Kit Kats and Cherry Pepsi

Stepping down from the excitement (and cynicism) of yesterday has felt like nothing short of a crash landing on an oxygen-deprived foreign planet. It’s been a little weird. But I can’t really complain. I’ve gotten back to my normal routine of unpredictability. Yes, a living oxymoron. But…such is life. Like I said, isn’t reality pretty cynical no matter how you slice it?

So I’ve caught a small case of the wedding fever. So what. I mean, how can a girl not catch it? Here I was trying to separate myself from any speak or riffraff about the dang wedding but it was literally everywhere. There was literally nowhere to go without hearing about the wedding. Though I will say that I fell in love with the fashion of the wedding. I loved Pippa’s maid of honor dress. A lot of people tried to say that her wearing white was in bad taste, but I feel like that fashion tradition has been a little outdated. I believe in this day and age a woman should be able to have the wedding that she dreams of, myself included. One of these days I will get married; but rest assured, I will be marrying no prince.
Reflecting back on the day today has not brought much of anything to mind. I suppose this means that everything is about back to normal. And so, I close with this last thought: A day without learning is a day wasted. I may not have learned much new today but I have earned myself a little bit of pocket change. So does that make this day worth it? We shall soon find out.

-Alya Songstress

Protein Bars and Bottled Water

Back to real life, back to cynicism—I mean, reality! Really, I meant reality. OK, so that’s a lie. It’s back to my normal cynicism. I mean, really? Isn’t reality pretty cynical no matter how you slice it?
Okay, okay. Enough is enough. But I suppose I feel as though some things are hard to say. I know how I feel on the inside, but it’s something that is very hard to put into words. All of the world is becoming a dark, twisted black hole of tragedy and negativity. Even this royal wedding was twisted into something overwhelming that really flooded over real life. Though today’s post is not a soapbox on the royal wedding. I’m over it.
Life has become to me this vastly unpredictable routine. As oxymoronic as it sounds, that’s what it is. I normally do what I always do, and occasionally, a few things change throughout the day. Though I will say that there are very few things that that actually change throughout the days. When something big does happen, it continues on and on and sometimes things even happen to add onto it. I miss these little breaks. I’ve been trying to find a usage, a way to spend my energy productively. I know that the natural disasters and things around me have happened, but I have yet to be able to find a way to really help. I want to help, but I feel so helpless. I worry and worry and worry but I can’t change the world. Feeling as though you want to do something but don’t have the means or the knowledge to be able to do so…it’s a dreadful feeling. I want to help so much, but I’m not very useful at the moment. I have begun to wonder if these feelings I’ve been having as of late is some kind of future indication that I will be able to do something great later on. One may only guess.
Reflecting on my entire day, I have bore my pain of cynicism and then anesthetized the pain a little with a slight bit of optimism. So in order to balance my thoughts of cynicism, I will proceed with optimism.
Despite everything that has happened to me today, there have been many good things that have happened. To be a person that was not affected by the disaster directly was nothing short of a blessing. At least in this respect, I will be able to use my time and perhaps my talents somehow to be able to help the ones that were affected, though I will admit to not knowing what I can do just yet. As far as my general health, it’s been good. I can’t really say that I’m wanting for anything right now, other than some rest. I suppose I am thankful for the ability to do something to help counter my uselessness of the moment.
A question was asked today in sociology class: “If knowledge is power and ignorance is bliss, which would you rather have?” This simple question sparked a class-long debate of circumstances in which each alternative would be favorable. The answer that all of us managed to conclude on: neutral. There are points (even on the same subject) where knowledge is power but at the same time, ignorance is bliss. Coach used the illustration of his daughter. He taught her that in softball, hitting the ball as hard as one can manage to hit is the best thing to do when at bat. She used that knowledge to perform well; however, he had never given her the knowledge of the fact that she was able to be hit by a softball that was intended for her hit. With her ignorance of this fact, she seemed to perform at her peak. But when she played in real life and one night got hit with the softball, the gaining of knowledge of that situation was not necessarily power at that time; she had allowed this new knowledge to hinder her performance.
Let it also be known that with the gaining of knowledge, it may at first hinder performance but can then be applied afterward with the right resources and be turned into power. Though, not all knowledge can be converted into something that is more helpful than hurtful. Knowledge of things like local issues or world issues such as economic woes, gasoline prices, or aggressive military action does little to lead us to power, but rather more worry. No matter how cynical and worst-case-scenario I speak of all of the time, I still feel the crunch of high gas prices or the pain of losing a loved one just as strongly as someone with a positive outlook. There are some who would argue with me, but then again they have their own blogs.
There is so much I could do with this post, but I believe I will leave it here. If you have your own opinion, leave it in the comment box. If you have a debate, then…well, that’s what forums are for. And this is not a forum.
-Alya.

Candied Strawberries.

One of these days I may get everything right. All I know right now is that everything is a jumbled up mess. A mess in my home, a mess in my life, and especially a mess in my thought processes. I suppose I will tell what’s in my thoughts in the order that they come to me, though I warn you that not much of it will make sense.

To be truthfully honest, I am so tired of this royal wedding fever. I mean, people get married all the time! Okay, so royalty doesn’t get married all the time; I understand all of that. At first it was nice to have a little bed of roses away from the toils of life that have become high gas prices, trouble in Libya, the earthquake/tsunami in Japan, the attack on South Korea, America’s huge budget deficit, and the slowly recovering economy. It seemed like Murphy was making some overtime runs this year. But then the announcement came. FINALLY, a break from all of the gloomy madness! But then the madness soon channeled from all of the bad things going on into all of the wonderful cheeriness and whatnot of the royal wedding. Then it became an obsession. And now I’m sitting here kinda wishing that the world would hurry and wake up. Though I suppose that it will all die down a month or so after the “I do”s, I still feel as though this intended “break” from reality will only snap us back into real life harder and faster than we’re ready for once it’s over. But then again, who *really* cares what I think?

-Alya Songstress