This is a Blog Post!

My little sister recently remarked on her blog about how she'd been neglecting updating the thing, especially in regards to an awesome experience that she had in Africa... It made me look at my post history, & realize that I have 3 entries for 2011 and only 1 for 2012. None at all for 2013, & it's almost over. Why is that? Why haven't I been writing about the many adventures that have happened to me in the past 2 years? Grad school played a huge role in that, but I graduated almost a year ago. I can't say that nothing exciting or worth mentioning has happened to me, either, because in the past 2 years I got engaged, married, graduated from my master's program, pregnant, & we moved from Utah to Washington. So, plenty of big lifetime events, but nary a post to be found... Surely I could have come up with a monthly highlight at the very least... But, alas, it seems my writing well has dried up and withered in midday sun. I think the reason why I've seemingly abandoned this form of communication is that... my writing style and the thought process that I put into a blog post has changed. & there was this big part of me that thought that I should try to keep emulating those early entries of 'deep' self-reflection with allusions towards economics, along with a clever quote to start each entry.

Well, here's an idea:

I don't have to do that anymore.

Phew! Glad I finally got myself to accept that! The thing is, I don't have to be the same person now, in late 2013, as I was in Spring 2008. Back then, I was struggling with typical college-woes regarding dating, general communication, and frustration with... um, stuff... Right now, I feel like I have a great, solid life; great husband, good area, no school stress, & a baby girl coming home for Christmas. No one will grade me on any of these posts, & it was silly to have that internal attitude even when I started. I don't even have to do the grammatically correct thing of not starting sentences with "and" or "but". & that's perfectly okay. But there's still the hurdle of all the big events that I missed reliving on here at a date closer to when they happened than this moment. Take a deep breath--- I don't have to write about any of them. Aaaaah.... that feels nice. Playing catch-up is daunting and often tedious, & the number one reason (probably) that I didn't update for so long. Can you blame a girl for not wanting to take time out of wedding planning, honeymooning, and the mad scramble to hopefully actually pass all of her classes and be able to graduate from the most difficult 2.5 year educational experience of her life? Surely not. Besides, most of those feelings and events are documented in less blog-y form, somewhere. So, to conclude: Hello, little blog. I'm sorry we haven't chatted for so long. Hopefully I'll give you better treatment in the future. All I ask is that you don't expect me to behave the same way I did when we first met, because I can't be the same person I was back then, not after all that I've experienced in the meantime. Also, get ready for some arts....

Would you help me stand…

… If I saw you in Heaven? / I’ll find my way / Through night and day / ‘Cause I know I just can’t stay/ Here in heaven.” Eric Clapton, Tears in Heaven

I have a problem with crying. No, wait, I had a problem being able to cry, but grad school has fixed that for me. But, growing up, I just didn't really cry. That doesn't mean I never got sad—I just wouldn't cry when that happened. My way to illustrate this part of my personality for the past ten years has been by saying, “I didn't even cry at my dad’s funeral.”  Okay, technically the 10 yr mark of the funeral is three days away, but that’s close enough. Today marks a decade since my father’s passing. 

I woke up that morning to a dark house. Granted, I was a junior in high school & going to 6:30am seminary, but my mom taught kindergarten 2 cities over & was usually up and bustling. Maybe she was feeling sick, but that’s odd. I checked the kitchen for lunch (I was still diligently getting ready), but it showed no signs of recent activity. Odd, but this time with a sudden tightness coming to my chest. Dad had been involved in a pretty bad motorcycle crash on September 10th (which is why, coincidentally, I don’t really take much stock with all the 9/11 hoop-la), but I had seen him 2 days before & he seemed to be getting better. He wasn't in ICU anymore, & they had transferred him from the USC hospital to a Kaiser facility closer to Mom’s work. He still had that Frankenstein-esque halo drilled into his skull and chest. I drew a picture of him in a notebook that I kept with my boyfriend (I still have it somewhere in a box in CA; the only reason I kept those books is so I would remember who I was back then & how I felt). Things were still pretty bad, but it was looking better. 

I found Mom in her bedroom. Er, “their” bedroom. She wasn't ready for work. She sat me down on the little cedar chest at the foot of their bed & told me that … things had changed. I don’t remember what she said, exactly. Perhaps that is recorded in one of my old journals from that time period. But I knew what she was going to say before she said it. I may have been a teenager, but I wasn't that clueless. I was shocked. After processing the fact, my first thought was something akin to “I wish Jacie didn't have to find out.” In my mind, she was much too young and emotionally vulnerable at 13 to have to face such a traumatic event. I don’t think I cried that day, except for worry of how my 3-years-younger-than-me sister was going to handle it. I wanted to cry. I just… couldn't.

That was a Tuesday. The next day, I went to school. After 1st period Marching Band, I collapsed into my boyfriend’s arms & said, “My daddy’s dead.” I spent 2nd period Spanish talking over celebrating the life my father had with my dear friend Katie Patterson. It still didn't feel real. I didn't know what type of emotions or thoughts I was supposed to have. The rest of the school day went by in a blur of numb routine. Wednesday was evening Marching Band rehearsal, & I of course showed up. I was section leader of the trombones- I had to. At the end, they crowned me ‘Band Chick of the Week’, a title usually given to an enthusiastic freshman who goes beyond their expectations. It came with a silly paper crown and all. There was also a card that they had everyone sign during rehearsal. That was Katie’s doing. Only a very few people knew what had happened. My section had no clue. It was a nice gesture, though, & I was glad that I didn't have to explain or pronounce anything. I wasn't ready just yet.

That Friday, I missed the very first “Home” football game for Claremont High (previous years, our home games were played at a neighboring city’s field, as CHS didn't have one. Until 2002.). There was a school policy that in order to participate in extra-curricular activities (in this case, marching band at a football game), you had to be at school for most of the day. I was at Dad’s funeral. There was family, ward people, and some of my siblings’ friends. Not one of my friends showed up that day. I wasn't really expecting them to, with it being during school hours, but I didn't know how much that would hurt. Later that evening, I went with my oldest brother, Cory, to see the new Hayao Miyazaki film, Spirited Away. It fit my mood pretty well. To this day, I try to watch that around this time of year. To remember.

It’s been ten years. I've thought about that event many times over the years, & how it has affected my life. I used to be terribly shy around my family. After that, I realized that family is all you have. The death finally sunk in 2 months later while reading Hamlet—for those of you who don’t know, there’s a scene where Hamlet gets all angsty about his mum moving on and marrying his uncle a mere 2 months since his father’s death.. I remember getting back to life, even though I’m not sure when. I even wrote a Beowulf spoof about that time, which I posted on here a while back (sorry, haven’t been on here in over a year… sheesh). I remember getting all paranoid because Dad died when I was sixteen & a half, and my mom’s father passed away when she was seventeen. &, when I thought about it some more, I realized that the time of death on records is just when the doctors have given up working on resuscitating. I figured, since time of death was about 1am, & they could have been trying for hours, he probably actually died on my half birthday. But that isn't important now. 

Since then, I have graduated from high school. I played trombone in Carnegie Hall. As part of the BYU marching band, I've played in front of countless thousands, & even had a solo that was pretty sweet—with just me surrounded by a circle of cymbals playing on a little cadenza while the entire band drops out. I've been to multiple March Madnesses & NCAA tournaments, including all of the BYU games during Jimmer-Mania. As such, I've sat court side (albeit behind the basket) at those games, & have been spotted (momentarily) on national television about a dozen times. I've graduated from college! I married a wonderful, brilliant man about 5 months ago. I’m in a Master’s program (Public Policy), & one of my main focuses this final semester is on motorcycle helmet laws, and recommending policy changes that can be implemented across the US. Working on that just now made me think about why I was doing that.

Nowadays, I feel like I have to go out of my way to let people know that my father is deceased. It’s strange. & it also feels awkward when they find out, & they express some form of sympathy, or say that they’re sorry or what-have-you. It’s been ten years. I've come to terms with it. It was very sad, but like I said before—I’m just not used to crying. & I don’t need to cry over it anymore. Something like that happens, & yes- you should have some time to properly grieve. But that doesn't stop you from going on, from getting stronger, from trying to make a difference in your world. At the same time, you can’t let it make you hard; it took me quite a few years, but I finally learned how to cry without feeling ashamed of having emotions. 

Another thing about losing someone so early is the realization that … well, that I didn't really know my dad all that well. I mean, before his death, I just knew him from my early childhood to mid-teens. But, I didn't know why he made the decisions that he made in life. I didn't know much about his formative years, or my parents’ courtship, or what dreams he had for life. It took a funeral to show me the full extent of his life. So yes, Eric Clapton, I’ll do my best to find my way through life. & if everything turns out all right, it’ll be just like heaven. 

The best thing one can do...

...when it's raining is to let it rain" Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The world is a beautiful place.

Yesterday, I walked to the Marriott Center to catch a CES Fireside given by Elder Oaks. Walking there, I was struck by how pretty BYU can be when seen from a different perspective. Each day at school, I take the same path from my apartment to the SWKT, passing the same stretches of grass & buildings & trees. You get used to it after a while, & start to forget to notice things. Well, this time, I took a stroll on the opposite side of campus, & enjoyed the little hills and paths strung along the lower campus buildings. It had been years since I'd taken the time to walk through there, as I am usually in a rush to get somewhere on campus. I wish I could have spent more time walking around. After an hour spent indoors engaged in some sweet spiritual osmosis, we walked outside to find that the grey clouds that had been rolling by overhead previously were now sharing their own 'message'...

I love the rain. It's probably my favorite type of weather phenomenon. Without a care for what the downpour, I gladly embraced the cool feel of each drop as it played against my skin. & hair. & dress. Most of the girls I saw were hunched down, trying to cover their heads with their purses, and scampering as fast as they could to get out of the elements. It made me laugh. Why run from something so wonderful, so amazing, so full of life as rain? I knew when I saw the wet sidewalk outside of the Marriott that I was not going to make it home dry. Yet I saw it as it an excellent adventure, an opportunity to enjoy campus once again from a different perspective. That, & based off of the distance that I had to walk from the Marriott to home, I figured that the marginal effect of a few minutes shaved off of my journey would be insignificant to how wet I would become...

Anyway, while walking through "the most romantic part of campus", it got me to thinking of those places and areas that fascinate me the most. Namely, downtown districts, be they in cities with towering skyscrapers, or small towns that have old buildings that make you feel like you've walked into the 1950s. I love rusty old cars parked next to fields the color of gold, & barns that should have been painted 15 years ago. Old factories, train tracks in the country, & anywhere that has a lot of trees. For me, nature does its part, & the man-made additions serve to compliment the environs... I think that, really, it's those imperfections in the buildings, the rust, the weathered bricks, the overgrown grass, the dirt roads, that give it the beauty... It's as if nature is saying that she wants to add her own brushstroke on the works of art we set upon the world.

I've always wanted to move to someplace green. My friends in high school knew that while I didn't really have solid plans on career path, as most anything would suit me fine, I was constantly dreaming of my green land. Maybe I'll find it there, if my work/family is heading in that direction, but maybe not. Who knows, perhaps I'll get an awesome job offer or "family offer" to someplace like Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, or someplace just as hot & full of desert. & dessert...? Either way, I decided this summer that you need to find ways to love the place you're in, which includes weather conditions that might not seem like too much fun at first. If I can find the joy in the rain, why can't I find the joy in the brilliantly hot sun?

When I get sad

I stop being sad & be awesome instead. True story." Neil Patrick-Harris, How I Met Your Mother

As a kid, I was never fond of summer. It was just too.... boring. I was one of the kids that would spend August redoing old math assignments, just to brush up. & reading books from the library, like Cam Jansen, Animorphs, and some other stuff that I can't remember anymore... There was only so much that I could read, though. I mean, the only book that was able to distract me from a week of listening to my body telling me it was hungry, etc. was the Lord of the Rings, way back in high school. Even now, the closest rival I have are the Wheel of Time series & the Dresden Files.... That's beside the point. I mean, I enjoy reading, hiking, playing with my dogs, & listening/making music. But there's only so much of it that I can handle on my own. What can I say? Even though I can be super shy at times (which is a terrible super power, btw...), I still need to be around people, preferably those my own age. Being in CA, though, does not lend to having very many people that I get to see during the day.

I've been working for the City of Rosemead for the past... 6 weeks. My last day will be on Wednesday, actually. In fact, even though the City Manager said that I'd be doing stuff with the public works/transportation, my entire time has been spent working for Parks & Recreation. Specifically, I have been working on developing a curriculum for the city-run pre-schools (which I also need to come with a cool name for, like "Rosemead Academic Tots" or something... RATs) since CA has no defined preschool standards. Good thing I've never taken a child development class in my life! It's been super rewarding and fun, though. I feel like a grown-up in a grown-up job for the first time in my life. I even get to enjoy the lovely 50 mile round trip daily commute getting stuck in SoCal's trademark traffic. Usually I spend those moments singing along with the radio or my plethora of CDs, which means that even when it takes me almost 2 hours to drive 24 miles (like it took me yesterday, when I resorted to taking side roads from Azuza to Claremont because the freeway had me averaging 4mph) it's still plenty amusing. M-Th has been great fun, full of busy times at work & nice relaxing in the evenings, often taking advantage of those things I love doing most. The weekends, though...

I've been lucky enough to make a few friends this time around in Claremont for the summer. In fact, I've been even more fortunate in that this group of people also plays Dungeons & Dragons, which I have developed an affinity for over the past year. I get friends, & I get my fix of D&D. Even so, games have been Wednesday nights, which means I need to do something to keep my spirits up on the dreaded weekends. My solution? Make a music video. Brilliant. I've wanted to make a music video for a long time. This lets me see friends, but also lets me plan things out, & have a side, non-work related project that I can keep busy with. Not really knowing much about how to edit & record things to the level of awesomeness that I want, I enlisted my brother Kyle into the effort, since he works at a place called Muddy Yellow Sneakers doing video things for kids or something, & some other stuff... I spent a loong couple of nights figuring out the words to the parody that we're doing, & then recording the stuff with my buddy Jarek in my brother's music recording lab thingy... We start filming a few random scenes this Saturday, & then doing a huge chunk of filming on Wednesday. I am so excited. What is this song we are doing, you ask? we call it, "DM Got Us Fighting a Mob", inspired by the music & music video of Usher. Don't worry, as soon as we get this thing finished in the next month, I will be posting it to Facebook, blog, etc. & by posting it, I mean... Kyle will probably upload it to Youtube or something & I'll share the link. So get ready for a world of awesomeness!

Where have all the young girls gone?

“... Taken husbands, everyone. When will they ever learn?” Pete Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

I try to make it so that the quotation at the start of each entry has some relevance for the rest of the post, but often it’s not the entire quote that fits, but rather a subset. With that being said, no- I am not getting married any time in the near/foreseeable future. Also, isn’t ‘foreseeable’ a strange looking word?

I have been gone for a long time. My last blog post was what, September? There’s a part of me that would like to blame the rigors of grad school on all of that. After all, the coursework was brutal, and I did end up staying in the ‘top secret zombie lab’ (as I like to call it) on campus until well after midnight on numerous occasions throughout the regular school year. I had a ton of reading and papers and data analysis… analyses? ... to cover. Who would want to take a break from all of that by writing even more profound things in their down time? Hehehehe, “profound”… I kill myself sometimes with the nonsense I spout out… Yes, I was busy; I had more homework and studying to do than I’ve ever had to deal with before in my educational career. However, that is no excuse for my prolonged absence, nor is it the particular absence I was feeling during that time. No, if I were merely ‘gone’ from the blogosphere and social scene for FW semesters, it would be no problem. Happens to many folk all the time. The truth is, I don’t know where I’ve been for the past… almost year. Well, that’s a generalization—I know that I was physically in Provo until the middle of June, and most of that was spent on campus or the other scenery changes my life had at the time, but that’s not what I mean. That girl was/is a stranger to me.

Life was a bit on the dark side for me during the school year. Not the cool dark side with Darth Vader & his posse, either… A lot of my friends know that my typical dream is ‘scarier’ and tons more violent than the average Joe. Or the average Methuselah. Average anyone, really… I don’t count them as nightmares, because I don’t feel scared by them or wake up terrified. Probably because they’re just dreams, & a part of the subconscious me knows that it can’t hurt me. The other part of the subconscious me must have some deep-seated paranoia about the government, zombies, and businessmen. I hope they’re not actually connected in the real world… *That* would be scary… Anyway, during the past school year, well, up until the end of February, really, all of the blood and violence wasn’t limited to my dreaming self. That is, instead of forgetting those dream images, they haunted me during my waking hours. I would go to a Data Analysis class, & instead of seeing the Power Point presentation, I would get repeated images of my dreams flashing through my head… Like, heavy duty day-dreaming, but in a very scary way. I got very anxious and depressed. I even had 2 actual nightmares—the kind where you feel that real terror in your sleep and wake up wanting to never go to sleep again… I don’t think I’d had a nightmare since I was a little kid before this past year. I was afraid to talk to anyone. Actually, I was so distraught & overcome with panic attacks/severe anxiety that I forgot that you could actually get help for that kind of thing. Finally, with the help of my bishop & some concerned professors, I got to a point where I could accept professional help.

There is waaaaay too much of a social stigma over mental disorders in our society. People are willing to accept things such as grief counseling, or help after a traumatic experience, but if the severe emotional pain isn’t visibly caused by any particular thing, then it makes people uncomfortable. In, Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith explains this little phenomenon. He says, essentially, that man is better able to sympathize with your emotional pain than your physical pain because while he may not have had a smushed toe, he can imagine what it would feel like for himself if his father were to die, etc… Well, this works only insofar as you can imagine the other person’s emotional pain. When it gets to the unfathomable, seemingly without cause region, people can’t imagine it. Or maybe they just do not want to. So, because they can’t sympathize, it’s like trying to feel a person’s pain over a broken femur when the worst you’ve ever had is a tummy ache… You imagine the pain of the broken femur to be as “bad” as the stomach pain because that’s the worst you can imagine… so when that femur patient is screaming in pain for a prolonged time, you might start to get super annoyed. After all, in your experience, pain cannot possibly be that bad.

Alright, that wasn’t the most accurate analogy, & I’ve never had a broken femur. But yeah, anxiety can be crippling. I remember having a huge panic attack in church once. Or twice…. Okay, a few times, during that time period. It would be from someone tapping me on the shoulder, or standing too close or something that right now seems ridiculous or small. Even right now, I can’t really remember what was happening in my life, what kind of choices I was making, or the way I interacted with people. That’s because I started getting medically treated for anxiety in the middle of February. Big. Huge. Difference.

You know those commercials for seasonal allergies or what-have-you, where there’s some lady who’s allergic to the outdoors & dogs & beach balls (because they’re in the ad too, for some reason), & then when she talks about the medication thingy, it’s like a film is lifted off the tv, & all of the colors are more vibrant & clear? That’s a bit what I felt like the first time I took one of those anxiety meds. The doctor told me to take them at night because they could make you drowsy, but I felt instantly awake. I could see things in the world around me. I could focus on my reading, my professors, and my conversations. I felt like myself again. I remembered all of my typical mannerisms, I was joking around with people, & I even started to feel comfortable standing close to friends. My eyes were open—I was blind, but now I see. & I looked back on the previous months that led to the meds, & got … frustrated. Who was that girl? What did she do to my life? What did she do to my arm? I’ve felt ‘normal’ ever since, really. Er, pretty much. There have been a couple slips here & there, but nothing as bad as before, & I always know what’s happening. That means I can remember how to get help, either by some calming down exercises, or by being able to seek for help from the people I love.

That’s another thing I got back: an ability to love. I reached out to people in the ward, & they became friends. I learned how to open my heart up to care about other people, to be able to feel the Spirit again and to come to understand a little bit of the type of love that God has for each of us. That is one thing that I never want to forget again, not even for a moment. It was probably the thing that kept me alive during those months, too. I have a super strong sense of duty (Kant would be proud), & while I could not remember or feel the truths of the gospel, I remembered that I knew them fervently at one point. I remember that I knew that I am a daughter of God, so when I felt ready to give up life, to give up hope, I kept going. I kept trying my best to live true to a life code that I had embraced before & embrace now, because part of me was still looking for that old me…

I am pretty sure that there were many, many people that were praying for me all those months. Maybe even fasting, who knows. All I know is that I could not have come back without all of that. Yes, the meds played a huge roll in that, but I mean… I don’t think I could have made it to that point if you weren’t looking out for me. So, because I don’t know who was praying for me, etc, I just want to say to you (that’s right, YOU): Thank you. Thank you for having faith. For coming to visit or home teach me even when I wasn’t much fun to talk with. For writing me a letter and helping me to see God’s love. For texting me randomly to tell me that you loved me. For cooking dinner so that I wouldn’t starve. For giving me a pep talk during the monstrous homework days… For watching Psych with me… For the spatulas, & the ice cream adventures… For being my friend…

Random Variable:

A variable whose outcome is uncertain." definition from Wooldridge text

Just felt like saying one more thing. I don't believe that a person can really choose to be random. Not on their own. Like, I might say something that you think is a random, non-sequitor, but given my train of thought, & all of those things that I just plain don't say, it turns out that random isn't random. For example, I was thinking of something the other day, while standing next to a friend of mine, & I just said, out of the blue, "I've never been in a Turkish prison." He, naturally, did a comical double take of amused confusion, but it made total sense to me. Not random for me, but yes for him. I couldn't possibly be random if I actually tried to be.

I had a friend, I think it was in high school, that wanted to see how random they could actually be by listing numbers from 1-100 in various intervals, recording them, & then doing the stats that would determine if he had computer random-status, or if he were subject to the natural pattern seeking nature of man. Yeah, that was kind of weird.

Most people, when told to scatter randomly, will actually try to put equal distance between them and the people around them. Yeah, that's not random. It would be better for someone to be standing extremely close to their buddy, or to start running with their eyes closed while singing the fight song, alternating between directions based off of whether the word starts with a consonant or not. But even that has a pattern.

Something that I find amusing is that when I try to explain to someone that good, human randomness can't be planned, they inevitably will say something like "refrigerator" or "banana" or "purple!". Those are perhaps the most common responses. Again, those being the most common responses means that, you guessed it, not random. I laugh.

Take that in mind; I cannot choose to be random. But, I can withhold information, thus making my speech appear to be random. I hope that this will explain to some extent why it is that the last paragraph of my last post actually isn't random. & I was just a little serious with that bit about the spatula...

I don't care if it hurts,

...I wanna have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul

I want you to notice
when I'm not around
You're so f^@%!&' special
I wish I was special

But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doin' here?
I don't belong here" Creep, Radiohead

Oh, grad school. It's been, what... 3 weeks? 4? Let me actually check. This is the 5th week. It feels as though no time has gone by, but at the same time-- 5 weeks is super long. & it hurts. I had this song stuck in my head for the first week or two, at least, just because it echos much of the inadequacy & emotions that were swarming through my brain like so many variables in a dataset; unorganized, raw power waiting to be harnessed if only the right programmer would come along... When I get super frustrated/anxious, when emotions flood my system, when so much is asked of me in so little time, I tend to shut down. Usually not everything, but the parts that are hurting the most. Like, if I start to cry, I automatically block myself from whatever it is that triggered it, & continue on in a somewhat detached manner. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. They get dammed behind some emotional barrier. The problem is that doing that, even though it's mostly subconscious, takes a lot of energy. & that barrier isn't indestructible. I don't always get control, even though I very much want to have that. So any little thing, or linear combination of things, or geometric combo--I won't discriminate-- may set me over my limit.

Other times, when I want to be able to feel something, anything, to know that I am alive,... I can't. I just want to bleed to know that my heart is still pumping. It reminds me of the Robert Frost poem, "Choose Something Like a Star": "say something, & it says, 'I burn!'"... Even right now, I can tell that I am being stretched awkwardly into something (hopefully) better, but I'm too exhausted to go on. I should be setting aside all of this stress & plowing forward with my assignments, but my brain is 5 minutes away from frying out like it did 2 weeks ago. So what do I do? start typing nonsense on a public forum for close friends & complete strangers & awkward creepers alike to judge me with...

"I want you to notice
When I'm not around..."

Looking for internships terrifies me. I don't know whether to limit my search to one area of the US or another, or even if anyone would want me. I desperately need a break, a sabbatical, but I think that I first just need to prove that I deserve one. I'll try not to get in a school-coma this semester. Even making it to the end of this month is going to be the accomplishment of the season... All I really want is for someone to give me a spatula...