the lights are much brighter there...

i also enjoy this.

VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip

i enjoy this.

VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip

"Hope will never be silent." - Harvey Milk

Well, I finally made myself watch the film Milk tonight. I was dreading it as I remember dreading Boys Don't Cry and The Laramie Project a few years back. Certain life stories just hit too close to home - they don't just dig at my heartstrings, they challenge me to figure out who I really am, how I feel about that, and what I'm going to do with that. Certain life stories force me to not accept this world, for I learn from them that there just has to be a better world out there. Life stories such as Brandon Teena, Matt Shepard, and Harvey Milk snap me out of every single minute complaint about my daily life - and they show me that what I see as a small part of my identity is, in fact, a common bond to greatness.

My struggles feel so small and so common, yet tragic and earned just the same. I hope that someday, everyone I talk to will have seen these tremendous films - they're a good place to start.

funky.

i love it.

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two things

one: found this new blog, aimed at gathering the stories of the pro-choice population. no apologies, just honest opinions and stories. check it out, and think about emailing them to add your story! http://intercessorsforchoice.blogspot.com/

two: idol. i haven't been blogging much lately, and that's in part because of having a full-time job, but mostly because of idol. usually the obsession skips a year (as it did from ace to jason), but i'm moving right from jason into adam. it's pretty sad how much i enjoy the show, and even more how i look forward to his performances. i already posted the video for "mad world," but following this entry, i'll post one of my favorites. "play that funky music"... nice. finally he started dancing a bit, and it's upbeat enough for me to listen to on the way to and from work most days. i'll probably update more on idol after the top 5 becomes 4, assuming the person i can't stand goes home.

i'll write more about this soon...

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umm why had i not seen THIS before now?

growing

Traumatic experiences really baffle me. It's not just the experience that confuses and ruins me, but how we grow and learn from it. My problem is holding on. I can hold onto the hurt and pain of a situation for eternity. We remember the sounds, sights, and noises of everything about those days. We remember the feelings, both hopeful and tragic, and everything we said. Maybe that's part of the pain, but for me it's starting to be part of the purely exhausting joy of moving on. The ability to remember -- albeit a burden -- is the only way I know to start to release the pain. First gather, then let go. Hold and release. We don't want to forget what happened -- but we want to remember how it feels to once again be in a good place. To look at our futures and grab on tight. Abuse changes a person so deeply -- their innermost childish memories somehow seem clouded. Three, twelve, sixteen, twenty years old -- at some point we were no longer children, but innocent enough to cry like we did as an infant.

my bedroom

over the past few years, i've grown fairly attached to my bedrooms. i've had a different one each year, and decorated each of them immediately. below, the order is: sophomore year, junior year, senior year, goshen, minnesota, goshen.