time capsule

found this while searching to no avail through the bowels of one of my email accounts for something or other.

one of the dean's at UW pointed this out to me before i graduated, and i in turn emailed it to all of my friends.

i'm posting it here to remind myself of something i so often and easily forget: perspective.

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

note: i'm feeling particularly whiny tonight

so i've decided that this entire semester has pretty much been finals week. at least it feels like it has.

where have the weekends gone? where have those long, lovely days of taking long drives out to the coast, or going to the lake for a picnic, or reading a book that had absolutely nothing to do with legal ethics, gone?!

i want them baaaack!

yes, i'm whiny. and yes, it irritates me as well.

*sigh* i know, i know, i really shouldn't complain. i mean, aren't i really lucky to be where i am right now? how many kids from tiny villages on the big island of hawaii (where you're more likely to get addicted to crack or pregnant than you are to go to college) can say that they're almost at the end of the dark tunnel known as law school? how can i possibly complain that i got to go to high school at a very rich private school for free, got to go to college at the university of washington (which, for out-of-staters isn't exactly small potatoes), got to study abroad, and then got to go to law school on full scholarship?!

where do i get off complaining?



but seriously? i want those days baaaaaaaack!!!

okay, okay, okay, i'm done with that mess for the night. i'm lucky. i'm lucky. i'm lucky....

so being the lucky girl that i am, i've been working pretty much all weekend, in case it wasn't obvious by the whinage. i have a legal ethics presentation to give on tuesday on the ethical dilemmas facing in-house counsel. it's both frustratingly complicated, and outrageously boring in equal parts. i want to just add that professional responsibility is not a joke in the legal field, despite what it may seem like. proof? i've also been spending my weekend studying for the MPRE (multistate professional responsibility exam), which is sort of part of the bar in california. i totally don't think i'd have to do this if i were taking the bar in washington, but that's neither here nor there at this point. the exam's in 2 weeks (count 'em, TWO) and this saturday was the first time i actually spent some meaningful hours studying. unfortunately, as a result of being inundated with all this ethical crap (haha), i have NOT finished my memo for work on sovereign immunity, nor have i read a thing for fed. indian law tomorrow, NOR have i finished reading my depositions for trial practice!

i know i say this a lot? (yes, i meant to make that sound like a question. isn't that so high school?) but there is never enough time.

the best thing about this weekend? i purchased albums from both Fair and City & Colour. go buy them. right now, drop everything you are doing, run to your nearest borders (i'm a borders nut, don't really like barnes for some weird reason), and buy them. soooo good.

i've been trying to come up with a playlist that has my favorite mellow-introvertish-i-don't-want-to-call-it-depressing-because-it's-not songs on it (inspired by, and in response to, a fellow blogger who published a great list herself), but haven't had time. and i also feel that if i playlist those songs (did i just turn "playlist" into a verb?), then i should also playlist my favorite up-beat-listen-to-while-i'm-cleaning happy songs. and i definitely haven't had time for that. so alas, they'll have to wait for a bit. but go get Fair and City & Colour! i'm a fan!

oh, and finally i guess, i think i just had a complete blonde moment today. like, more so than any other day when i'm totally not with it. i was talking to a friend today and she mentioned how her favorite thing about the twilight books is how they model classical pieces of literature. now, i realized while reading the books that the characters often talked about the classics and critiqued the actions of those literary heroes or villains, etc., but i guess i just never realized that it was an overarching theme. it sort of makes the books cooler for me. so can someone tell me what the first book was? for twilight? because new moon = romeo and juliet, eclipse = wuthering heights, and i think breaking dawn = merchant of venice and midsummer night's dream. anyway, that was just a random thought.

is it just me or did i use an inordinate amount of parentheses in this post?

i want to be brave

i feel like my life has turned into little pockets of time.

last week was such a big blur. emotional upheaval. traumatic roller-coaster. inevitably tragic. every single aspect of my life was in limbo. i felt lost and weak and pointless and so very, very tired of trying to hold it all together. i just wanted to escape. literally, figuratively, it didn't really matter to me one way or the other, as long as i was no longer me, living my life in my body.

i obviously don't deal well with...anything really. i have some theories on this.

when i was in the 10th grade, i went through what i guess was my first bout of the crazies. not really. a lot of big changes were happening in my life, and i wanted none of it. i felt like parts of my life were falling apart, no matter what i did to prevent it. so i tried to do stupid things to forget what was happening. stupid, teenage crap. my teachers and dorm advisors eventually intervened, got in touch with school counselors, who got in touch with my parents, who got in touch with professional counselors. and i got help. i remember my first session with my therapist. he left me waiting in his office for him for like, fifteen minutes, and as i was looking around, i noticed he had this huge wall of toys. now, i was 14 at the time, so toys weren't really supposed to interest me, but i figured since he left me in there to fend for myself i could do one of two things: bawl my eyes out as I'd been doing for the passed six months, or go over and investigate the toys. i ended up making a farm. i had the barn, barnyard, animals, and white picket fence. when my therapist came back in, he wanted to talk about what i'd created. he asked me where all the people were and i told him there were none (obviously). he asked why. i think i replied, very calmly and seriously, and with all the wisdom of a teenager, "because people just mess everything up."

that was when we began working on my issues of stability and control. up until that point, my life had always been relatively stable. my parents got divorced, but they still remained really close friends and we all did things as a family so that my sisters and i wouldn't feel the loss of the separation as much. my mom was engaged to a great guy who i loved. my grandparents were like second parents to me. my sisters were my best friends and were never too far away, despite the fact that i didn't live at home (my older sister actually lived in my dorm with me). i had great friends at boarding school, good grades. a relatively stable life.

then my mother's fiance was in an accident and life...stopped being life. a lot of other things happened around the same time (viscious fights with friends who were spreading sick rumors about me, my older sister leaving me for the first time to go off to college, my mother moving out of her house because she could no longer afford the rent, etc.), but that was the biggy.

my life changed. and i railed against it as hard as i could, with as much force as i had. but it changed anyway.

i slept all the time. i cried when i wasn't asleep. i spent my 15th birthday in the ICU watching a man in a coma and the life support that was keeping him alive. i tried to take control of my life in really, really unhealthy ways. and it just made everything worse.

so my therapist and i worked on getting me comfortable with change.

ever since then, i haven't had a problem with stability. it's almost the exact opposite, actually. i've become restless. i need things to change after a while or i feel suffocated. i'm not hard to satisfy externally, but i rarely satisfy myself. i want more. all the time, i want more and i want difference. i need to change. i can't be me all the time.

i feel like i'm always waiting for something better, always looking for something new. what i have is perfect...for a span of time. and then i remember all the things i want to do that i haven't done. and i'll need more.

not moving forward scares me. there are so many things i want to do that i'm afraid i'll never do if i stay the same person in the same place.

and at this point, i feel like i'm too scared to go out and get what it is i want. even if i knew what it was i wanted. and so i'm dealing with that fear. with not being brave.

i want to be brave.

and then there's the control. i feel like, because that time in my life was in such upheaval, and i had no control over it, i crave the control now. because the last thing i'll ever let happen is for me go back there, to find myself in that place again. i feel like i had no choice in what i was feeling back then, no way to stop it, no way to get over it. and i feel like it almost killed me.

so i learned my own personal survival skill: compartmentalizing. now, when things happen like what's happening with my grandfather and school and my feelings on my relationship, i compartmentalize. last week was so difficult for me because i was so out of control. and now that i've experienced it, let myself kind of go crazy for a little while, i can handle it better. i can put those feelings away in little pockets and deal with them in my own time. in my own way. i can think rationally about it, or not think about it at all.

and honestly, that is what's helping me get through the day at this point.

it's a bandaid. i realize that. but at least it stops the bleeding.


so i guess that's my roundabout way of saying that i feel better. that, at least for tonight, i feel in control of myself. maybe not my life, but myself. for now.

i'll figure out my life soon.
i'm taking it a step at a time.





i'm currently reading "eat, pray, love" which may either be a really good idea, or a really bad idea. we'll see.

blog love

so the ever-wonderful ashley over at writingtoreachyou has passed on some blog love to me, and i'm just going to keep it rollin' in the hopes that even more people will feel special too! thing is, i think i'm supposed to pass it on to 10 more bloggers that i enjoy, but i just haven't worked up to reading that many yet! so until then, let me send this:

out to: the artist in the ambulance, isn't she pretty in pink, goodminton, and of course, writing to reach you.

today's obsession

my favorite.

so i actually finished this book almost two weeks ago and have just been rereading and...digesting it, i guess. i've had to. i can't let go yet! it's the last one and it was perfect! i still have it in front of me on my desk, just in case i want to take a mental break and go through it. truth is that this book has been helping me through a rather rough time; every time i need my brain to stop thinking about whatever it is it can't stop thinking about, i would grab this book and find one of my many favorite sections, then read on from there until i was okay again.

so here are my thoughts:

though i've loved this series, i'm going to admit that i've had a slight issue with bella ever since the beginning. it's not that i disliked her character at all. i thought she was very 17, and endearing to a point as well. but it was her absolute lack of self-preservation when it came to edward that (though completely understandable) grated on my nerves sometimes. i mean, the obsession was one thing (again, completely understandable), but when he left, and came back again, she was just...waiting there for him. and it's just not the type of person i am or care for. you can obviously see that i've had trouble getting over "new moon".

BUT, in this book, bella redeems the hell out of herself!

vamp bella kicks ass. i thought that stephenie meyer did a great job of showing how bella was really meant to be in that lifestyle. her character just...really came into her own after the conversion. and once the conversion took place, the only flaw i ever found with edward (his way too overprotective, we're-doing-this-my-way-you-dim-witted-female tendencies) vanished! he's perfect again! and they're great together! i was so happy that they could finally be happy, after all the non-happy moments in the rest of the books! and can we just take a minute to say how absolutely about-time fabulous it is that they could finally get it on without the threat of apocalypse?

it even made up for the fact that their child was named renesmee.

*sigh*

as for the child. i have to admit that i was a tiny bit disappointed with the pregnancy. not that it wasn't predictable. and i guess it's not that they're too young (come on, the were on the clock at that point!). so i don't really know why i didn't necessarily want the kid to arrive. but as it turns out, it didn't bug me as much once she was there. i liked that she gave edward an "out" to having to kill bella, because i feel like that would have tarnished the morality of the edward i've gotten to know in the books. and renesmee gave bella a center, i feel. it made her automatically a stronger, older woman. and that was refreshing.

i have no opinion on the imprinting shinanigans. honestly, it rates rather low on the how-much-i-care radar. i care about bella and edward. jake is peripheral. but speaking of jake, i LOVED the blonde jokes for rosalie. especially the one about the golden retriever. i've actually already told to it someone. hilariousness.

and as for alice. *another sigh*. i have a girl crush on alice, so when she left it broke my heart. i knew she and jasper were coming back (really, did anyone not know that?), but i was a bit miffed about what it did to the image of her character until her last minute entrance.

speaking of. now, apparently, some people were put off that there wasn't some huge bloody vamp massacre at the end of the series. like the deep breath before a jump that will never happen. i, on the other hand, very much preferred this. i liked the fact that it was possibly the longest, most drawn-out build-up to a war that never happens since lord of the rings. i almost cried with the birage of good-byes that went on, and felt so sad when bella and edward prepared to say good-bye to renesmee and jacob. i liked that it was an out-smarting rather than an...out-strengthening?...that won the day.

and at the end of the day? the last 2 pages? my absolute favorite scene.

it ended as well as it began, i think.

i guess it's time to start all over again. lol.

you have my attention

it's been a really, really bad week.

bad month.
bad semester.
bad year.

i find myself in this place right now where my life, and i know i've said this before, but my life is a mess. and i don't know that it really is, but i feel like it is. i feel like nothing's where i want it or need it to be. i'm not going in the directions i want or need to be going. i feel like i made some bad choice somewhere along the way and have lost sight of who i am and what i want to do.

and i know a lot of this is grief. my grandfather is in the hospital again. this would be in addition to the time i wrote about it my previous post. this makes it three times in the last month. his body is just...shutting down. his heart rate is slower. that's what really scares me. a slower heart beat. slow it down enough...

so i know that so much of what i'm feeling right now and what i'm going through is grief and anger and helplessness and homesickness and fear. and i know it's only going to get worse. over the next couple of months, my life is going to be a wreck. i'm going to be a wreck.

and i'll throw myself into my bad habits again because they make me feel like i can NOT care and be fine. i found myself thinking about that yesterday. about how i was wishing i had really bad habits, or that i could restart old bad habits. i want my tattoo this weekend. i wish i was a smoker. i wish i drank excessively. i wish i stayed out late and did stupid things. i wish i could blow off school and sleep in till noon. and a few other bad habits that are just a bit too graphic and personal for me to discuss even here.

but i won't do those things. well, not all of those things.

i just wish i could. because my life feels like one big spiral right now, and it's getting away from me. i want to take some of that control back and i don't know how, nor do i know if i would be brave enough to do it even if i knew how.

what were my bad choices? where did i go wrong? where did i lose sight of myself? is this the lesson i'm supposed to be learning?

i worry that what's happening to my grandfather, and the way it's making my life seem so...not my own...is taking its toll on all other aspects of my life.

or if it's just forcing me to acknowledge what was already there. that's a scarier thought though.


sorry, this was so convoluted.
at least it'll give you a good look at where my head's at right now.

and because it's been on repeat lately and i am in complete awe:

Copeland - You Have My Attention

Quiet now.
Your voice seems miles away
but somehow I hear your song resound
A little bit softer each day
And from my tired heart, a little bit farther away.

I’ll sing along
The whole day through.
Just do your best to hear me.
It’s all you can do.

You have my attention
Like you’ve had all the while,
Since that first day when you made my heart smile,
With loving eyes and tired sighs that follow.
You have my attention
Like a shout through an empty sanctuary.
Speak but a whisper;
I’ll hear a sermon

I’ll sing along
the whole day through.
Just do your best to hear me.
It’s all you can do.

I’ll sing along
the whole night through.
While you sleep safely,
I’ll be thinking about you.

You have my attention.

music genius

another amazing playlist from K. for new moon.

- surrogate – 15 (before party)
- cursive - some red handed slight of hand (birthday party)
- coldplay – trouble (drive home)
- death cab for cutie - brothers on a hotel bed (later in her room)
- circa survive - in fear and faith (talking in the forest)
- the shins - split needles (he leaves her)
- the juliana theory - as it stands (as if he never existed)
- moby - guitar flute and string (the empty months)
- thom yorke - the eraser (hearing his voice)
- fair – unglued (driving around freaking out, seeing the bikes)
- city & colour - waiting... (jacob)
- barcelona - first floor people (the empty cullen house)
- far-less - a thin line (riding motorcycles)
- sia - breathe me (visiting the meadow)
- thrice - the lion and the wolf (laurent)
- copeland - should you return (thinking she'll die in the meadow)
- the juliana theory - emotion is dead pt. 1 (dreaming of wolves)
- the early november - figure it out (might be falling for jake)
- 30 seconds to mars - from yesterday (cliff jumping)
- secret & whisper - anchors (acoustic) (drowning)
- city & colour - sensible heart (thinking about paris and romeo)
- starsailor - tie up my hands (seeing alice and kissing jake)
- moneen - closing my eyes won't help me leave (edward's call)
- the receiving end of sirens - planning a prison break (off to italy)
- muse - apocalypse please (reunion, and the volturi)
- keane - atlantic (return to forks)
- band of horses - no one's gonna love you (the truth)

my favs: coldplay, death cab, the juliana theory, moby, fair, barcelona, thrice, 30 seconds to mars, secret & whisper, city & colour, muse, band of horses

look after you

my grandfather's in the hospital again. second time in one month. and i feel lost. it's so hard to be so far away when so much is going wrong.

i know that at a certain point i have to face reality. he won't be around forever. and the years seem to be getting shorter and shorter as we go.

but i just don't think i can deal with that. i don't know how. i don't know if it's possible. he's so much a part of my life and who i am. he helped to raise me. he's just as much of a parent to me as my actual parents are. what do i do when i no longer have that? how do i move on from that?

i don't deal with this kind of thing very well. my mind just won't. i hate being comforted because it makes the loss that much more real. i've always been that way. the hugs and apologies make me feel worse rather than better. they throw the situation in to such stark relief that all you can see is where you've been and not where you're going anymore. and i can feel myself working so hard to emotionally resign myself to the inevitable. to work around to acceptance before it happens. and i just can't.

i don't know what to do. he's so breakable. and he must be so tired.

and i'm so useless.

why are we always so useless when it matters most?

ummm...wow

Twilight HD Exclusive Trailer



ALSO, so the ever brilliant K. has made a twilight playlist that's about a million times better than the official soundtrack of the movie. i knew there were benefits to having friends who work at record labels and know music like the back of their hands...

enjoy!

- fair - grab your coat (arriving in forks)
- copeland - you have my attention (cafeteria)
- the juliana theory - trance (freaking out in bio)
- far-less - devil without a clue (van on black ice)
- doves - sea song (at first beach)
- muse - time is running out (trouble in port angeles)
- paloalto - breathe in (with him in port angeles)
- the fray - look after you (her room after day at the meadow)
- coldplay - shiver (meadow)
- sigur ros - viorar vel til loftarasa (lullaby)
- the receiving end of sirens - the war of all against all (baseball)
- linkin park - easier to run (escape from forks)
- radiohead - jigsaw falling into place (motel in arizona)
- oh, sleeper - vices like vipers (fight in ballet studio)
- mutemath - after we have left our homes (semi-consciousness)
- death cab for cutie - stable song (ending)

my personal favs are: fair, copeland, paloalto, the fray, and death cab. PERFECT.

101

1. It took me almost a week to come up with this list.
2. I would consider myself an animal rights activist.  I'm not a member of PETA though.  Yet.
   
3. I think my fingernails and toes are my best features.
4. I want to be a writer.  There, I said it!
   
5. I'm in the process of trying to kick a really bad Diet Coke habit.
   
6. I don’t know the parts of speech. I can actually remember the day in second grade when they were taught and I was absent.
7. I once heard someone say, "plagiarizing is sacrilegious."  My response?  Word.  Up.
   
8. I’ll stop conversations mid-sentence if my favorite line in a song is about to be sung.
9. I’m an OCD kind of organized person. But only with certain things. Like my desk, bookshelf, and the kitchen cabinets.
   
10. I want to be artsy and poetic and am just so not.
11. I read cheesy romance novels.
12. I like cheesy pop songs to go along with my cheesy romance novels.
13. I never learned to drive on freeways.
    
14. I want to live abroad again. Desperately.
15. I can't hang with racism, rudeness, and incompetency. I worry that it’s because I see those things in myself.
16. For most things I have the attention span of a 5-year-old girl. But I also have the stubborn streak of 70-year-old man, so it balances out quite nicely.
17. I’m painfully shy.
18. I’m more lyrical than I am musical.
19. I think indigenous peoples deserve all the special programs/benefits that they can get.
20. I’m really very silly. And excitable. It only gets worse with alcohol.
    
21. I own more sweatpants than jeans.  I see nothing wrong with that.
22. In my honest and seriously unbiased opinion my nephew is the cutest kid I have ever seen in my life.
23. It's hard for me to be dependent on anyone else. It makes me edgy.
24. I love rainstorms.  There's just something so clean about them.
    
25. I'm Portuguese, Native Hawaiian, Filipino, Spanish, Chinese and French.  People usually just think I'm Mexican.  Works for me.
26. I rarely get through arguments without crying. Which embarrasses me. Which makes me cry even more.
27. I had a pen pal in the 5th grade who asked me if I used a canoe to get to school. I think I told her yes.
28. One of my prized possessions is a poem my boyfriend wrote for me on our first anniversary that he put in a box filled with origami paper cranes.
29. I’m horribly indecisive. I can’t even decide what to eat for dinner most nights.
30. I get unbelievably infatuated with celebrities. Like, 14-year-old-girl-staring-at-a-Backstreet-Boys-poster kind of infatuated.
31. I wonder what happened to the boy I was obsessed with liked in high school. And I don’t always hope he’s doing well.
32. I hate beans, multiple choice exams, and public speaking.
33. I have to read the ending of books before I start them. I have to. It’s a sickness.
34. I often buy those big variety bags of candy just so I can pick out and eat the bite-sized Mr. Goodbars.
35. I have weight issues. I’ve pretty much been trying to lose 50lbs since I was ten years old.
36. I used to wear really thick glasses and was made fun of a lot.  Kids can be mean.
    
37. I think an entire half of my family are pastors. I grew up really Christian. And have fallen in love with a Buddhist.
38. In law school I specialized in federal Indian law. It's ridiculously interesting.
39. I reread books right after I finish them. I literally start them over again as soon as I finish the last page. I feel like they’re always better the second time around.
40. I'm a slippers (versus flip-flops) and soda (versus pop) kind of girl.
    
41. I’m vain about tan lines.
42. My mother has green eyes. So when I’m in an exceptionally good mood, my usually brown eyes turn a little green too.
43. I have a tattoo.  Will have 2 more soon.
44. I have no hand-eye-foot coordination. As a result, I can't really play sports and I'm not the best dancer you've ever seen.
45. Apologies make me cry.
46. I graduated from the University of Washington with a major no one understands.
47. I’m not as smart as people think I am. But I think I may be smarter than I think I am.
48. I want an iPhone like it's going out of style.
49. When I was a kid, I wanted to be Indiana Jones with breasts.
50. I’m a product of the *NSYNC generation. JC all the way.
51. I attended boarding school from age 12 until I graduated high school. I think it made me a private school snob.
52. The smell in bookstores and libraries makes my stomach ache. But I still want to own one. A bookstore, not a library.  Though that would be kind of cool too...
    
53. Hot coffee and hot chocolate also makes my stomach ache. I don't know why.
54. My best friend and I met for a week at "camp" in the 5th grade (though I'm not sure we ever spoke), then began living together in our 7th grade dorm.  We still talk every day.
    
55. In high school I was given "unlimited detention" for sneaking out of my dorm to go to a Britney Spears concert.  So.  Not. Worth it.
56. I’m deathly allergic to shellfish.
57. I have the memory of an elephant. It drives my boyfriend absolutely nuts most of the time.
58. I usually don't watch or read the news.  I hear about current affairs through word of mouth.
59. I'm terrible at calculating tips at restaurants.
60. Upon seeing Yosemite Valley in real life, my first words were, "Are you f**cking kidding me?!"  I still can't believe how beautiful it is.
61. I curse, sometimes a lot.  But never in front of my parents.
62. My magazine subscriptions: Women's Health, Sunset, Saveur, In Style.
63. I like country music and know the lyrics to most Garth Brooks songs.
64. Seattle is probably my favorite city.  I would love to live there again, but the boy can't deal with the gray.
65. Team Edward.
    
66. Is there such a thing as selective dyslexia?  Because if given a set of number, chances are I'll read/write them down backwards.
67. At age 25 I began developing a fear of commitment.  Says the girl going into year 6 of her relationship.
68. Kahea (short for Kahealani) is one of my middle names.  It means "call of heaven."
    
69. If it's a bad movie I probably already love it.
70. I don't eat lamb, duck, venison and veal because they're cute animals.  I wish I could stop eating beef, pork and chicken in general.
71. My dog probably hates your dog.  It's his one flaw.
72. I hate cold-calling people.  Even the pizza delivery place.
73. Retail therapy is my favorite kind, and I have the credit card debt to prove it.
74. My first concert ever was Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.  I was 9.
    
75. I absolutely cannot watch something if Tyra Banks is in it.
76. My fingers are double-jointed.  I'm not gonna lie, it's kind of gross.
    
77. I don't understand the obsession people have with Prince. It baffles me. He's a little man who sounds like a woman. Am I missing something?
78. My first "language" was Hawaiian Pidgin English. I still speak it when talking to family, and my mainland friends never understand a word I'm saying.
79. I love going to sporting events regardless of whether or not I like/understand the sport itself.
    
80. I think the Dos Equis guy really does seem like The Most Interesting Man in the World.  They're my favorite commercials.
    
81. I love to travel. I’ve been to Canada, Ireland, Northern Ireland, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Singapore so far. I get travel fever every 7 months or so.
82. I'm a sucker for accessories.  Earrings and necklaces preferred.
    
83. I cry when I listen to Death Cab’s “I Will Follow You into the Dark”. Every single time.
    
84. I believe that everything happens for a reason, though things may not necessarily be "meant to be".
85. I've never lived alone.
    
86. I hate The Daily Show.  I love The Colbert Report.
87. I think John Muir has written some of the most beautiful things I've ever read.
    
88. I quote lines from “My So-Called Life” in my head on a regular basis.
89. My boyfriend, his brother (his ex-girlfriend), their cousin, my last piano teacher, my childhood friends' grandmother and I all have the same birthday, different years. It's okay, I know it's weird.
    
90. I rearrange my furniture every five months or so. I can’t stand when things stay the same too long.
91. I have a bracelet I've worn every single day since I was 18.  In that time, I think I've taken it off for probably less than an hour, total.
    
92. I often think of Coldplay as the soundtrack of my life.
93. I tend to be an introvert, but I love friendly people and am usually really friendly as well. I want people to feel as comfortable as I can make them.
94. I love ghost stories.  I watch all of those paranormal TV shows too.  But I hate horror movies with a deep, burning passion.
95. I like going to places I've read about in novels.  I've planned entire trips with this in mind.
96. I don't own any lipstick.
97. I’m often told to stop trying to please everyone.
98. Fall-going-into-winter is hands down my favorite time of year.  I'm pretty much giddy during the stretch between Halloween and Christmas.
99. Those in the know have developed the ability to make me feel bad for inanimate objects.  Like the broom.  Or a sock.  Apparently, my bleeding heart doesn't discriminate. 
100. I'm really bad about procrastinating.  If it were a sport, I'd be the world champ.
     
101. I’m extremely surprised that I was able to think of 101 things about myself. It’s difficult to be this honest sometimes.

today's obsession

feels like a set-up book, and didn't make me particularly happy, but just as interesting and important as the other books.

we're going to start this off by saying whose "team" i'm on, since that will probably influence the way i felt about the book, and hence my review. i'm on team edward. as i told K., i'm probably the head friggin cheerleader of team edward. that does not, however, mean that i dislike jacob. in fact, i kind of like him. not for bella, but still. lets just make that clear.

so i think i'm going to tackle this review by discussing what issues i had with the book. the first being that it goes against the grain for me that edward constantly thinks he knows what's best for bella. he was just so overprotective of her throughout the first half of the book. it irritated me. he rarely gave her choices, and in fact told her that she had no choices in a lot of situations. i wanted to punch him. and then i wanted to cheer for bella when she would do things like go to la push when edward was out of town. and i reveled when she came back and had to deal with a pissed off edward because it was like a slap in the face for him. (though there are some great bella/edward moments that i definitely reread a few times).

my second issue, which may seem to be in stark contrast to my attitude regarding edward in the previous section, is with bella and jacob being soulmates. eeew. i hated what she put edward through. i hated that she tried to have it both ways. i mean, i understand that, if given a choice, she would never have put any of them through any of it, and that she probably would have backed away from jacob before their friendship ever took of, but i think she should have had a little more sense once it was apparent how jacob felt (though if she could do that, the whole "soulmates" theory would have been trashed, i guess). i really hated when bella, edward, and jacob were up on the mountainside and jacob had to play "space heater" for bella. it was wrong. to be fair, edward's self-sacrificing was part of the problem, but still. i didn't like the fact that jacob made it so difficult for bella throughout the book by constantly throwing himself in her face. at a certain point, i feel like he should have just respected her feelings for edward, much like edward, in the end, respected her feelings for jacob.

now, what i liked. i loved that we got more of a glimpse into alice and jaspers lives. alice is one of my favorite characters, and jasper has always been slightly mysterious, so i really enjoyed them getting their spotlights. in particular, when she helped him with the training scene, and we got to see just how powerful her gift could be in a practical sense. i loved when a truce, however tenuous, was struck between the pack and the cullens. it was about damn time. and i am obviously thrilled that victoria is out of the picture. although to be honest she seemed like a very cardboard villain. she just never seemed to be as big a threat as they all made her out to be. i did enjoy the "big confrontation" in this book though, with the newborns and the attack in the clearing. even though we weren't able to be present at the attack, it kept me really interested through that entire section. i know that a lot of people were somewhat bored with the background info on newborns, etc., but i appreciated it, both because again it gave us a glimpse at jasper, and because i always like a good "set-up" book, since it has me on edge anticipating the next book to come.

and finally, i loved that, though there's the elephant of jacob and his soulmate status in the room, bella's choice is edward. the self-sacrificy aspect of it all got somewhat tedious, but if i love nothing else, it's a couple willing to go to the extremes for one another. i read some review where someone said she was annoying in her love for him. and it's almost true. but i feel like, for those of us who are rooting for bella and edward, that's the only thing saving us from throwing this book against the nearest wall. if bella wasn't so completely and visibly obsessed with edward, then there really would be reason to doubt that they belonged together.

and that just cannot happen.

alright, enough cheesy-ness for now!

weekend in review

took a short trip to seattle this passed weekend and miss it more now then ever. i always forget how green washington is. when you fly out of oakland, every piece of land you see that isn't covered in cement is a yellowish-brown. then when you fly into sea-tac, everything that isn't covered in cement is trees. and things are starting to change color there, so its extra-beautiful. fall is my favorite time of year. it just makes me want to bundle up, walk in boots over wet, reflective sidewalks to the nearest starbucks and get a pumpkin spice latte that i probably won't drink. i just like the smell of it.

it was weird being back in the udistrict though. as we drove through (heading to hawaiian bbq - woo!), i realized that i'm older than practically everyone i saw! and it was sad in a way, because for the most part, none of my friends really lived in the udistrict any more. areas around university districts are so transient. you'll never be able to come back in ten years and think, "hey, my friend joe schmoe lives there," because the fact is that there have probably been dozens of kids who have lived there after joe.

and seattle, on a rainy night, can seem oddly lonely too. not a bad lonely, just...lonely.

visiting also made me think of how people change, and don't change, at the same time. for example, i haven't seen my freshman/sophomore roommate kina since i moved down to the bay two and half years ago. and yet, it's like we've talked every day the whole time. i mean, give or take the fact that we're catching each other up on our lives. and i got to see anthony, kina's fiance, and another of my first washington-friends. we hugged and it was like being enveloped in a big brother.

i saw other friends too, of course. my junior/senior roommate will be moving down to the bay this weekend, so there's no real reason to miss her. but it's still stunning to realize that she's getting married soon. she has this amazingly beautiful wedding dress (and i'm picky about what wedding dresses i find pretty), that she's going to wear with these awesome red peep-toes. she has her wedding planned out and i feel so out of touch with everything. we talked about her best friend (who happens to be one of mine as well) and the fact that i know next to nothing about that girls life anymore. i can't even remember that last time we talked. there was just a...losing touch...that happened. it made me so sad.

and i saw one of my best friends from back home who's moved up there and has this new, amazing life working for an indie record label and being friends with interesting people and band members, etc. sometimes i feel so out of touch with her life as well. like we have so little in common anymore. but there are ties there that i refuse to let sever. she's been in my life too long to ever let her be out of it, you know?

i guess i've realized that the changes in myself i didn't see happening were happening just the same. for example, this passed summer, one of the quints got married, so it was the first time we all got together since graduation night of highschool. and these girls - women, now - are my best friends. absolute rocks in my life. one in particular. and yet, we have to work to keep the conversations going and to find things to talk about. it was so unnerving that i actually had to bring it up with them so we could talk about the awkwardness. i'd never felt that before, but then again, i hadn't seen them since i was 18. so this is sort of how it felt a little this passed weekend. and M. is the one to point out that it's because we've changed so much. so much.

it was sad to realize. but nice too, because we were still there, trying to meet on common ground. trying to find something to discuss the way we used to discuss the most trivial things. it's reassuring to know that we value each other that much.

on that note, my mom did me a HUGE favor this passed weekend and rummaged through storage to find some of my things from high school. she's sent me my yearbook from senior year, complete with signatures and goodbye notes. and she found my diaries. OMG. the diaries of a 16 year old! it's incredible how hard and wonderful at the same time it is to read these thoughts. we're so invincible at 16. so sure and unsure of ourselves at the same time. so confident in our friends, and so engrossed in our little intrigues. and it's just interesting to read what i wrote when i was that girl.

The sky is so beautiful right now. The lights of the island end so quickly, then the horizon goes from red to pink to orange and yellow before fading into a light blue. The mountains are so darkly silhouetted against that yellow. Then it's nothing but a cloudless dark blue expanse with a crescent moon and the north star accessorizing such a beautiful night. Definitely one of the prettiest nights of the year. Far to pretty for me to feel so...discontent. - Oct. 29. 2000

What exactly is destiny? I mean, do we really control our own? Because if we do, then how can we be "meant to be" with one person? How do you know that this one person is...your destiny? Does that mean that all your life you were just waiting for them? All the while you were feeling so strongly about other people, were you really just waiting for someone better to walk into your life? - Nov. 28, 2000

i'm not going to lie. the diaries from my junior and senior year are full of a boy. but i have a feeling that's not atypical. it's just so entertaining/embarrassing to see what i put myself through over something so...not real. i wasn't an adult and i thought i was. i wasn't mature and i thought i was. but i think the funniest and scariest thing of all is that the person that 17 year old was isn't as far as the person i am now thought she was. i can still see myself. i still do some of the same things. and now, years later, i can look at what i did and see patterns, see myself and my habits forming. see my defense mechanisms refining and my ideas on life and love taking shape.

it's an educational experience to realize that you've grown up, but not so much that who you are is a stranger to who you were.

i have this favorite line from "jane austen's book club" that i always think about when i think about those years. it's when prudie and her husband are fighting in their hotel room because she thinks he was flirting with her high school nemesis. and she tells him that this woman was terrible to her in high school. and he says that high schools over. and she just looks at him, crying, and says "high schools never over."

so true in some ways. and i'm so glad it's not true in so many others.