerdoodles out for you guys tonight; eat them at your pleasure.
~CrimsonRuin
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