Being a timid perfectionist is a pain in the butt.

What's really difficult for me: Admitting that I'm bad at something.

What's really easy for me: Pretending that I just don't want to do something when, in fact, I might want to do it, but I'm be bad at it. And I don't want anyone to know.

For instance, I had really hard time agreeing to have the training wheels taken off of my bike when I was little because I didn't want to face the embarrassment of falling over sideways the first few times I tried to ride it.

I also avoid playing video games because, having never played them growing up or in college, I royally stink at them. They are about as far from intuitive for me as anything can get, and I have no concept of how to control anything. The best I got at video games was Super Mario World for my Gameboy Color. That was my flash in the pan.

I won't play them now because I am embarrassed by my utter suckiness. I don't want people to judge me. Once, I tried to play something where I had to kill zombies and I could tell that my boyfriend was getting more and more frustrated with my inability to walk, look, and shoot simultaneously, so I handed off the controller to him and let him play with his roommate. While I looked on, hugging a pillow.

I really despise being bad at things, but it is only recently that I've managed to shove pride far enough out of the way to where I'm just okay enough about being bad at something that, if I'm interested, I'll keep trying it so that I can get better. Like normal people do. It's taken me 24 years to get to where normal people were when they were 3.

Also, I'll even go ahead and do something that I THINK I'll probably be bad at, just in case I'm not actually that bad at it. Like the 5k run/obstacle course in which I partook this past weekend. Old me? Heck no. I might get stuck along the way, better not do it. New me? Heck yes. I might get through the whole thing and feel invigorated.

The fact is, I've only just really understood that there's more to be gained from being really horrible at something, but doing it, than there is to be gained from avoiding doing anything out of fear of failure. Not exactly a lightbulb moment for most people, I don't think, but it was a freakin' lightning storm to me. I'm appreciating this newfound sense of freedom. It's the physical sister of the intangible freedom you feel when you realize it's easier to be honest and whatever way makes you feel most comfortable than it is to sit around, trying to figure out what you think other people might like you to be like.

This weekend? Might go shoot a gun and miss the target a bazillion times because I do not know how to shoot guns and I am nearsighted, particularly in my right eye, but I am psyched.

Abbreviations sometimes make me crazy.

YOLO? It sounds terrible. It sounds like what they have the village idiot greeting passersby with in a low budget film about Medieval life.

Or maybe the jester. Someone, anyhow, who is typically the butt of jokes.

"YOLO, m'lady."

Maybe it's just the jester's name.

It gets even worse when people manage to shoot that one out while maintaining a straight face. It gets disturbingly prevalent in bars, right around 12:30am as the drunkenness is setting in and the common sense is taking flight. Believe me, I've been there, I know. I know that place. Where you're balancing on that tightrope of "Stop drinking now" immediately above the empty space of "But it's making this night so much fun."

But stop saying "YOLO."

My reaction to hearing people holler "YOLO" before downing a shot of SoCo and lime is very much like my reaction to seeing two people grinding on the dance floor. It's this sudden, shock of awareness that the objectively uncool things that people do, that are thought of as being cool, are not cool. It doesn't register until you happen to look at them sideways at just the right second and see them in stark reality.

Two people grinding looks really weird. I'm sure I look really weird grinding. There's no way not to look weird when there's butt wiggling occurring and the two people doing the wiggling are taking it very, very seriously. There just isn't.

Anyway, I digress. You only live once, right?

HAM is another one. Thankfully, it hasn't caught on too heavily. Probably because there is simply no way to make "HAM" sound cool.

Saying, "I'm going out HAM tonight" calls forth alternate images of being in a musty basement somewhere, hunched over an old radio, and large quantities of pork. Neither of which is particularly related to swanky nightclubs and dangerously attractive people, coupled with top shelf alcohol.

In fact, "hard as a motherfucker" couldn't sound LESS like "HAM" in terms of being relatable.

How do these things happen?

How do we tell people that the thing they think they're so cleverly abbreviating just sounds so much better when they leave it alone.

These things can run amok. I know. Because back in elementary school, "H.A.G.S." and "L.Y.L.A.S." were all the rage and there were always a few smart alecs that thought they'd run with it. I wound up with a few yearbook messages like the following, "H.A.G.S.I.H.Y.H.F.A.I.W.S.Y.N.Y."

Not kidding.

(Have a great summer. I hope you have fun and I will see you next year.)

Imagine if people start yelling "YOLOHAM!" That's the village idiot's village.

ASMMC.

This was my way of knowing.

1) You tuck sembei crackers and CDs in too-small envelopes into my bag before I leave your house.
2) You've let me usurp your place and stool of choice at the table, quietly and unprotestingly.
3) When I get upset or irritated about something, you respond calmly and patiently, giving me a chance to slow myself down and have a mature conversation.
4) A hug from you is like being pulled against my complementary puzzle piece, and I do not want to detach.
5) You like the idea of my having your sweatshirt as much as I do (and I'm not kidding when I say that that is something on my Ideal Boyfriend list).
6) As far as I know, you don't think my crackpot ideas are crackpot.
7) We can pitch tents inside, build forts out of couch cushions, sled down snowy hills on trashbag-encased cardboard, and argue about the merits of capsaicin and bergamot. We are perfect.
8) Indeed. Quite.
9) The time I snored, you thought it was cute.
10) In my eyes, you are so...whole-package, that I refused to believe it the first time around.
11) I can still make you blush.
12) When I get ranty and loud and imitate a battering ram/steamroller combo, and my face gets pink from the excitement, you humor me and never make me feel like I'm being ridiculous or talking about something unimportant.
13) You kiss the top of my head. You stroke my hair.
14) You've decided that you don't mind driving up to Connecticut, on your own, to meet my parents for the first time. I didn't even have to ask.
15) I am not afraid to tell you anything or to show you any part of myself.
16) I never feel that you keep things from me or are, in any way, afraid to be who you are.
17) When I thought I was getting sunburned you tucked your shirt around my arm and huffed at me when I wanted to eat my gelato on a bench.
18) You adopt some of the things I frequently say. You like them. You like me.
19) I poke your butt, jab my fingers in your floating ribs, and you don't like me any less for it.
20) You play the violin. It makes me want to knock you into a closet and lock us in.
21) In all seriousness, your intelligence, talent, and youness provoke decided respect on my end.
22) You own flannel. You are not a hipster. You don't wear it ironically, you wear it because it is fantastic.
23) I know that even though my leaving Pennsylvania for law school is a daunting prospect, you would never consider trying to talk me out of it.
24) I might call you cute sometimes, but you're a guy, and I absolutely adore it. And the balance you strike.
25) Star Wars.
26) Our first conversations revolved almost entirely around philosophy. Not hobbies. Not [surprisingly] food. Philosophy.
27) No one has made me feel safer than you make me feel.
28) Two years ago, you drove to Bryn Mawr from Collegeville some Sunday nights with movies and snacks to keep me company into the night, even though you had to go to work in the morning. Even though you'd only known me a month or two.
29) You really wanted me to meet your family.
30) When we're walking, sometimes you grab my hand, interlace your fingers with mine, and just keep on going. I always want to stop and look at you, because the effortless gesture never fails to make me feel electricity.
31) I catch you looking at me....when I'm drifting in and out of sleep, when I'm reading. You never forget that I'm there.
32) I have never been so sure of anyone in my entire life.

Words.

Sometime's the words don't work. The discomfort is real though. The wanting runs far deeper than lust coiled in loins. The wanting rushes through the soul, holding it captive. Making it beat against the confines of the human body, its corporeal prison. A kestrel with clipped wings. No one gets the basics of love correct. True love, true love makes you aware of the kestrel beating in your breast, makes you catch the scent of open air, shining skies, and blush-scented breeze. You are forever caught between ground and moon, painfully aware of your position in perfect, poignant, blessed purgatory. If you are so lucky as to be loved in return, you feel the spray of rapids, hear the thunder of waterfalls (or are they heartbeats?), fly towards infinity without a map or navigation. You join hands, you leap, you plunge, you cascade over those falls, and you never look back.

This is why still I keep Skippy with me: What teddy bears really do for you.

It's one thing to learn to live without someone. It's another thing entirely to get over someone.

I hate that you won't hold me tight
And that you make me hollow
I hate the way you say you care
I hate that you will not follow

I hate your stupid Wawa snacks
And the way you said my name
I hate South Park and Family Guy
I hate that there's no one to blame

I hate your balanced perspective
I hate how you made me feel
I hate that you taught me how to love
And now I don't know how to heal

I hate the way we said goodbye
And that you let me go
I hate the way you fill my brain
And that time moves so god damned slow.

Who feels like this post breakup? I can't figure out if it means that the breakup was the right move, or that the universe is planning great things, or both. Or...what. Because I feel so peaceful. So zen. So calm and collected and solid. It's the very last way I expected to feel.

Let's play a game where I post pictures that reflect how I feel.

I believe that the universe is conspiring to give us presents. Thing is, the universe has a whack way of handling itself and our lives. For instance, one could think of a gift from the universe as being something like your gym teacher handing out clothespins to all of your fellow students rather than telling you directly that your feet stink. Once the clothespins are out, and everyone has one but you, you have to isolate the issue. On the one hand, it's an insulting gesture. On the other, if you take it for what it is, without making it personal, it's a gesture that nips a problem at the bud. Okay, so it's probably not the best parallel in the world, but hopefully you get what I'm saying.

Lately, it's been feeling like I can't quite catch a break, like the universe has started throwing curve balls and yelling, "GO! GO! GO! Catch as many as you can! GO!" all the while aiming for my head and my heart. It's a little difficult. But also a little invigorating and a lot strengthening. For a while, I've felt like I've simply been traveling through a series of rooms, each room containing one door. My choice consists of either staying inside the room, or going through that door. Suddenly, though, I'm standing in a ballroom whose walls consist of nothing but doors. My choice is now to stay in the ballroom or pick one of a 101 doors to enter, but I can't preview any of the doors ahead of time. My choice must be based on clues I retain from the rooms that I've already been through - my life so far.

Here's the thing. Being a naturally cautious person in life, I try to play it safe. All the time. This entails not making decisions until I think that I have mapped out all possible futures and am okay with any of them happening. It's silly of course, and purely psychological, because as cracked.com explains, science has come up with this little thing called the Copenhagen Interpretation which basically means that anything is possible at any moment. Meaning, I can't pretend to anticipate all of the outcomes of my decision. Sucks to be me.

In recent days, through a series of different occurrences, I've come to realize that I hedge my bets. I am a bonafide bet-hedger. Which is altogether not a good thing to be and sits dangerously close on the shelf to the intent to "have one's cake and eat it too," and we all know that that simply doesn't work out too well. When you try to have your cake and eat it too, usually your ass catches on fire and everyone hates you. (That's barely an exaggeration). Now I find myself in a situation akin to straddling a spreading fault line that's spreading at an alarmingly rapid rate. I have a very small window of time in which to jump to one side or the other before I fall down into the crack and both options more or less disappear. Thanks, universe. You're a pal.

I'm scared of large changes. Adjustments have always been difficult for me. Any of you who have read my other posts will know this. Transitions are the bane of my existence. I'm getting better (thanks again, universe, for making me move 3 times in a year), but am not all there yet. So even when I know what I need to do. What will, on a fundamental, gut level, be the best option for me. I balk. I want to have a preview of all of those doors in the ballroom, just to confirm that what I think is behind the one that I want, really is behind it.

Here's to improving, and improving soon!

It's hard to fully comprehend just how tricky and frightening the world gets once you leave the academic chute until you suddenly find yourself swimming in a sea of adult concerns and responsibilities. And you haven't got a flotation device. Or a study guide. Or a list of expectations, a check-list to help to make sense of the many things required to successfully navigate the ofttimes muddied waters of life.

I didn't actually expect life to  beat me up the way that it has. And saying that is rather like saying that I experienced starvation after eating 3 meals in a day because I'd been used to eating 6. In other words, 97% of the people in the world are getting beat up much worse than am I. But my point stands. I found myself confronted by challenges that were outside the realm of familiarity. Sometimes it felt like I was scrabbling around on a slippery wall, grasping for handholds.

It's been as much of a refreshing and invigorating experience as it has been an exhausting and troublesome one. The scariest thing is coming to the realization that to live life, you do have to be truly brave. To get up every day, thinking about not only your work, whatever it may be, but also about your interests, your goals, pursuits, and about your responsibilities. What doctor's office to call to complain about tests being run unannounced. Which bank teller to ask what to do after an ATM failed to provide the $40 taken out. When to take the time to write a scathing indictment of your apartment's poor customer service skills and blatant attempts at screwing its residents. How does one not lose oneself in the avalanche of "must dos?"

Prioritization is hard. It's become very easy to see why youth are idealists and the older are downtrodden and cynical. How are you supposed to pursue those ideals when you're also worried about sweeping up dog hair every single day when you get home from the office? Where is the energy supposed to come from? I have it easy, comparatively. The latest that I have stayed at work is 6:00pm. That said, I have approximately 6.5 waking hours every day not spent in the office to myself.

I'm trying to study for the LSAT. When I'm being rigorous in my studying I try to study for 2 hours a day. I'm left with 4.5 hours.  In the morning, I spend half an hour getting washed-up, dressed, and doing my crunches and push-ups. I spend another half an hour making coffee and eating my breakfast. Then I go to work. I'm left with 3.5 hours.

3.5 hours. A day. No wonder the adjustment is hard. It takes practice and stamina to learn how to use the little bits of free time every day wisely. Efficiency is a hard mistress to master.  And I need to learn how to do it.

More to come.

Life is really terrifying. Well, time is. Life itself isn't actually all that scary, and if time didn't exist, it might be a lot like wading in the kiddie pool, lukewarm water lapping below your knees. But time. Time is the monster in the closet. Time makes for urgency, and urgency, if disregarded or handled poorly, makes for regrets. And life is often full of regrets; and regrets' close companion, what-if.

Holding patterns feel safe and are easy to slip into. They are also treacherous. The perfect intro to forever. The wrong kind of forever, though. The kind of forever that's more purgatory than heaven, more assembly line than innovation, and more suburbia than outback adventure. It's the kind of forever that I don't want. I haven't quite figured out how to get the forever that I DO want.

I spend a lot of time casting about like an idiot. Sometimes I feel a little like I'm doing the equivalent of walking into walls, even though I know they're there, just to sort of...see what happens. And a bruised nose isn't enough of a deterrent to keep me from continuing to do it. Or maybe I'm like a bat with a defective sonar. Either way, I get frustrated a lot these days, wanting to go in so many different directions that I wind-up stuck in stasis, a frozen lump. I should probably make a list of the various directions in which I wish to go. But when I try, I get overwhelmed and thus, stuck again.

I have used-up a lot of life being stuck. I still had training wheels on my bike long after everyone else was whizzing by on their two-wheelers. I made myself feel better by pretending that my bike was a horse (remember? I wrote this in my last post). Metaphorically speaking...I'm still having to go through the different stages of my life with training wheels. That's frustrating as well.

I don't know what I want.

That is the crux of the issue. To evolve, extend, and move forward, one has to know what one wants. I envy people who are already there. Who already have the vision, the drive, the lifeblood of a wish, to propel themselves through their lives. I get worried that I was born without proper passion, with a lack of motivation, and a predisposition for laziness. Except I know that that's not true, because when I get fired-up about something, I will tear apart the world to get the end that I want. So it's in there.

Time to figure out what I want, and to lose the wheels.

1) I am bad at multi-tasking.
2) I am easily distracted.
3) I am very good at coming up with ideas and very bad at implementing them.
4) If I am going to get where I want to be, I am going to have to overcome the previous 3 points.

I've decided that it's time for me to stop half-assing my way through LSAT studying. I'm not going to get anywhere at that rate. I very much like to think of myself as someone who does everything perfectly on the first go-round. And when that doesn't seem to be happening, I'm prone to give up and leave.Unfortunately in life, one is rarely able to do everything one tries perfectly on the first attempt. This is a bitter pill for me to swallow.

As a young person, this aspect of my personality caused trouble.
1) I was slow to learn to read because the black symbols on the page didn't make sense to me and I already knew the wonders of reading from having been read to and the effort didn't seem worth it. It shouldn't have to be that hard to get to something I loved that much.
2) I avoided letting my mom teach me how to cook because I KNEW I wouldn't be able to do it right the first few times and I couldn't stand the criticism. This has left me only able to make biscuits with any degree of certainty.
3) I had training wheels on my bike for about a year longer than anyone else my age. I made myself feel better about this by pretending that, with its extra appendages, my bike was actually a horse.

You get the idea, I'm sure. But this means that I'm going to turn on the parts of my personality that SHOULD counteract the parts that are being lazy and frightened of initial failure or lack of success. The stubborn, focused parts that hang onto their goal the way my dog hangs onto her rawhide chew toys. They're very good at coming out when I'm mad, but less good at coming out when I'm settled. Time to practice!

When you do what you love, the seemingly impossible becomes simply challenging, the laborious becomes purposeful resistance, the difficult loses its edge and is trampled by your progress. -Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)

On my way to work last Tuesday, I decided that I walk strangely. Of course, I can't tell for SURE because I can't see myself unless I watch my reflection in building windows. I try to refrain from doing this because I'm concerned that the people around me will think that I am checking myself out rather than worriedly attempting to diagnosis my mobility issues. But the flip side of that is that they already think I'm strange because I walk oddly.

My legs just feel like they don't want to cooperate in a smooth fashion when I move around. They seem to prefer a jerkier, slightly lopsided motion, potentially exacerbated by the fact that I walk about 3x faster than the normal person, as it is. This is something that I cannot help. When I try to slow down, I am faced with a sensation that feels like what trying to stop a very heavy wagon from rolling down a very steep hill feels like. I have to concentrate really really hard on moving my feet more slowly. Usually, I just give up and speed back up again. Because, actually, my walk gets even more awkward when I attempt to reign it in.

The other day when I was walking home from work, an older businessman with a briefcase in hand actually commented on it.

"Must be those Chuck Taylors making you walk so fast," is what I heard as I zoomed by him.

"Haha, could be! Or just the cold!" And, with a good-natured smile, I kept going. But seriously. I must look...irregular. I blame my New Yorker mother. As a small child, I had to move my little stubby legs at double-time to keep up with her purposeful stride, and, as I became accustomed to moving at that speed, proportionally, I continued to move that quickly when I got older. That is my thinking.

Things are far worse now that there is an irritating amount of snow on the ground. Now I wobble on top of moving strangely. On Friday I almost careened into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Such is my life.

Today, as I sat in John's car at the Bryn Mawr train station, I was struck by the thought that I really ought to make a concentrated effort at self-improvement. When I said this thought aloud, I was met with a look that made me think he was thinking that I was a lunatic. Which was nice, for all intents and purposes (assuming he wasn't thinking that I was so hopeless that working towards self-betterment was a fruitless endeavor), but which didn't change my mind.

I too easily give myself a lot of leeway when it comes to figuring my shit out. "I'm young." "There's time." "I've got a lot to get through first." Yeah, sure. Excuses. It's not like I am suddenly going to hit a place in my life where things are suddenly smooth sailing and I can kick back and hone whatever skills I think that I might have. If I keep giving into those excuses, letting them ultimately direct me, I'm going to wind-up as a very boring and very unaccomplished person. Just like most everything in life, self-direction and self-knowledge take effort and work. But I'm fairly certain that it is well worth it. In the end, I'll know exactly where I stand. I don't think I'd ever quite realized how exhausting leading an interesting and full life really is. As far as I can tell, society does a bang-up job of wearing us all down to little nubs of the people we are by telling us what we "should" be doing. To live to the fullest takes a kind of courage and a kind of independence that I hadn't really considered. Life is too short to stay safe and to put off exploration and development. I have to work to get where and what I want. And now is the time to nail down exactly what it is that I DO want. Period.

"420. Don’t be sorry for speaking your mind. It’s like you’re being sorry for being real." (Thanks, Leo)

 

This is a good thing to remember. We are so often frightened of getting a load off of our chests that we forget that evasion, avoidance, and misrepresentation are akin to saying, "My thoughts aren't good enough" or "My thoughts are wrong." It's too easy to fall into that trap. It makes you wonder how many thoughts worth hearing are lost in the shuffle because the thinker is too afraid or too ashamed to give them voice.

 

I'm in a funny mood today. Sad. A little. Pensive. A lot. I sat in front of my computer trying to come up with a post that would center around something light-hearted or funny, and I came up blank, so I decided to go with reality as opposed to vignette. I blame this state partially on the blog that I have been reading (click the link above) because never in my life has my little brain been flooded by so many beautifully simple pieces of wisdom in such a short period of time. I'm realizing that someone, somewhere, at one time or another, has created a quotation that encapsulates literally every moment of every life. The magnitude is frightening and awe-inspiring.

 

It also has me convinced that I have to read more.

 

The other part of the blame rests on this song:

Between the two of them, blog and music, I have been reduced to small, emotionally fraught, body. And let me just tell you, it blows popsicle sticks to feel like this and to have to pull together some semblance of productivity while I am work. Tongue depressors might be more on point than popsicle sticks, actually. Like the big kinds in the jar in the doctor's office that always used to be really scary because, as a kid, you never knew if the doctor was going to come at you with one of them and attempt to jam it down your throat.

 

I picked this particular quotation because I'm starting to get the feeling that it's going to be representative of the theme of my 2011. I have this sense that it'll be a year for journeying and growing. I also picked it because speaking my mind was something I was amazingly good at as a small child and something that I was equally as bad at once I got older. And let me tell you, being challenged in that particular area is anxiety-inducing. And also character-splitting. Two bad things that could get pathological if I keep it up until I'm old and grey. Which is not how I want to end up when I'm wizened and grumpy, zipping around in my little motorized chair. I'll probably already be running over people in grocery stores, I don't need to be fighting panic attacks and dual personalities while I'm doing it.

So here's to speaking my mind, being honest and upfront, confident and sincere, and here's to strengthening relationships through doing it.

 

 EDIT: Look! Images from my blog are showing-up on Google Image Search!

Don't tell anybody, but I usually spend the first half hour of my workday screwing around on the internet and being unproductive; this is mostly because I am always the first person into the office every day and because mornings tend to be slow (probably because everyone else is screwing around on the internet, too). This morning, I got an email from my mom that included this: Crow and Cat

Unbelievable, right? It sort of throws a wrench into the nature vs. nurture debate, or at least adds another element to it. Anyway, I just wanted to share.

***

Have you ever been someone who was scared of everything that was, or could be construed, as even a little off-kilter? Like wearing plaid socks that might end-up being visible when you sat down? Or like having parents who implemented a 10pm curfew when you were a a senior in high school so you pretended that you just didn't actually WANT to be out late anyway? That's how I was. I also embarrassed really easily, which made me less than open about just about everything.

Like sex and anything related to it.

I was still scared of penises when I was a senior in high school, and I was utterly convinced that if anyone was going to be the victim of immaculate conception ever again (no offense intended), it was going to be me. I was equally convinced that the first time I had sex I would get pregnant and they'd put me on one of those trashy MTV shows about good kids who managed to somehow fuck up big time. Sometimes, when I was feeling especially masochistic, I would play out a scene where all my family's friends were gathered around, shaking their heads, and saying, "She had such a bright future...I just didn't see this coming. She was always such a smart girl..." I also figured I'd have to move far away and not talk to anybody I knew ever again. Looking back at my youth now, and seeing how many complexes I gave myself, I'm shocked that I'm even half as well-adjusted as I turned out (which is not extremely, but I do all right).

Most of them came from being frightened of everything but my shadow, and maybe even that at night if I were half asleep and trying to stumble into my bathroom. I made it worse by never actually owning up to being frightened of everything, and I'm fairly certain that that misstep is what gave me complexes. I used to work very hard to put up a facade of suave, untouchable, coolness. I tricked most people with it, because I was a control freak and kept myself in an iron-tight grip, but I was stressed-out all the time. It was a tough existence! I constantly had to anticipate and predict any bumps on the road that would force me into patch-up mode so that people didn't actually figure out that I was a huge, lame, weenie. This made me every girl's best friend in high school and an enormous bitch to just about every guy. Which somehow managed to work out for me, anyway...which still puzzles me enormously.

That is why, with the dawn of 2011, my biggest goal might just be to be open and up-front about myself with myself and with other people. (Can I get a "HELL yes")? So far, I'm doing pretty well.

Now that it's the new year, I'm going to kick into high gear with respect to studying for the LSAT. And I really mean it. The tumultuous romance between me and my study aids wore off about 3 weeks after I received them in the mail, but now it's time to settle into a comfortable relationship with them and learn them inside and out. I plan to do this in several ways, including but not limited to:

1) Make a schedule. Withhold things that I want from myself until I stick to said schedule. This means no tv show binging on my computer, no Starbucks, no friends, etc.

2) Reward myself when I succeed. Could occur simultaneously as studying (see number 3).

3) Bring the romance back. Study in public (like at Starbucks). Look studious. Attractive. Smart. This can be done by carrying more books than I actually need, plugging into my iPod so that people think I'm divorced from my surroundings (when I'm still probably people-watching), carefully choosing an outfit that looks effortless, yet good, and arranging my materials so that at least one book's title regarding the LSAT is visible to passersby.

4) Get my roommates to guilt-trip me if I don't seem to be studying enough. Rubbing in the fact that I might never be able to effectively handle idiot corporate bureaucracy like Park Towne's if I don't go to law school might be a good starting point.

I think there are probably more. Besides the LSAT, there are other things that I want to do in 2011 (I recently came to the abrupt realization that this is the first year of my life in which school is not a player at all. It scared me).

1) Come up with a backup plan if law school doesn't pan out; maybe just a plan for 2012 pre law school if it DOES pan out: move to Chile and do something that doesn't count as this, move out west and work on a goat farm, work on a cruise ship, team up with Mike and drive around a country - doesn't have to be the U.S. - in an RV.

2) Learn how to cook.

3) Stop only grocery shopping once a month because doing so means that I have at least a week where my diet consists solely of rice and beans and pasta with garlic and olive oil. And maybe some leftover frozen veggies if I'm lucky. Hello, scurvy.

4) Be more honest with myself. Own the person I am.

5) Write more frequently, both blog and otherwise.

6) Finish Shogun. Finish at least 10 other books over the course of the year. This means less brain-dissolving online tv watching. And normal tv watching. Also read the NY Times more regularly.

7) Make good use of my art museum membership. Go on more tours.

8) Be better at staying in-touch with my parents. We have a 5 minutes a day rule for a reason!

9) Don't forget how to think critically sans the help of school.

10) Live more. Make memories!

Have you ever grudgingly figured something out about yourself as you've gotten older?  Something that has been exactly the same, probably from the day you were born, your entire life?  Something that you have attempted to deny since the day you began to be cognizant of it?  Sometimes I think that one of the most rewarding things about being a parent must be knowing something about your child from day one and watching them come to realize it, after denying it vehemently, once they are older.

Story of my life.  

When I was a baby, I used to get my baths in the sink.  Because I was small.  And small creatures are often overwhelmed by things as big as bathtubs, therefore, I got washed in the kitchen sink, and then patted dry on a towel my parents laid out on the counter.  There was a whole song associated with it, but that's a story for another time.

Once I got a bit bigger, my parents felt that it was time for me to take the next step in development and start having my baths in the bathtub.  I was still a small creature, but not too small.  Unfortunately, for my parents (so many of my stories seem to have that statement built in…), I was not having it.  I happened to like the sink.  I was adjusted to the sink.  It was a known quantity.  And that was a BIG deal for me, because the unknown was terrifying and to be avoided at all costs.

According to my parents, when they tried to put me in the bathtub I screamed blue green murder and stiffened up, splaying my small, chubby limbs outwards, like I thought I might be able to push my surroundings away from me.  I am not sure how many times I did this, for how long I stubbornly adhered to this course of action, but ultimately, I decided that I LOVED the tub.  Loved it.  Didn't want to get out of it.  Hollered when bathtime was over because I preferred pruney fingers and toes to chilly, post warm bathwater air.

My mother actually had to shock me out of taking baths and into taking showers as I got older, because I liked them so much.  She said, "Don't you know that when you take a bath you're sitting in your own dirt?"  I took showers everyday after that.  Recently, she mentioned to me that she felt horrible because she believed that she had single-handedly ruined my devotion to baths and the pure happiness which I derived from taking them.

She didn't.  I would have switched to showers anyway once I realized that no one else my age was still taking baths.  I was very prone to peer pressure in my younger days.

Anyway, I have finally come to realize that I don't know myself nearly as well as I think I do.  I've identified this as being the root of the issue.  I've had a misformed idea as to my identity ever since I realized in elementary school that there was a divide between the cool kids and the kids no one wanted to be friends with.

It's tricky, though, because as I've gotten older, I've figured out that it's something that I need get sorted out or face living a life that isn't actually mine!

The first real crush I had and, subsequently, my first real heartbreak, was on a boy I was convinced I despised.  Not just disliked, despised.   When our summer camp was over, I cried for days and literally stopped eating because I was so upset.  My parents didn't understand what was wrong with me.

I almost didn't even get out of the car to take a tour of Bryn Mawr because I was positive that I would never EVER go to a girls'  (women's…) school.  Later, I was making moves to apply early decision.

When I finished school and was looking for places to live in the Philadelphia area, I was initially certain that I didn't want to live in the city.  I live in the city.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.

It's sort of incredible.

And somewhat worrisome.

I'm learning to listen.

The post is coming! I promise!

My family never puts up a Christmas tree before Christmas Eve day.  When I was little, I used to hate it.  I watched all of my friends and their families go Christmas tree shopping immediately after Thanksgiving, and I often had the sense that life was inherently unfair because it seemed like they all got Christmas for about twice as long as I did.

Whenever I complained, my mom always returned with anti-commercialism sentiment and the importance of sticking to principle, and, in this case, keeping Christmas happening at Christmas was the principle.  I didn't get it.  It irritated me.  It made me pissy and probably more than a handful of unpleasantness for my poor parents to handle.

I think the Christmas that took the cake, though, was the one where we literally picked up somebody else's discarded Christmas tree.  Actually, we wound-up with two.  We had spent Christmas proper in New York City - something else that I'd kicked up an enormous fuss over because it wouldn't be a "real" Christmas since I wouldn't be waking up at HOME on Christmas day - and had arrived home on December 27th.

Let me just tell you, walking into a cold and highly unfestive house was ridiculously depressing.  I was immediately saddened and probably, knowing me, enraged.  I probably stomped around, blazing, "This is the worst Christmas ever.  It doesn't even feel like Christmas!"  I was probably the perfect cross between Ebenezer Scrooge and one of the entitled, stuck-up little girls from "A Little Princess."  So my mom had the brilliant idea for my dad and me to drive around and pick-up a tree off the side of the road, and, once my dad listened to her, he was equally as enthusiastic about the idea.  I, however, was not.  I was mortified.

"You want us to do what?!" Every inch of my small body was trembling with indignation.  Not only had we had Christmas entirely the wrong way, as far as I was concerned, now my parents wanted to make it even more wrong by dumpster diving for ALREADY USED Christmas trees.  I would never get over the shame.  The humiliation.  No one, no one, did things like that.  It was unheard of.  And humiliating.

"Tons of people get rid of their trees the day after Christmas, and they're perfectly fine."

"That is NOT the point.  We can't just…take somebody's tree off the street!!!!"  I'm sure that at this point I was feeling frantic and helpless, which is not the best combination for me, because I get kind of like a cornered dog.

"Why not?"  My mom was infuriatingly calm, and was actually laughing at me a little bit, which was really like poking that cornered dog with a stick.

"It's just…stupid.  It's revolting."  I don't know if I actually used the word, "revolting," but if I'd had the presence of mind to have used it, I'm sure that I would have.

"Then I guess we just won't have a tree."  My dad sounded mad and smug all at once.  Clearly my abrasiveness was costing my parents their festive moods.

"WE HAVE TO HAVE A TREE."  I couldn't believe my family.  At this point, I felt that I was the most misunderstood child in the entire world.  My parents didn't understand anything.  They didn't understand me, they didn't understand the holidays, they didn't understand the natural way of things.

In the end I got in the car with my dad and we spent about half an hour driving around the neighborhood, scanning the curbs for trees.  I'm positive I spent most of the ride muttering unpleasant things under my breath.  (In retrospect, I really was not a very nice child when I was unhappy.  The older I get, the more I realize that my parents really must have loved me a lot to put up with me and not lock me in a closet somewhere).

My mood changed drastically when we found what was probably, to date, the nicest tree we've ever had.  It still had a little bit of tinsel on it and one small ornament clinging to an inner branch, as though it wasn't ready for it's time to be over.  It was also perfectly proportioned and enormously tall.  It was kind of like looking for a hobo to offer food and shelter to, and instead finding a hobo, we found a disguised prince, heartbreakingly handsome and willing to come take up residence in our house.  Honestly.  The tree was just that good.  It literally made me reassess my original opinion of the whole endeavor.  For the next couple of Christmases I was only half-joking when I suggested to my parents that we wait until a couple days after Christmas to find a tree.

Our second tree was just a rather small, well-proportioned, sort of sparse kind of tree, and we took pity on it.  So we took it home, with the big one, and it wound-up leaning up against the side of our house in a bucket with popcorn garlands that I made wrapped around it. True to the theme of my life, which is that things I think I hate wind-up being the things I love the most, it was probably one of my most favorite Christmases to date.