things I've learned 2017

Let's get things straight here. I'm super great. I'm also a total mess. I had an adventurous year. I also had a hardcore mental breakdown. I travelled to Portland. I moved out. I started graduate school. I quit graduate school. I moved back in with my parents. I accepted a job at a bakery in Anniston. I'm sleeping on friend's couches like a nomad. I feel like I'm doing okay again. 2017 was bonkers.




Things I've learned in 2017:

• Some people will continue loving you(me) even if you’re(I'm) a piece of shit.
• Some people will stop loving you(me) because you’re(I’m) a piece of shit.
• It’s completely necessary, for my brain to stay level headed, to sometimes go all in and surround myself with design and inspiration and live in that, but it’s also necessary to hang out with people(Smells, KC, fam, etc) that have other interests. *It’s so important to diversify where you’re receiving validation.
• Organized tools, cluttered inspiration.
• Before and during graduate school, I didn’t understand the concept that small impacts compound over time to make a big impact. Everybody (EVERYBODY) said “baby steps,” but I did not understand.
• I like to stay busy, but I do not like to be restricted with the things that make me busy.
• Guilt really is an asshole.
• I am in process. I'm an unfinished human and I'm imperfect and I'm okay with myself.
• A shower can temporarily soothe.
• I have a hard time going to sleep and I have a hard time waking up.
• Being nosy is a way to care about things and a way to be curious.
• People notice when you don't post on social media for 3 months.

Things I didn't learn:

• What exactly happened to my brain from August to November. I still feel like I blacked out the night of my birthday and woke up at the end of November. I became a person I didn't recognize and it scares me so bad. I have a lot of embarrassing stories to tell about that time.
• How to repay the kindness and support that friends and family have shown. They didn't have to stand by me during my nonsense, but they did. And they had open arms when I became myself again. They didn't have to be so good, but they continue to be.
• How to escape from a downward existential crisis spiral???
• I read somewhere that “You cannot heal in the same environment where you got sick.” I'm not sure if that is true, but we'll see.

thnks fr th mmrs

One of the most important things to me in life is sharing music. 

I grew up being influenced by my parents music. I'm just so thankful that they had listened to a diverse collection. My mom always loving Bruce Springsteen, U2, Green Day, and New Wave 80’s and my dad listening to Spin Doctors, Disturbed, The Offspring, Hootie and the Blowfish, and pretty much anything my mom wanted to listen to. Some of my earliest memories are listening to the living room radio and tapes and cd’s, with those giant speakers and the turn dial volume that could spin to infinity. One of the only home videos of toddler Alexander is him dancing in his diaper to the music. It’s so funny to me that I went through a stage where I rebelled against my mom’s music, because now those songs are some of the ones I go back to when I need comforting.

Most of my vivid memories are tied to music. Some memories are literally music related (my favorite concerts), some not (the playlist I listened to on repeat during my senior semester of college). Rapping to Eminem's most vulgar songs while riding around Hokes Bluff with Smells. Picking Taking Back Sunday songs from Calub's ipod while we laid in the field behind my house.

My friends and I used to make these epic mix cd’s for each other in high school. I miss that so much. The process of selecting a song, not only because it’s a great song, but because you want to share it particularly with this person you care about, is incredibly special. 

One of my very favorite things about living with W was that he constantly played music. He was either listening to his current favorite on repeat or he was listening to a brand new release. I will forever associate Issues - Julia Michaels with him. Haha :)

I can almost guarantee that if we’ve hung out at least once, I probably associate a song with you. Ask me, give me a second to think, & I’ll tell you. You might even have a whole playlist.

Music is one of those things that makes me feel like I can relate to a person. In the one “actual" relationship I’ve ever had, the straw that broke the camel’s back was that he only listened to American Idol songs. ONLY. It was so boring. The fact that he was so rigid about his music taste was what did it. The discovery of new music is so exciting. I can develop a crush on someone based on their taste in music alone. (That's happened with this guy… I know almost nothing else about him, apart from his excellent music choices: Everything)

I always want to know what my friends are listening to. I love when we find common ground, but also when I’m introduced to something way different. TG is one of those friends that I can always count on to be listening to something crazy that I'll probably adore. One of my favorite things is when TG says, “have you listened to that playlist I made?” The answer is always no, because I suck haha. But I always go listen to them eventually! He perfectly curates his playlists and it makes them so fun to listen to. When he picks a theme, he goes all in. And it brings me back to those mix tapes from high school. I wish I could get more of my friends to make playlist and send them to me. (*hint* send me music *hint*) 

Check These Out:

*Here’s a playlist that TG made to commemorate the time he spent working at Foodland:

*And another that he made to collect songs that he thought would sound good with video footage, which is so vague and hilarious to me, but absolutely perfect and you need to listen to it: Videography

Friendship

I've been slowwwly reading the book Bird by Bird: Some instructions on writing and life by Anne Lamott and I've been telling anybody that will listen about it. It's just so good (to me).
I came across this pearl the other day:


"I like for narrators to be like the people I choose for friends, which is to say that they have a lot of the same flaws as I. Preoccupation with self is good, as is a tendency toward procrastination, self-delusion, darkness, jealousy, groveling, greediness, addictiveness. They shouldn't be too perfect; perfect means shallow and unreal and fatally uninteresting. I like for them to have a nice sick sense of humor and to be concerned with important things, by which I mean that they are interested in political and psychological and spiritual matters. I want them to want to know who we are and what life is all about. I like them to be mentally ill in the same sorts of ways that I am; for instance, I have a friend who said one day, "I could resent the ocean if I tried," and I realized that I love that in a guy. I like for them to have hope -- if a friend or narrator reveals himself or herself to be hopeless too early on, I lose interest. It depresses me. It makes me overeat. I don't mind if a person has no hope if he or she is sufficiently funny about the whole thing, but then, this being able to be funny definitely speaks of a kind of hope, of buoyancy."