March Forth

Photo by Jackie Cotton

Today is the last day of March.

2016 is already 1/4 of the way over.

I'll be 23 in three short months.

With all this looking ahead, I need to stop, take stock, and be thankful where I am.

I'm functioning perfectly fine as an adult. I'm paying my bills on time, I'm devoting attention to my closest friends, and I'm balancing a need for peace and quiet with my desire to be out and about with people all the time.

The ambivert struggle is real, y'all.

I'm exploring exciting opportunities for the future (can you say "grad school?") and thoughtfully and intentionally trying to decide what path is the wisest. Meanwhile, I'm blessed with a job that pays me enough to live comfortably while saving up for the future.

But let's be real: I have a hard time being thankful for those things. When things are good on the homefront, I get an urge to gooooooo somewhere. Not long term, of course. Just a vacation.

The day-to-day adult life gets very boring, very quickly. I enjoy having a routine, but I like to be able to change that routine up on a dime, and a desk job really doesn't give you room to do that. Without the ability to say "nah, I'm going to work on this from 8-11 pm instead of this morning," I lose a bit of freedom. And day after day of losing that freedom feels very constraining and makes me want to swing the pendulum from being stuck in an office all day to doing some extreme travel.

I'm dreaming about taking a 4,000 mile road trip looping through the southwest and northwest, touching ten different states and finally getting to go to Canada. It'd be by myself because I'm craving a lot of alone time right now.

I don't know if it will actually happen, though. I'd also really like to go to Chicago/New York with my friend Jackie when she goes back home after graduation and then moves to NYC.

I also really want to go on a cruise to Cuba, but gosh--that's a really expensive dream.

There's a lot I want to do, and I know I can't do it all. I'm incredibly grateful for where I am and what I'm doing, but being cooped up in an office is grating on my soul and I really just want to go.

Power. Love. Self-discipline.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity--but of power, love, and self-discipline. 

A photo posted by A M A N D A (@mandalyn93) on Mar 27, 2016 at 10:35pm PDT

Life is weird right now, y'all.

Related: Life will always be weird.

A lot of crazy things are happening; and what's worse, I can't really talk about them en masse. It's personal stuff compounded with adulthood mashed up with some really hard decisions I need to make.

Shoot. I wish I hadn't picked up blogging as a hobby, because I can't share much more than that on the internet.

But what I can share with you is the Bible verse I came across on Easter. I wasn't able to make it to church (long story short, I placed a larger value on sleep than on being surrounded by a few hundred other people hearing a lesson I've heard a hundred times before and already know. I kinda hate going to church on big holidays, but we can talk about that another time).

As I was saying, I wasn't able to make it to church, but I did spend a considerable portion of the morning reading my Bible and journaling, and a large portion of the evening in community with my cousin and best friend Raquel, both of whom love Jesus.

In the morning when I woke up, I remembered a painting my friend Ben made for me a few years ago. It's pretty abstract, but has 2 Timothy 1:9 on it:

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love and self-discipline.

I'm not sure why it came to mind. I haven't seen that painting in months (sorry Ben. It's somewhere in my room, I promise...I just don't know where I packed it.) and I haven't thought of that verse in a while, but it is so so perfect for my life right now.

We weren't created to be scared. We weren't made to be timid, or fearful. Incapacity, hate and indulgence are not the trademarks of our spirits. We're intended to have a heart that is powerful, that is loving, and that is self-disciplined.

In the midst of the growing pains I'm experiencing, with overwhelming options and intimidating situations, I'm working toward a powerful, loving, disciplined spirit.

Election Day

My shirt says "Vote or we're sending you somewhere you don't get the right to."

I'm that nerdy, nerdy kid who wanted to vote from the time she was in second grade.

I remember walking from the playground to Mrs. Rexall's classroom with my friend Alicia in the year 2000, when President George W. Bush was up for his first presidential election. Alicia said she would vote for him because his last name was Bush, and squirrels are cute with bushy tails.

General second-grader logic.

As I grew older, I loved learning about the political system--how America is a representative democracy, how the President is chosen by the electoral college (not directly by the voters). The words "suffrage movement" and "political efficacy" give me happy, giddy, butterfly-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach chills, and I know I'm probably alone in that.

But, as you've probably guessed, I want you to feel that way.

I want you to want to vote.

I will not accept "my vote won't matter" or "my vote will be wasted and cancelled out by everyone else who votes" as an excuse. There's no room for pettiness like that in my generation.

Political cartoon by Nick Anderson, because 2/3 of eligible Texans don't vote.

I vote because I believe it indicates I am a responsible, thoughtful citizen who appreciates having the privilege of voting. I desire to see my country succeed, so I research the candidates who will potentially run it at a state and federal level, research the facts candidates share, and vote when the time comes--and I'm telling you to do it, too.

Research the candidates.

I'm not going to tell you, the internet, who* to vote for. I don't think that's proper to do in an online forum such as this--but I will tell you to check out all of the candidates. Watch debates on both sides of the aisle. Google their names and stances, and check out their websites. If you're overwhelmed, you can find out which politicians you side closely with using the I Side With quiz (which grossly simplifies politics, but hey--it's better than nothing.)

*and while I said I'm not telling you who to vote for, I am going to tell you to please back a politician who is decent, exhibits a loving character, and has experience in politics on some level. I feel this all ~should~ go without saying but probably needs to be said anyway.

Research the facts.

Did you know that President Obama has deported more undocumented immigrants than any other president, ever? Or that net migration from Mexico to the US is below zero? Ok, one more: Did you know that the unemployment rate is hovering below 4.9%? It's been continually dropping since February 2014--which is a good sign for the economy.

Maybe these are statistics you don't care too much about. That's okay. But in order to be a well-informed voter, you need to know if what the politicians are saying is true. My favorite tools for fact-checking are PolitiFact, which live-checks debates; and the AZ Central fact check, which looks at local news. If you live outside Arizona, your local news organization probably has something similar.

Get registered and join PEVL.

This is probably the gosh darn easiest part of voting. If you live in Arizona, you can do it online. And look, I even gave you the link. And here's the link again. Go ahead, just click here and do it. It takes an incredibly short amount of time to register to vote, and you can even join the Permanent Early Voting List or "PEVL." PEVL is great because you'll receive your ballot in the mail before elections so you can fill it out and send it right on back to the ballot counters without even putting pants on.

Get your friends to register.

Once you've caught the bug and understand how important it is to vote, don't shut up about it. Keep talking. Explain to your friends how awesome you feel now that you're making at least a small difference in the way your country operates.

Get your friends to register. And if that's not enough and you want to really make waves, get complete strangers to register.

Vote.

When the time comes--be it the Presidential Preference Election or the Presidential election on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November--go out and vote. Cast your ballot! Let your voice be heard!

This can pretty much all be summed up by a quote from one of my favorite script writers (Aaron Sorkin) and fictional Presidents (Jed Bartlet): Decisions are made by those who show up. So do your civic duty and show up.

Rest.

Lemon ginger tea and West Wing will help me get rid of this cold, right?

A photo posted by A M A N D A (@mandalyn93) on Mar 1, 2016 at 8:54am PST

I suck at resting.

I'm a go-go-go-go total Type A personality.

I schedule rest into my planner by blocking out certain nights and weekends to just chill and spend by myself.

And I know this can't be good for me. I'm an ambivert who has a hard time striking a balance between tons of meaningful human interaction and a fair amount of solitude.

So, I'm pretty sure all the go-go-go I've been participating in lately has contributed to a gnarly cold that sent me home from work on Tuesday.

I really don't like missing work, but when I have a runny, stuffy nose, cough and can't focus--you better bet I'm going home. (That, and one of my coworkers actually told me I should go home to rest.)

Which means I got to practice resting yesterday. I drank a lot of hot lemon ginger water with honey, I diffused some essential oils (the internet said lavender, clove and peppermint are a good blend for colds, and I have to agree), I listened to my favorite Bon Iver album and I did a whole lot of napping.

Aaaaaaaand I finished the first season of West Wing.

While I wouldn't consider these things to be restful normally (I like participating in what some call "active rest," or doing things that are creative and replenishing as a form of rest), it was exactly what I needed.

If you're like me and don't know when to stop moving or doing things, take some time this week and just chill. Binge on your favorite Netflix show. Drink tea. Nap. Listen to music. Take a shower in the middle of the day just because you ~feel like it.~

However rest manifests itself to you, do it before you end up like me--exhausted with a cold--and are forced to stop and rest.