The Blog
Round And Round
I spent a lot of this year cozy as a ghost. After my year living in three different states, I decided to settle back into my little Provo, Utah. I moved back from Connecticut with a lover in tow, white-flag waving from the exhaustion of traveling all year, and a longing to be in the arms of familiarity.
I spent the first part of my year lost in the short days and long nights of Greyson’s magnetic mind. We first connected in November of 2022 and by time I floated back to Utah there was nobody else on my mind. Greyson was bad news to everybody in my life but me. He was rich, older, and taught me things about life and myself that I don't think I would’ve figured out any other way. We were mirrors of each other. He was a storyteller. He spun the threads of life into a magical wild ride, one I couldn’t wait to get on. He fell in love first, I fell in love eventually. I broke up with him on Easter, the springtime makes me flighty and too alive-feeling to linger in the home he made for us. Ultimately two people with freedom-obsessed lives will be free. He and I were two parallels, and loved each other well and right. He let me be free and that was the purest testament of love we could ever give each other. This sacred, rose-covered shade I lay on my lovers is on purpose. I hold them in my mind and think of them both often and fondly. I think that love in this world is rare enough, and I will not let any kind of love pass by as if it was some mistake or error. I love on purpose, and I love long. The rest of my year is spent in the shadow of love, where it turns out great and many people live. I saw Taylor Swift in March, and looked forward to stretched out days and the green it brings. I was a little tired of the color Grey.
I sprawled in the sun while spring and summer passed me by. I jumped in rivers and started learning how to skateboard. I sweat out any trace of longing for far-off places in a 110 degree pilates room. I hardly slept this summer, too invested in Throne of Glass and Vampire romances. I ran off coffee and friendship. Marley and I stranded ourselves in Wyoming for 2 days with a broken car. Cassidy rolled in on the summer breeze and we flew east to see Taylor Swift. Metlife Night 2, specifically. Maroon and Getaway Car (with Jack Anotonoff). I watched so many people get married it made me sick! I love watching people be in love, and it was a summer full of love. I snuck into bars and got caught in the middle of sweaty teenagers at my favorite band’s concerts. I crashed on my moped and kissed my way through warm nights. Everything a 20 year old could dream of, really.
As soon as I could perch into fall, I did. I am no clinger. I have never had trouble parting from the things that are passing. I hope I never will. I found myself turning inwards in time with the turn of seasons. I deleted my social media, and I started therapy (I was ghosted by my therapist twice. Anyways I’m not currently in therapy anymore). Without college to start, or flights to catch, or a relationship to nurture, I ran back to what I do best. Research. I am a scientist and a historian by heart, not by choice. God knew this, so he knew to put me on earth in the Age of Information. I blame both of my grandpas mostly, but I have this brutal, insatiable curiosity and the curse of always wanting to know more. I dove into Human Design, the death care industry, true crime, wine-making, the Battle of Somme in WW1, and enough stoic authors to last me a lifetime. I cemented the importance of nurturing discovery and curiosity daily in my life. It’s a deliberate work, to make yourself ask questions and seek out answers. It’s an important work, to entrust yourself to discover deeply the things that interest you and impassion you. But there’s hardly a better time in history to do it. We have libraries, and the internet, and podcasts, and articles, and documentaries, all at our fingertips. As far as information goes, we have never been freer to discover what we want to learn about. But if you’re not careful, you get hand-fed information that you don’t really care to know. That’s why social media feels so draining for most of us! Because we expect information to seek us out instead of the opposite. When the mountains stopped looking like fire, and my walks called for warmer jackets, I dyed my hair dark and sunk into the sleepiness that the snow brings.
Winter found me curled under a pile of blankets. I have always hated Winter. I can’t stand to be cold, my body becomes the sahara desert, and I get this unique type of restlessness that only comes when it’s so cloudy I can’t see the sun. I’ve hated it so much that I thought it was a rude joke that I was born in the middle of it. I enjoy the falling of snow the first time it happens each year, and despise it anytime after. One of the few things therapy brought me was an official diagnosis of Seasonal Affective Disorder. That wasn’t shocking news, considering I have lived in this body every winter of my life. Obviously I already knew that. If we look at nature there are very few things that are not affected by the seasons. Even though I hate it, I am very grateful for it. For the people throughout history who had no other option but to live by the seasons, the cold meant reflection! It meant celebration, rest, and nourishment. My ancestors knew that and so do I. I spend the last little bit of the year deeply reflecting on the death & rebirth cycle we all go through constantly. Every moment you are alive and breathing there are changes happening somewhere in your body and heart. I let these changes come and go at will, and in return, the feeling of loss is more of a visitor opposed to a constant companion. You can’t run from the intense feelings of regret and grief (I know this well, because I used to put great effort in my escape routes) but the best thing you can do is to let them lie where they need to. Let them kill you, but then allow them to remind you that you’re alive. Warmth exists in the Winter: my brother building a fire in the fireplace, my family when they are laughing playing games together, my friends and I huddling into each other walking downtown. Light exists in the Winter: Fireworks, neon signs, and the snow reflecting off the mountains. Life exists in the Winter: Coffee with friends who made it home for the holidays, watching the dough rise on my sister’s homemade bread, and all the ways we gather to celebrate a year well-lived. The new year is hunting me down. It’ll find me fragile, grateful, and well-loved under the blankets of luck and excitement.
December 31st, 2023
Things I’ve Loved
The best things I’ve seen in 2023
I've always been a paper planner typa girl, but when I was managing the coffee shop a lot of my processes got digitized (google calendar, asana, etc) I ended up moving a lot of my daily planning to notion and I have loved it so far!
Stardust is a cycle tracking app, and it has in no small sense changed my life. If you are interested in cycle-syncing this is the best app out there. It gives you insight into each phase of your cycle, sends you reminders, and what to expect depending on which phase you're in. It also allows your partner to download it and be aware of your cycle which is soooo dope. As a woman, the more you understand this part of your life the better you understand yourself. PLUS you can be friends with other people and can see what phase they are in too. Most of my close friends have it and it's cool to track moods and behaviors. Literally cannot recommend enough.
One of the best books I read this year, and the book that really developed my interest in Death Care in the world. I have an entire instagram highlight on this book.
I really dove into human design last year, but this year I referenced it more and when I tell you it's one of the most accurate and interesting systems of energy tracking I mean it. Its's a lotttt of information but it's interesting! I have read my entire immediate families charts as well as some friends and it has benefitted me in so many ways. Even if it's not your thing and you don't believe in the "woo woo" things, it's at the very least fun :)
I devoured this series and I mean. DEVOURED. Bring back chaotic messy series that watch like my books read. The book for this series is not good, but that's okay because this show did great.
Favorite movie of the year. Nothing I love more than a Christopher Nolan film, and overall I think this was on top of the Cinema game. Stacked cast, perfect storytelling, and not to mention I'm just a girl who loves physics so I thought it was incredible. I think I watched it 4 times in the theaters.
Nobody is doing it like Sarah J Maas. Her world building is unmatched, and her writing is addictive. This series put me in the biggest fantasy reading slump ever. I'm not sure anything in my life will beat this series. Do you know how talented an author has to be to keep you invested for EIGHT STRAIGHT BOOKS? Ily SJM.
Somethin bout Joan Baez singing Bob Dylan just does it for me. Idk I listen to this all day everyday I can't stop
I played a lot of chess this year. More than any other year, and I think as a collective we should play it more often. That's it
Normalize making playlists with just covers of your favorite songs! It's wonderful. I also switched to Spotify but I kinda miss Apple Music so we will see which one makes it out on top in the next few months.
Ok I hate to say it but I understand the matcha hype now. After developing a crippling caffeine addiction this year, matcha was like an angel from the heavens.
The last two years I have really loved going to the movie theater and I'm a proud AMC A-lister. 3 free movies a WEEK. Do you know how many movies you can watch and re-watch with that bad boy? A lot.
This man's mind is insane. His podcasts are full of information and some episodes are really hard for me to digest, but I always come out having learned something wild. 5/5 podcast.
I have started keeping a list of anything that I want to know more about or questions I think of. I slowly work my way through questions when I feel inclined. It's how I stay in a state of wonder as I get older
This book changed my life. That's all I have to say. I will reread it over and over again for the rest of my life probably but I'm not even mad about it
Nineteen on Fire
December is always the great month of reflection in my life. I hate when I can’t see the sun, and I never like being cold so I tend to find myself turning to the coziest things I can during this miserable month. I turned 20 this December, and my birthday paired with the holidays always creates the most beautiful environment for reflection on the last year and dreaming for the next one. I feel like I’ve lived a lot this year. To be specific, I feel like I’ve lived 7 different lives, died, come back to life, and still haven’t figured anything out. So I wrote a little bit about it.
Here are the 6 most important lessons I’ve learned this year:
1 . Everywhere you go, you take yourself
Everyone who has ever said something along these lines was right. I spent my entire year on the move, always planning where I was going next, always looking towards my next destination. I never left with the intention to “find myself” but I always was searching for some way to grow. My head knows that change is necessary and inevitable, but my spirit and body REJECTTTTT that knowledge with everything in me. I enjoyed who I was for most of my life. Knowing that I was changing into something different scared me. I didn’t want to stop being who I had always been, I just wanted to purge all the parts of myself I didn’t like. That isn’t how change works most of the time. As you get older, the changes just slip in almost without you realizing it. Sometimes in life you just wake up one day and look in the mirror and realize you are revised. I felt a little robbed. I’m not seventeen anymore even though most of the time I still feel like I am. No matter where I laid down to sleep at night, I was still left with the problems I always had, and the foundation of who I had always been. I wanted to be less cynical, less proud, less scared. Until you strip away your comfort, your unwillingness to face those hard things, no number of flights or sightseeing changes them. No amount of avoidance, at any scale, changes them.
2. Embracing loss
One of the hardest lessons to learn is how to grieve things that are still there. I’ve never been in the business of ruining good things. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. I had so many things and people that I loved. Experiences that shaped me, people who altered the course of my life, objects that were a part of my identity. It wasn’t until I lost them that I had the space to appreciate who I was without them. There is credit to be given to those things, and how they changed me. I am not those things though. Losing things that don’t have any good reason to be lost hurts. It hurts to lose a relationship you both still loved, to leave a place that never hurt you. There is no blame to be given in these situations, and there is nothing I love more than somewhere to place the blame. That is one of the great mysteries of my life. Maybe you don’t realize until 6 months later, 15 years later, why those things had to leave. It’s not a crime, it’s just how it goes sometimes. As things leave, it opens space for things to come. And if I have to lose things over and over again for the rest of my life to continue meeting the great things that come in place of them, then it is a pain I will choose everyday.
3. It really is about the friends we made along the way
There are so many things to be grateful for, but one of the greatest is all of the new people I met this year. I have met some of my PEOPLE. Friendships that clicked so well that I never want to lose. When you make friends as an adult, in a new place, it’s a different kind of connection than being friends with people you grew up with. It’s no bullshit! You both have to willingly decide to make the effort to understand and learn about each other. It’s seriously one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever had the joy of experiencing. My mind solidified the idea that life is really all about connection. It’s the most magical thing to get to form relationships from the ground up. Getting to walk around the Rocket Center at night talking about theories of the universe and philosophy, getting to sit on the NYC-bound train and discuss each other’s lives, camping in the mountains with no cell service and enjoying someone’s company, tipsy-talking to strangers, those are the things that light me UPPPP inside! This year I am especially grateful for that. This year I am especially grateful for the people I have in my corner, and all they have taught me.
4. Stop the percussion, I wanna have a discussion
If you know anything about me, it is that there is nothing I hate more than having difficult conversations. I need about 3 months notice to be able to build up the courage to have tough conversations. I’ve cried every time I’ve had to quit a job. It just sucks. But it is so necessary to learn how to have hard conversations. It solves a lot of problems very quickly. I had the art of beating around a bush and changing subjects down to perfection. But most conversations in life that are worth having require little to no sugar coating. Nobody wants to feel like a fool in a conversation. Everyone should be capable of holding themselves down in a conversation. Those conversations used to be hard for me because I didn’t have a grasp on who I was. I thought everyone else knew me better than I knew myself. That’s a fool’s mindset!!! I thought because I made myself an open book, a translucent box, they should have a say. What a lie. In order to have hard conversations, you have to have a certain level of surety in yourself, your wants, your desires, and where you are going. That was my problem.
5. Shame is a dirty liar and a cheat.
I have always had a Shame problem. It didn’t matter what I did, I felt guilty because of it. Shame had a fully furnished room in my mind. It was cozy, and it never wanted to leave. I felt guilty for everything I did and didn’t do, and it was a game I never won. I would feel guilty about not waking up early and not letting myself get a full 8 hours of sleep, but then I’d feel guilty about sleeping in and not maximizing my morning. It was always there, my constant companion. It would immobilize me a lot, and then I felt guilty about never making a decision. I learned this last year that it comes from living out of balance with myself. I could never find peace in a decision, because I was always doing wrong in one way or another. I felt guilty about not doing what my soul wants and I’d feel guilty about not doing what everyone expected me to do. I’d read books and feel guilty about how much I hated the main character for making the wrong decision. It made me fine-tuned to standards and expectations in society. I can tell you what the obvious right decision is in most situations, the textbook answer of moral rightness (I give pretty good advice). The issue is that my soul didn’t agree with a lot of the moral answers. I felt ashamed for a long time about how badly I didn’t want to make the right decision. Through the last year, I realized how much the “correctness” of any decision doesn’t matter. I am the one who has to deal with the consequences, I am the one who has to lay in my bed at night and suffer my decisions. For twenty years I tortured myself every night with my shame. I’d scream at myself while I was driving, and have in-depth arguments in the shower. I’d spend any free moment trying to justify what I said in conversations, or what I had for breakfast, or the way I performed in a debate sophomore year. It wasn’t until I started seriously journaling that I was able to decipher the shame. I could weed through it and clearly see how I felt, instead of being an active participant in it. Occasionally I will catch myself in an argument with that stupid shame monster in his cozy place in my mind, but now I move past it. There are so many times I have done wrong in this world, and there will probably be many more. But there are too many beautiful wonderful things I get to experience. None of those things, the good and the bad, are worth slowly killing myself for the rest of my life. I do not need to plead for forgiveness from the girl in the mirror. Frankly, it’s a waste of time, and she doesn’t know much anyways.
6. I am not a robot!
I learned a lot about what it means to be a human who has human experiences. I’m a big advocate for the fact that it is all a part of the human experience. The terror, the goodness, the hurt, the loss, the beauty, the struggle, the unity, the connection, the love. I’m grateful to feel and witness it all. I’m cynical and jaded when I’m angry. I love to get people worked up, and sometimes I cheat when I play board games. I’m more naive than I should be, and I trust too easily. I have blind optimism and fail to see the big picture in my own life. I never respond to text messages, and I spread myself too thin. I struggle to admit when I am wrong, I’d do anything to prove a point, and I am too stubborn for my own good. But, I am also empathetic. I hand forgiveness out like candy at a parade, and I cry when I see an old person alone at the store. I am good at entertaining a room, and I can talk about anything forever. I never cheat at card games, I’m easily excitable, and will do anything for the sake of adventure. I am no saint striving for perfection, I am a pile of questions, bad jokes, and 20 years of experiences. I’m here for the journey. I’m here for the struggle and the ease of this life. I’m learning to love the great push-and-pull. In order to start understanding life, you have to have a great deal of respect for it. To start accepting the mystery of life and the human experience is to experience it. Grateful everyday for my free will and unlimited thoughts. So grateful to not be a robot.
There it is! Six things I’ve learned in my 19th year of life. I am so excited for the next one. I hope you all move with ease in this new year. I hope it’s a year of rediscovery, new discovery, adventure and growth. Growth most of all. I love hanging out on this giant ball in space with everyone. There’s so many cool people doing cool things. I’ll see you all sometime!
December 27th 2022
Ode to Summertime, Utah, and Growing Up
Summertime is SUCH a concept. As we grow up, summertime is something we rejoice in so hard. You’re 10, and it’s the last day of school, and if feels like the entire world is practically buzzing with the summer excitement. I loved school but there is nothing I loved more than the idea of summer.
Every year I went through a shift when I realized summertime was almost here. My siblings and I turned into fish, and lived in the water of our condo pool. We went to swimming lessons everyday for two weeks at the start of the summer at Veteran’s Memorial Pool, and when we stopped, Maxx and Markie started. Of course, most summers were filled with a lot of ball playing. If it wasn’t Wyatt’s baseball games, it was my softball games. Now, Summer 2022, my family and I all gather most weekday nights to watch Maxx play. We had barbeques and birthday parties and family reunions. So many days spent in the beating Utah sun, and we let it fry off any sense of time we had. August seemed a lifetime away every summer, and that is just how I liked it.
The summer after Junior Year, I worked at Utah Lake at a place called Epic Recreation. It was one of the best summers of my life. Spending everyday on the lake, meeting new people all the time, paddle boarding Provo River whenever we had a free chance to. I worked there with some friends, Taylor Swift released Folklore in July, and it was the soundtrack of my summer and the year that would follow. And BOYYYY OH BOY, it was a summer to be had. Once the season started slowing down at the end of the summer, I would be working by myself a lot of mornings and I would sit right in the water on a paddleboard reading until a customer came for their boat reservation. I read Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury a total of 4 times that summer, and it has since become a summer tradition for me.
Summer of Junior Year was the first year I learned to be slow. I fell into a timeless space, just like the years before, but it was different. We had just got done with a fully remote last couple of months of school, and the entire world was paused that summer. My sweet Grandma Millie passed away in September, and I was still in that timeless space. It felt too slow. I spent a lot of mornings before my first class of the day in the Provo Cemetery. Now, I think about how if I had never experienced to stop and slow down then, I possibly never ever would have.
This summer, coming home from Alabama with the knowledge that I would be moving away (again) in August made it even more special for me. I experienced my first homesickness ever when I was in Alabama. It started by thinking of the mountains, then my family, then my friends. And I had never understood the longing for home until then. When I came back home, the first thing I did was go to my family reunion. I remember driving through the canyon on my way to Spring City, Utah, with my whole family in the car. I started crying looking out the window. I knew a part of myself better, in that moment. I realized that as much as I loved my freedom, as in-tune with my capabilities to adapt and grow somewhere else were, as much of myself that is made up with a desire for new experiences and different places, there was a soft-spoken, hidden part of me that belongs to Utah. There are parts of me left all over this place. This summer felt like coming back to a warm hug. It feels like snow cones and jumping in water. I was built into a lot of who I am in this valley, with my family and friends around me.
When I was in Alabama, I would tell people about my relationships with my family, and especially how close I was to my cousins, Lucy and Kenzie. People were baffled. It was weird and strange to a lot of people how much precedence my family holds in my life. When I was little my parents would use it as a form of punishment. “You will not get to go to see Lucy tonight if you don’t do the dishes” I would be crying over a statement like that- and soon enough the dishes would be drying. I moved out after highschool and my first roommate was Makenzie. I had the time of my life with her, and I can’t wait to move and be 10 minutes away from her again. All of my grandparents worked hard to make sure we were tight-knit family, and it worked, because my world revolves around them! A lot of that comes from growing up in the LDS church, and I wouldn’t change it. The lack of connection the world has with their own families is quite normal, and a lot of the time for good reason. But we are built from the people who came before us, for worse or better. You either grow up with your parents as your heroes or you grow up vowing to change the pattern they set for you. Either way, you are changed by that. It doesn’t have to be good or bad, it just is. Since being back, there is not a day that goes by that I do not think of my family and feel such an immense sense of gratitude to have the relationships with my family that I do. They are my people. There is no where else I was meant to be this summer than with them. Doing yoga in the morning with my sister Sam, going fishing with Uncle Buzz, my dad, and Maxx and Markie. Spending Sunday nights in the backyard playing card games with my family. There is something that changes in your brain when you hit puberty that longs to be away from that. You want to be with your friends all day, and you want to be anywhere but your own house. But as I’ve grown up, there’s nobody else who gets me the way they do. They are the feeling of home to me. They center me and frustrate me more than anything. They are my summertime people, they are my all the time people.
Being back in Utah is like a charger of sorts. I had just got back from a very different environment, and I knew I had changed a lot. I had grown up a lot in the time I was gone. I was scared to come back because I truly felt like I was a different person than I was when I left, and I mean, that was the entire point of leaving and being on my own. I was nervous to see my old friends from high school, nervous to be put back in the bubble. Those friends are the same good people they have always been, but I realized I wasn’t the only one who changed. I love growing up beside all of those people. I love seeing them and catching up. I was nervous to lose the things I learned when I was gone, nervous I would lose touch with all the people I met. Luckily, I still talk to them often, and they center me in a different way. In order to truly honor the parts of me that have changed, I have to honor the parts of me that never do. It has become quite simple in a slow realization. I am always changing, I hope to always be changing. I can be all of these things that I am and that I have learned. I am 19 and obsessed with Space and my family, and moving to new places. I am 17 and working at the lake and reading Dandelion Wine. I am 13 and craving freedom and to hangout with my friends all day everyday. I am 10 and upset that I have to do the dishes, I am 7 swimming in the pool. I am a cumulation of all of these things, I am all of those previous versions of myself. They all live inside of me, and I now feel like they all have a home inside of me.
I am forged by all of the mistakes that I’ve made, I have a foundation of love and water and card games. I am built to move and meet and discover. There are traces of me in Alabama, Provo High, hostels in Rwanda, Ensenada, and 20 different airports. I am all the people who have spent time loving me, and all the places they’ve watched me grow. I’m made up of swing dancing to country music, search histories of the universe, Metallica and Tom Petty and my siblings singing along. Different parts of me come alive when I’m in the Rocky Mountains, or the ocean, or watching patterns of fields from an airplane seat. I have a never-satisfied hunger for freedom and blue skies and backroads. I am all of these things all at once, put into a little vessel of a slowly-aging body.
“One day you discover you are alive.
Explosion! Concussion! Illumination! Delight!
You laugh, you dance around, you shout.
But, not long after, the sun goes out. Snow falls, but no one sees it, on an August noon.”
-Ray Brabury, Dandelion Wine
March Madness!
Some of the stuff I have enjoyed in this wild march month
Current podcast obsession! The episode 'Trauma for President' really offered great perspective and commentary into current trauma talk that I've seen a lot these days. I have told everyone I talk to about it, 10/10 listen.
Daisy Jones & The Six is a book you read in 14 hours because you cannot put it down. That is exactly what I did. This book follows Daisy Jones- a charismatic mess of a girl who is chasing her dreams of being a songwriter. It also follows the most sensational band of the 70s, The Six. The story had me in a CHOKEHOLD. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a phenomenal author of historical fiction, and I first became a fan of hers after reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Her writing style for both of these books is really compelling, and keeps you enthralled the entire time.
My first time eating a Poke bowl in my entire life and BOYYYYY. I am a new woman. Not the same person. Permanently revised. They are phenomenal and I am now their biggest fan 4 ever. Scrumptious. Showstopping.
Finally made my way around to finishing The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury this month. It is a collection of sci-fi short stories written in the 50s about space travel today. It's interesting to follow these stories through the lenses of how humans thought the world (and space travel) would look today, especially living somewhere that revolves around space. Bradbury has this way of writing that just makes you nostalgic for the stories while you read them, and that's what keeps him on the top of my list.
I have loved the concept of rituals lately, and although I don't have any, this little guy is what comes the closest. This man has saved my life the last few weeks. He does it all! A week or so ago I drank 6 glasses of sleepytime tea. Not sure I've ever had a good sleep compared to that, and every night I will dream of him.
This is the cover for my March 2022 playlist. March has always been such a weird month to make playlists because they are all mixed and scrambled. Ur hoping for spring and trying to get over winter, and also trying to adjust to living in a new routine. Linked for da apple music listeners.
Psychedelic is a podcast that holds teachings from Alan Watts. The majority of the episodes are snippets from his lectures and they're awesome. Linked my favorite one.
Cass started going through a Laurel Canyon phase a little bit ago, and some time through starting a similar journey I got completely sidetracked and this became the only album I ended up listening to for like 2 weeks this month. It'll getcha getcha.
Waffle house hit difffffferent when a random customer hops behind the counter to help make the food. Vibes are insane and I'm honestly convinced that it only tastes good at 2 am, but some of the best hashbrowns I've ever had.
Looking for Space
It has been a little over a week that I have been in Alabama working at The US Space and Rocket Center. It is so interesting to be somewhere where everyone knows more than you. For one, it is very humbling. Two, you can’t escape the learning. Spending 8 hours a day walking around museums and listening to people talk about the universe isn’t where I would have expected to be at 19, but hey! That’s life.
The more I learn here, the more questions I have. I think that’s something I wanna hold forever, yanno? I sorta hope I never come to any conclusions. And don’t get me wrong, I enjoy simplicity. Sunshine in the mornings, laying in grass, going on drives with my friends. I thrive off those simple routines. But sometimes there are truths that exist in this world that don’t really care if you enjoy simplicity. Nothing is as simple as it seems, and everything came from somewhere. That’s beautiful and terrifying. I think having a constant example of that everyday has made me more grateful. Very few things in this world just happen. Everything that we use in our world came from someone’s desire to make things better. How can you not be inspired by that? How can you not be grateful? Most everything came from someone’s hope that generations from them, years into the future, things would be easier for us. And they ARE easier. I don’t worry about going and buying the newspaper on the street corner to stay informed. I don’t have to worry about boiling my water before I drink it because someone made filtration systems. There are just some things we don’t worry about anymore, and we are lucky for it.
It is comforting to me that 50, 100, 500, 1000 years ago, people worked and moved in an undying faith for a better future. Most people want things to outlive them. Writers want their writings to touch even one person, no matter how long that takes. Scientists want their experiments to be a stepping stone for what happens 25 years from now. Us lovers, we want our love to last long after we’re gone. It’s human nature to crave immortality in any way we can get it, and while I could get into the philosophy of why I think that is, at a very basic level, I think it is our way of ensuring something can last after we are gone.
We all live through the future the same way we learn through the past.
And that is why what the USSRC does is so important, and why it is so cool to work here. The goal is to encourage and inspire. There is something so beautiful about living and working in a place that is focused above you. Everywhere you go, you are looking up. That has translated to my current existence a lot lately. Because I can’t be looking back at Utah. Or looking back at Provo High. Just because you love where you came from doesn’t mean that you get to take them with you. The only souvenir we take with us from our past experiences is ourselves. I spend my days looking up over myself, past my little bubble of hurt and pity, past any mistakes and all of my accomplishments. I think that’s another way I’ve been humbled.
There are just some things that you cannot continue to mourn when you are looking upwards. I would consider myself a sunshine girl, and the months of Utah winters where I wouldn’t see or feel the warmth of the sun for weeks on end were always the worst times of the year. When the US Space Shuttle was made, there is a specific place on the rocket called the External Tank. This tank is where we kept the liquid Nitrogen and Hydrogen (aka what propels the Shuttle off the Earth) They have to be kept at a very, very cold temperature, otherwise they will fail or kill you when it’s time to go. I think that sometimes life goes a lot like that. You hold these cold emotions inside of you. You hold frigid fear, and hurt, and betrayal. You hold a list of names of the people who have wronged you on an ice cold pedestal. But then on a sunnier day, after a countdown your body has been doing without you noticing, you ascend upwards. You get propelled into the universe, into a place where everything looks much smaller.
And then you take it all in, and you realize that things aren’t as big as you’ve felt them, and that sometimes they are gone now. And then you catch glimpses of understanding and clarity. Things are lighter than they once were. Things are tiny, and ginormous. Nothing earthly can last forever. Luckily for us writers, scientists, lovers, and passionate believers, we are made from things a liiiiiiiitle bit bigger than this little planet. Some things do last forever!
big love and hugs from your favorite galactic girl!
Alex February 7th 2022
Dawg with a Blog
Social media is crazy, and trying to find the balance between wanting a place in the digital realm where I can keep all my memories, thoughts, and almost a diary entry while also not wasting my life away on apps is essentially why I decided to make a lil blog.
If you know me, you know that I’ve grappled with a social media obsession. It just became one of those things that you integrated and care about in your life without even realizing it! And I hate it. But, the desire to share thoughts and curate a space where I can share my ideas and perspectives is also something that I love! I think that as a world, many of us are coming to terms with the fact that social media is no longer interesting and it’s no longer a way of connection. It’s just a curated consumption hole for the average joe (aka all of us) and to be honest, it’s kinda unsatisfying! One day I will write a long post about the concept of social media, but luckily for you, it isn’t today.
Today is about how one day, Cassidy and I were talking and somehow we came to the conclusion that we are starting blogs. So here we are! I am also at a very fun point in my life where I am getting ready to move to Alabama, where a bunch of new experiences are waiting for me! Having a way to keep all my friends and family updated with my life is such a blessing. I also think 20 years in the future, and when I am a mom and my kids wanna know what my life was like at 19, they will have a place to see if they want! This came because my parents are not the best journal keepers (sorry guys! love you though!) and I am determined for that to be different with me.
If you know me, you also know that I take after my mother in the way that I am a talker. I can talk away an afternoon. I have a lot of thoughts, and I think a blog will be a beautiful way to take a snapshot of how I view the world at 19. We all change, that’s one of my favorite parts about life, and none of us see the world the same way. That’s reason enough to document how you see it, because no one else can see it how you do.
So here it is! A little blog about a little life.