Dear Hannah,
You’re right – you will be okay… you will make it through all of this, and be the better for it, and even more so than you currently can imagine.
You can do it.
And it’s okay to be scared a bit, too, and to cry a lot… totally part of the whole process of turning into the person you want to be. 😉
Peace and Love be unto, from, and within you
Hannah of the future
Post-a-day 2019
What are you doing right now?
Can I play ukulele to you?
I’m feeling a bit lonesome and useless, and that would be a quality purpose
I considered guitar, but the strings really need to be replaced
Those were the messages I sent.
And then she called me…, and I played ukulele and sang to her, and we talked a bit afterward about some things, and it was great.
My mission was accomplished, and I felt so much more at ease than beforehand… service given, art made, purpose felt, love shared.
Friends are wonderful, even when they are all the way across the country.
🙂
P.S. I spoke briefly with a friend in D.C. earlier, and then this one in Oregon tonight… I really do span the country with my closest friends… it’s almost as though one must live farther away in order to deepen our friendship more. 😛
Post-a-day 2019
Well, I turned in that second paper for finals… it doesn’t feel very final, though.
I wonder if it’s actually as bad a paper as I’m concerned that it is…
Post-a-day 2019
I feel that one of the most valuable things that school could give a student at the time of the education (that is, while in school) is relevance and immediate applicability.
As we have been reading various books on utopias and dystopias in one of my classes this semester, so much of it all has become relevant in my life within a very short time of its initial introduction.
The struggle one character has with God in this book, and how she finds change to be inevitable (and, therefore, God), applies to my life the week following my reading of it… I can relate to her struggle immediately, and then the change comes up in conversation and contemplation regarding my relationships with people in my life.
I think teachers, schools, curriculum planners aim to have books students read in school to be relevant to the students’ lives, but they often fall short of the mark… they miss the applicability of the ideas and actions somehow, and only assume that this specific struggle must be applicable to all students of this age… and it often isn’t.
From English class, we need concepts, ideas, brainstormed theories that we can learn to apply to any part of life…
For history class, a historical context would be only an enhancement of our understanding of what’s going on right now, what people are discussing from the news, and why it seems to matter so much… we hardly do more than regurgitate facts, and rarely know much about what they really were like or why it mattered to people who lived it (and therefore why it might matter to us).
I today was learning of a book about a man struggling in Russia, and, as I heard the details, I knew it was around the 1920s…, because of the Russian refugees in season four of “Downton Abbey”… there was a story in which I could invest myself, and ideas to which I could relate and from which I could draw my own ideas and conclusions, and the history just kind of stuck with the affinity for the people in the story…
I interested myself with the French Revolution recently, because I discovered the wonder of the film “The Scarlett Pimpernel”… and I remember details about the revolution because of how they connect with the story of the film and its characters.
The actual history became relevant and immediately applicable for me, because of my investment in the film.
The same is so with my investment in “Downton Abbey”.
How could I possibly relate to the Russian refugees or to the French upper class, when I merely read some statements of facts, names, locations, dates, and a summed-up given political meaning to it all?
I guess that’s why I remember just about nothing from my history classes in school…
Perhaps it everybody needs this kind of education, but everyone certainly could benefit greatly from it, I dare say.
You know what I mean?
Post-a-day 2019
I’m part of a ladies group for my former job in Japan, and someone recently posted about how these old ladies always compliment her nostrils as being proportionate to her nose, and so she wonders if anyone else gets funny compliments from other Japanese people.
In a quick think through, I came up with this for my own experience:
I’m dirty blonde and blue-eyed. Students often complimented my ‘beautiful’ hair, asked to touch it and my arm hair, constantly complemented my ‘amazing’ and ‘beautiful’ ‘high nose’, and even, on occasion, discussed how ‘amazing’ my ‘soft breasts’* were (which, by the way, are proportionate to my body and are a small B cup for US sizing)…
Also, I once had a new student, who had just learned that my eyes are blue, specially request to see my eyes… he then gazed into them for a full thirty seconds, and then thanked me and walked away. 😂
*Because, naturally, they discovered that I was not wearing push-up or padded bras, and so, from the outside, my breasts were ‘soft’ and not ‘hard’, like their extremely padded bras…, which they explained to me by tapping loudly on their own surprisingly solid bras…
Oh, Japan…
I do miss you… ❤
Post-a-day 2019
How am I doing, she asks?
I’m doing okay, I think. Dealing with a school mental struggle of being tired of it and not wanting to do semi-pointless work (i.e. work that serves no value whatsoever in why I am getting the degree). I got sick, too, and so that aligned interestingly perfectly with the assignments, and so they are excused from being late. I still don’t want to do them, though. Life has become so interesting outside of school recently, it makes me want to take a big break from school, possibly permanently. But mostly because ‘I don’t Feel like it(!)’, and I’m not sure if it really has anything else behind it. Laziness might just be all there is in the matter, ultimately.
That’s the just bulk of my daylight hours… evenings and nights are a whole ‘nother conundrum these days. 😛
How are you doing?
Post-a-day 2019
I have schoolwork that I need to do tomorrow and Tuesday, but I find myself already feeling that old dreaded feeling of Sunday night at the end of Spring Break in middle and high school… I don’t want to go back to school tomorrow…. Mommy, can I just not go to school tomorrow?
Obviously, she always declined, but I never truly meant it – some part of me always wanted to go back… I just didn’t necessarily have all the work finished by Sunday evening, and so really just didn’t want to do the work I needed to have done by class the next morning… much like this time… 😛
Life has offered me so many awesome things this past week, and I’ve grown so accustomed to them – and quite easily, I dare add – that I don’t want to go back to that other routine from before Spring Break…
A small part of me is saying that things will be good once I’m back to it, and that it is only tough because this has been such a good break, and that even the break would turn bad, if it didn’t have an end, and that, at that point, I would start to long for my previous schedule of school and work…
But the key word up there is “small”.
And so, I feel like curling up into my bed with my stuffed animals – duh – and ignoring morning tomorrow, and sleeping in, instead… though, I know I’ll be up around eight or nine at the latest, desperately needing to go potty, and guilt is likely to settle in within me, if I try to avoid the day by going back to sleep. 😛
And so, (I say again) I think I’ll not bother figuring out anything right now… I’ll go to sleep and rest myself in all aspects for the night, and then see how I feel whenever I awaken… hopefully, I’ll be prima for going to a coffee shop to work, and then I actually do that, because I really do have a decent amount of schoolwork to do by Tuesday and Thursday evenings. (Yikes.)
Sweet Dreams, and Good Morning (to those across the planet right now from me)!
Post-a-day 2019
At this one school where I worked, it wasn’t that I felt unappreciated, because I didn’t…, but more that I felt unnoticed…, which, in a way, feels kind of way worse.
I remember finding myself fantasizing about receiving this particular award at the end of the school year – it was an award given to a teacher whom the senior class had elected as invaluable for their own educations… aka an extra-special teacher.
Since the students elected it, I had a chance of actually winning the award, though I had so few of the seniors, it wouldn’t happen, anyway.
Nonetheless, as I sat amongst the miniature version of the band during the senior awards ceremony, at which this teacher award also was awarded, I would ‘read aloud’ in my head the write-up they would give about me, before officially revealing my name… mentioning how I was involved in many areas of the school: dance PE class, teaching foreign language, helping with theatre on many levels, assistant coaching and co-founding the women’s lacrosse program, helping and participating in band events, actually playing trumpet in the band (including at this ceremony), founding of an acts of kindness group on campus, and much more in the unique realm of student interaction… and the kids would choose me for the award, because they acknowledged my utter awesome-ness and outstanding-ness as not only a person but a person who encourages and empowers them to be the best people they can be… I think no student who has known me would deny that fact.
My students know that I love them and that I want all the best for them, including if that means they need to suffer a bit to get themselves straightened out… they know and understand this all just from being with me in class or the various activities.
I take no nonsense, which they know, too, but my love and concern for them are unwavering and undeniable, and they know it.
I miss that.
And that is why I allowed myself to fantasize about receiving the award – if enough kids had known me, I could have won the award… if the administration ever would have allowed my winning it, of course. 😛
Anyway… yeah.
P.S. Tomorrow holds something new for me, in a sense…, if you feel up to it, I would appreciate your sending good intentions and/or prayers my way. 😉
Post-a-day 2019
I pulled out my guitar tonight and played.
I had thought that it had been maybe a month or so since I last played, and then another couple weeks or few since I had been playing regularly.
However…, I did some calculations and checking (mainly here), and discovered that I have played my guitar a maximum of a handful of times since September, the most recent one being in December…
It’s mid-March right now.
That means that I was absurdly off on my passive calculations, and it has actually been almost half a year since I played guitar regularly, and only a max of five occasions in there – though, probably more like three – have found me playing it for, say, ten minutes.
Granted, I have played a bit of ukulele since then, but that has been rather sparse, too… and my last regular playing of ukulele on the daily was actually a year ago.
I did a while of playing/making music every day for myself, no matter what, back in early Fall, but I somehow stopped…, which I usually don’t do, when I come up with something like that… (I’m thinking I reached my goal of 40 days, or else I hit moving and the absurdity that was involved with that, and so I didn’t have any instruments with me for a while, and was too distracted and exhausted by everything else either to notice or to bother with it, if I did notice.)
Part of it is as I have known for years: If I don’t have the guitar out (e.g. on a stand, from which I need only to pick up the waiting guitar in order to play it), I end up rarely playing, with the reverse being true, also – if the guitar is out, I will play it often.
Another part of it is that I miss my other guitars, and somehow feel something like being unfair to them, or like I have abandoned them, and therefore am cautious about spending too much time and energy with the Japan guitar I have with me.
Granted, the idea is totally absurd… however, that in no way changes the fact that I am experiencing it.
So, I sent a message a bit ago to the person who took temporary charge of my guitars when I moved to Japan.
He lives here in Houston, but is gone during the school year, so I might have to wait for summer… hopefully, though, his spring break will be the same as mine, and we’ll get to have coffee and then go pick up my guitars from his home, to take them to my new home.
And maybe I’ll get to pet his family cat then, too.
(On a related note, I have been missing my cat all evening, yet also totally not missing having a cat – I love animals; I just don’t want to live with any right now. I mean, let’s be real, I think this raccoon is enough for the time being.) 😛
Anyway… I played parts of two Shake Russell songs tonight, and they both were awesome.
The guitar totally needs new strings, but that is for another day’s/night’s tasks – for now, it has done its job of getting me strumming around and creating music again. 🙂
I’m hoping that, while with family tomorrow, my uncle will play some Shake Russell songs with me, since we often all end up doing music stuff, anyway, when together, and our families (my mom’s and her sister’s) love Shake Russell music.
Okay, I’m stopping now, before I continue on to talk about how I love Shake Russell’s concerts, where here are only sixty-ish people, and how that’s my kind of concert, and how Japan was like that at times, too, and now I’m suddenly super sentimental, and tears this and tears that, another hour has passed, and I’m still not asleep in bed. 😛
Therefore, I bid you wonderful nights and days and mornings and evenings and everything in between. ❤
Peace
Hannah
P.S. (Aha!) I’ve remembered: I stopped the daily music because it was something I was aiming to do daily, but not something I’d committed to doing daily… it is a small distinction between the two, but it is important to note – life got busy, and I opted for sleep over music… …, but I didn’t break my word on anything there. 🙂 (Phew!)
Post-a-day 2019
In middle school, a friend of mine introduced me to a friend of hers one day, and I somehow ended up invited to that friend’s birthday party, which was, I believe, the upcoming weekend.
I knew very little about this girl, but I got her some kind of present and showed up to the party.
At the party, I knew few people, but really, really hit it off with the birthday girl – we created our own no-hands cake-eating contest (just the two of us, while everyone watched), and, because we were having such a good time together, turned the birthday party into a birthday slumber party, having girls call their parents (or check with them as they arrived originally to pick up their daughter) to request staying and having a change of clothes delivered.
During the slumber portion of the evening, when everyone was splayed across the TV room floor in sleeping bags and pallets, and the version of “When Harry Met Sally” that has the miniature interviews with old couples interspersed through the film (and therefore adds an extra hour or more to the run-time) was playing, the birthday girl and I were snuggled right next to one another.
I remember my hair being wet still, because we had also turned the party into a swimming party earlier on, and I had swum in borrowed clothes.
Anyway, she and I were watching the movie and chatting with one another off and on, when we came to the topic of being ticklish.
Neither one of us had much of any resistance to being tickled, but we both had the desire to be able to resist the way other people we knew could – mostly people with lots of siblings.
I had (and have) many siblings, so I felt like I was missing out on this special skill that people with siblings seem to have.
And so, by reasoning that it must be a matter of having been conditioned that allowed these people to resist, we agreed to test out our own conditioning.
Therefore, dozing off during the film, we both slowly and gently ran our fingers back and forth across one another’s feet bottoms (yes, the soles), so that we each could practice deep breathing and calming ourselves in the face of being tickled.
Fast forward to today, and I can tell you that our night of tickling practice paid off – most people have no idea that I am at all ticklish (this includes, of course, all the people who actually tickle me – I’m not just saying it because people don’t try or anything).
I can’t resist forever, but I still have a solid thirty seconds to a minute or so that I can resist quite well, even when the tickling is intense.
When the acrobats were hanging with us, we all had a tickle fight (because what’s the point of giving up tickle fights amongst friends, just because we’re adults?)… almost every attempt to send me into crying giggles failed, due to my power of resistance – vive la résistance! – but our fingers grew sore from jabbing at what felt like concrete or brick walls, because the extremely muscled abdomens of the acrobats were also extremely ticklish.
(This went in many different directions… now, back to my original concept with the instant friend in middle school.)
And so, years later, I still recall Sayrah, the girl who became my instant friend that one week in middle school, just about every time I consider a no-hands food-eating contest or event or when I consider my awesome skill at resisting being tickled.
***As a quick note, I totally can be tickled like crazy, and I willingly give in to it instantly when I’m in the mood for a good and deep laughing fit, but it’s nice to be able not to have those when I really just want to be a rock of calm. 😛
Anyway, I miss having that, instant friends… we even mentioned that tonight, missing the social aspect of school, where you get to be surrounded by people of similar age and intelligence at least five days a week, and friends kind of abound… adulting is tough in that respect…
Post-a-day 2019
hannah ananas 