on being being happy

yesterday i attended a short presentation on being happy and how to achieve happiness. he gave us a few examples of what makes us happy and what makes us unhappy; having lots of money does not make you happy, but having more money than your neighbor does. having less money than your neighbor surely will make you unhappy if you dwell on it. getting into a great school makes you happy, but leaving all of your friends and family behind to attend this school makes you unhappy. but according to mr fong the number one thing that makes you happy is being able to do something that you love. for him that is corridor recovery after the flood. "the best way to cheer yourself up is to cheer somebody else up." --mark twain

according to wikipedia, happiness is an emotion associated with feelings ranging from contentment and satisfaction to bliss and intense joy. i think that short term bursts of happiness are more along the lines of intense joy and the overall state of happiness is contentment and satisfaction. for example if you were to get into a great school, your number one choice, more than likely you'll be feeling that intense joy and with that if everything was just going well for you lately then it's more of the contentment and satisfaction.

everyone wants to be happy but you can't just focus all your goals on being happy. you have to let happiness come to you, not you chase it. you can chase happiness all you want but it'll come faster once you stop chasing. if you're stuck feeling unhappy and don't know what to do to get yourself back on track try these nine steps to happiness. i seem to be on a wikipedia kick today so don't trust everything that i've linked to. it is wikipedia afterall.

warning: being happy all the time is not a good thing. for one, it annoys everyone around you. if you are always happy go lucky every single day of the year it gets old..fast. secondly, if you're always happy then it makes the low points seem even lower which then brings you down even more. this is why you have to take the good with the bad and have the smiles outweigh the tears. sometimes life just sucks but it does get better.

...marching band

...yes, i am a member of the marching band here. it's not exactly something that i announce to people when i first meet them, but it's not something that i try to hide. it's very much a love hate relationship, with a lot of hate and a lot of love.

the beginning of the season is just painful. 'band camp' is not an enjoyable experience. for five days of our summer we are forced to spend 8 hours at the high school, usually four morning hours spent outside and four afternoon hours spent inside. outside we learn how to march. the the underclassmen are always pitiful, but so are some of the upperclassmen which is even more pitiful. it is always unbearably hot during these five days but we're outside anyway. spending four hours outside under the beating sun sure makes me love life. we rarely learn any of our actual marching show during band camp, it's just the basics. so you think that after roughly 20 hours of learning the basics we could march forward, backward, left, and right pretty well right? nope. some of us just can't. it's not that hard.

then we move into the school year and there is band from 7am-9am daily with a great three hour rehearsal every thursday night. some kids get out of an hour of band by taking an extra class therefore filling their schedule. i highly suggest it. from my experience 90% of the time nothing extremely productive gets accomplished in that first hour so why not just sit inside and take a class? and anything that we do learn we'll go over it again so you have plenty of time to learn it. then it rains. and rains some more. and we're stuck inside. well the directors start to get antsy so out we go, as long as there's no lightning. we also get threatened with push ups, often. and have done many. it's a time consumer this marching band is.

the last two saturdays of september and the first three saturdays are competitions. those aren't too bad. the first one not judged, it was just a simply show us what you've got and we'll give you helpful suggestions. but the second one was my favorite, sarcasm-please pick up on it, we went to marshalltown. and marched in a parade all morning and then marched on the field during the afternoon. let's see we won 4A parade competition, 4A marching competition, best winds, best colorgaurd, best percussion, and overall grand champions. what's wrong with that you may ask? we were the ONLY 4A school there. everyone else was a little 1 and 2 A with maybe two or three 3A schools. we did not belong there. not at all.

after all the competitions are done, overall i'm happy with our show and what we accomplished. it was my favorite show of the three i've participated in. we played stars wars music, ya know, the new stuff. so it was kinda recognizable. the crowd kinda knew what we were playing which made it a little easier for them to get into it.

sure i may want to make a few people disappear so they don't come back to marching band because they obviously suck and need to be removed but there's nothing i can do about them. these people generally tend to be the ones who aren't really on the better end of the spectrum playing wise so after marching band i'm never forced to see them daily and i do not mind at all. ...i do prefer marching band to concert band though...concert band gets old fast. even though i'm usually fed up with marching band half way through the season i know that i'll be back next year.

auditions

this past weekend was all state audition weekend. it's one of the most nerve wracking weekends of your life, your fate in left in the hands of judges who hear you play for 5 minutes tops. after that short incriment of time they decided who is apparentley the best of the best and select them to get a coveted spot in the prestigious all state band.

thousands of kids across the state have been practicing the same etudes over and over since the first of august until the third weekend in october. this sure seems like a lot of time to learn two or three one, or one and a part, page pieces and get your thirteen major scales up to tempo, 88 beats per minutes scales played in a sixteenth note pattern (which is four notes per beat), but in reality the time just flies by. these etudes and played over and over and over and not only are they engrained in their heads, but in the heads of all their family members.

you have to be perfect for these auditions just to get a call back and then you have to play impeccably to make it. i'm not perfect. which means no call back for me. i may have been happy with my audition but it wasn't perfect. i could still just hope that maybe, just maybe, when they put that sheet of paper up on the wall my name would be on it. it wasn't. over fifty flutes auditioned in the northeast iowa audition center. can you guess how many were selected? five. just five. one tenth of the auditioners were selected.

phenomenal players auditioned on saturday and did not make all state. it is entirely possible for them to have made it the previous year and then not even get a call back the next. it all depends on how you act under the pressure of these auditions. people stand outside the door and listen, silently critiquing your perfomance mentally comparing themselves to you. everyone may be wishing you good luck as you enter the room but it's in the back of their minds that they don't want you to do well, they want themselves to do well. the worst feeling ever is walking out of that room knowing that you have played better than you just did but that doesn't matter because all the judge knows is how you played just then.

after three years of auditioning i have not gotten a call back. every year i hear the same, "there's always next year."

obesity in little kids

i honestly find it just heart wrenching to see a little kid who is already suffering from obesity. for the rest of their lives, they will be suffering from this unless they start a work out plan to start losing the weight. the longer they wait to start trying to shed the pounds the fatter their going to get and then the harder it will be to lose the weight. as i've stated before i work in retail and i was recently helping a customer find clothes for his granddaughter. the poor girl was between 7-8 years old and nothing in the girls section fit her. she would've needed an XXL in girls and we do not carry that in store, i'm not even sure if they make an XXL for girls. i just felt so bad for the little girl because we had no girls clothes to fit her so all i could do was point her in the direction of womens.

i blame the parents. sure some babies are just born chubby, but they only stay chubby if they are fed to much and for the first two or three years, just a rough estimate there, parents are the ones spooning the food into the kids mouth. though they are responsible for the portion sizes for the kids for years and once they form the habits, have fun breaking them. as a parent why would you want to see your kid suffering through obesity. they would be the butt of many jokes in their lives and would be made fun of on the playground. what do you do when you take them to an amusement park and they're too fat to sit in the roller coaster seat? what do you say to them, what can make that not hurt as bad? how are you going to make that less embarrassing for them?

today's world makes it so easy for people to become obese. we're the fast food nation and we run on tight schedules. the fast food companies have taken advantage of this and now offer a quick and easy breakfast, lunch, and dinner. it's so much faster to just run through the drive thru rather than actually making yourself a meal. c'mon people, it's not that hard. unless you don't care if you're obese and that most clothing stores do not carry your size because you have expanded so much. you just drive up to that mcdonald's, burger king, wendys, kfc, or whatever your favorite greasy meal comes from and enjoy all those unnecessary calories. maybe you'll even feel yourself getting fatter as you sit there in your car and shove your face as you drive to work or home or where ever you're going.

i honestly have no sympathy for obese people. it's your own fault for shoving your face with food every chance you get. go work out, i don't care if all you can do is walk. you'll work up to excerize that will steadily burn off your fat. the only people i have sympathy for are those who have that disease that affects the brain so they don't get the impulse to stop eating because they're full. well they could just portion out their food and say i'm only going to eat this much so it's still their fault if they're obese.

essay blog

interesting stuff here people, interesting stuff.

attempts with videos

we're learning how to embed (spelling? not sure) videos today so i'm practicing as he shows us how to. enjoy!

if you ever feel like a failure this will certainly make you feel like lessof a failure. though i do feel bad for this little kid because i can't help but laugh at this.




and this is just sad. really really sad. i blame the parents.

hey there

random place.
(click on it, you know you want to. it really is exciting, okay not really but it's the idea behind it)

i plan to road trip here after senior year. mini goat is going to be joining me.
you may ask why i would want to go to such a place, and i'm not really sure.
it'll be an adventure!

this goes hand in hand with college and leaving home. as of right now i have to ask permission to do most things, and if i wanted to road trip to a random place this year the answer would be a no. there is no reason for me to go there. why would i want to waste my gas on a trip to go there? why, simply because i can. i'm looking forward to being the boss of myself and making my own decisions in college.

nothing against my parents or their rules, but sometimes i just want a little more freedom. i know they trust me, and i think now they just have to trust themselves and what they've taught me. sure, i'll make mistakes, they're an unavoidable part of life, but i'll learn and grow from them. you learn so much more from failure than you do from always succeeding. and i bet once you make that mistake you won't make it again. that's growth right there. mistakes happen and the only productive thing you can do about them is learn from them and move on. don't dwell on them or cry over the spilled milk.

i'm not asking for complete independence here because i know that i am not ready for that. i could not handle it, i still have more learning and growing to do before even attempting getting rid of the crutches totally. i'm just asking for maybe setting down and going around with one less crutch every now and then. it'll be a strengthening exercise and i'll end up going back to two but eventually setting down the second one more permanently. this way when i do stand up on my own two feet i'll already have a little experience and the transition will be so much smoother with less chance of falling backwards.

college will be here before we all know it and then it's only a few short years until we're out in th real world. i feel that the more preparing we do now while we're in a more sheltered environment the easier it will be for us to stand on our own two feet without the support of crutches.

employment

as of august 28th 2008 i have been an employee of gap inc. gap inc is the gap, old navy, and banana republic. i work at old navy. it's been a very exciting experience. my favorite job is probably working up at the register because it's the most exciting. my least favorite would probably have to be fitting room unless there's a steady traffic of people, otherwise it's just boring back there.


the worst part of working in retail is when customers ask if the clothing they tried looks good. or if they should try it in the larger size. the goal is to make the customer happy, but you don't want to send them home with something that doesn't look good. and you never ever want to say that they need a larger size, that just makes them angry. i try to deflect these questions by asking if they want me to run and get the larger size just so they can compare. i do not directly say that they need a larger size. i would fear for my safety if i did.


being employed sure makes me work harder on time management. on some week nights i have to somehow find a way to complete my homework and work for about 4-5 hours. it's a stretch sometimes but i get it done. my time management skills are greatly improving due to me being employed. i have also started to become more focused and get my work done in shorter amounts of time. and i'm starting to do the assignments that are actually due before working on the longer term assignments. and i somehow manage to practice my flute in my limited amount of time.


making your own money is a very satisfying experience. nowadays i do not feel that i have to rely on my parents to get money because i have a job. it gives you a feeling of greater independence. i also have to learn how to manage my money and balance a checkbook. all this is new to me and it doesn't alway go so well. it's very common for me to forget to enter a purchase and then my balance is always off from the balance that the bank gives me which makes we wonder where my money is going. but i haven't forgotten to enter a purchase in a while so my balance and the bank balance match.


old navy is my second job experience. over the summer i worked for spencer rougueing and detasseling. strangely i didn't mind either of those jobs. it got hot on some days but i don't ever remember it being horrible. the people i worked with made the job a lot better too. though i didn't really like working with my brother. that got annoying. he always gave my food away. so i was a problem solver and didnt put my food with his. then i always had my own food and none of it was given away.

baseball

boo chicago white sox. i am not a white sox fan. i am a minnesota twins fan.

really now?

i recently had an argument with my brother about 'bad' teachers. we both had the teacher that we were discussing and we weren't exactly in agreement. he found her to be a bad teacher, well maybe he didn't but he only talked about how his friends called her the worst teacher ever. i had her and she definitely wasn't a bad teacher. plenty of kids, including me enjoyed her class. sure the workload was hard and there was a lot, but that doesn't qualify her as a bad teacher. her due dates were strict, but it was ap so that's kinda common sense. i have also had friends who have had her class and they had no complaints about her teaching. but the one who stated that she was the worst teacher ever didn't do his homework. ever. and expected that to fly. and just because he got in trouble he labeled her as a bad teacher. seriously, you cannot expect the outcome to be good when you don't do your homework in a class where homework is one of the main ways of learning.
i have no sympathy for those who don't do their homework and then whine when they get in trouble for it. we were always given ample time to do the assignments and if you felt crunched for time it's because you were procrastinating. just because you don't do your homework and then not learn from it doesn't make the teacher a bad teacher. it makes you a bad student. so suck it up and do your homework.

numero dos?

i'm still new at this so bear with me here. i'm going to go on a small rant about cell phones.

it seems like everyone today has a cell phone. i've walked into an elementary school and seen kids with cell phones. what the heck? why do they need cell phones? they're in elementary school mommy and daddy do everything for them and plan out their day. they do not need cell phones. for me cell phones in middle school is iffy. i can understand it if you have an extremely busy schedule but not many middle schoolers do. so most of them do not need cell phones. mommy and daddy still do a lot for them, but not everything.

i got my cell phone when my brother turned 16 because the deal was buy one get three free. that was when my parents both got their first cell phones also. if the deal was buy one get two free then i would've been outta luck until my 16th birthday. my belief is that if you drive you need a cell phone. that is your lifeline if something were to happen to your car. and i know that most of the world's first cars are not the greatest and sometimes prone to breaking down. i know mine is.

today's world has become attached to our cell phones. they are on us constantly and more often than not are on and in use when they shouldn't be. one example that just bugs me is texting in class. what is so important that it can't wait a few hours? omg jane likes joe! omg!!! wow, seriously? put the phone back in your backpack.

it seems like at the beginning of every year the teachers go over their cell phone policies and then they never stick to them . i've heared countless versions of 'if i hear it/see it it's mine for the day', yet all of my teachers just say turn it off when they hear a phone go off in class or catch someone texting. techers should not be able to hold phones overnight though. for those of us that drive, our cell phone is our only way to call for help if something were to go wrong.

hi!

first posting, how exciting!