Unwritten

Earlier today, I tweeted something about Lent, and then I decided that my impression of this tradition is far too complicated to confine to tweets. Essentially, I do not understand the point of Lent the way that most people choose to celebrate it. I get the basics of it, you give up something for 40 days because Jesus wandered the desert for 40 days while fasting, and you want to show Him your love and devotion by giving up something of yours for Him. Here's the thing, though, after those 40 days, Jesus went out and began His ministry. His 40 days of fasting were in preparation for Him to give His life to the salvation of the world. The idea behind Lent is that if you give up these things that we don't realize we spend so much time doing, you can then devote that time and energy to God through service, prayer, devotional time, etc. Lent is supposed to be a time where you not just make a sacrifice of something you like but where you spend time reestablishing your connection with...

Children never cease to amaze me. I'm serious. One second I am so worn out and sick of telling them to check their props seventeen times, and then they get out there and steal the show and are doing just what I wanted them to do, and I can't help but love them and love what I'm doing. I would tell kids to go check their props every single night of my life as long as I got to sit in the audience and watch them succeed. And that is just this truly incredibly thing about the arts that kids can't really get in other subject areas. Their math gets better, they get better test scores, but who remembers the first time they did really well on a math test in elementary school? Probably very few people. These kids, though, they will remember what it felt like to come out at the end of the show and take a bow and hear the audience cheering for them. I can see how proud they are of themselves when they come up to me after a rehearsal. I mean, to see that one kid who is always just ...

Growing up, I tended to be one of those people who let my moods and emotions control me. You know those people I'm talking about: your stereotypical high school drama queen who sobbed in the hallways because her boyfriend of like 4 months broke up with her, and he was a big fat jerk. Yep. That was me. I'm not really sure why, but it never occurred to me that I had the power to control, perhaps not my emotions, but the way I react to him. Maybe that was because I needed to be medicated to actually be able to do that, but nonetheless, I think I am starting to realize that. Yesterday, I had a really tough day. There's so much going on with school work and my show and other commitments I've made, and it was all starting to pile on top of me. Combine that with my money being tight, being out of prints at the library, and my printer dying on me because it needed ink so badly, and I was suddenly set into an anxiety attack. Last night, I literally cried for about 3 hours. It wa...

Do you ever stop and consider how much different your life would be if you had just made 1 different decision in your life? For some reason, I woke up this morning pondering what my life would be like today if none of that drama had gone down, and everything would have been just like I imagined it would be, and I had stayed at Huntington, and I realized that I would be an entirely different person. I never would have met the people who have changed me so much in the last two years. There would be no Catherine or Kaitlyn or Holly or Grant or Angie or Noelle in my life. The professors who I have learned the most from, like Jen and Mike and Dr. Smith and Beth... they wouldn't exist to me. My relationship with my family would be completely different. I never would have met Ben, and we never would have fallen in love. Vanessa and I wouldn't be preparing to move into our apartment together in August. Some of the experiences that have come to define who I am never would have occurred...

There has been a story inside of me for a very long time just waiting to be told. All semester in playwriting, I have struggled to find a story that is worth telling, all the time avoiding my own stories like the plague. Maybe because I didn't think my stories were worth telling, or maybe it was because I didn't want to face the emotions of writing about my past. I don't talk about my dad very much; it's something I've conditioned myself not to mention because people never know how to respond when they find out he died. I never talk about what it felt like to lose him or how it's affected me to grow up without him. I don't tell people that unlike other little girls who dream about their wedding day, I cried when I thought of mine because my dad wouldn't be there. Very few people know that I can still remember the dream I had the night he died, and even fewer people know that there's a dream about him that has been reoccurring randomly for the last 15...

So, I have to leave for a jam-packed Monday in approximately 20 minutes. That's enough time to write a blog entry, right? Sure... why not! Sometimes I am sure people wonder why I go home so much. Yes, my boyfriend lives back home, and I enjoy spending time with him. Yes, I am really close to my mom, and I like to see her. Yes, I have a lot of obligations to the theatre back home. Most of all, though, I think I go home because home is the one place I can just stop running around like a crazy person and stressing about all the things I have to do. Honestly, when I go home, I spend a good portion of my time just laying in bed watching TV, which is something I don't have the luxury of doing here, even on the weekends. And honestly, I don't think there's anything wrong with going home to escape because I know I can relax there and let my mommy take care of me and not worry about my homework or whether or not I'll have time to eat between commitments. Speaking of eating.....