Idle hands and whatnot

Being in High School somehow, for some gawd awful reason starts the PRESSURE.

And by pressure I mean everybody is starting to gain independence and if you don't keep up, well, you're just plain out of luck.

Kids in my grade are starting to drive
Kids in my grade are starting to get serious about relationships
Kids in my grade are getting jobs
Kids in my grade are doing the mcnasty
Kids in my grade are experimenting with tobacco and alcohol

And it has become increasingly hard to "live above the influence" of all these activities. I remember asking successful upperclassmen how they had survived unscathed by all the pressure and the thing that was most constant in their responses was to keep busy.

Since then I have taken their advice. I'm an active member of a myriad of clubs and extracurriculars and academic competitions. In my free time I volunteer.

But being so busy, being so dedicated to many different things has made me question what I was even doing. Recently I was questioning why I was even in debate. Do I have the passion for it? Do I have the skill?

It's been like this for most of the things that I'm in. At this crucial point I'm also being bombarded by the opportunity to hang out with people that I like, but probably shouldn't be spending time with.

It's times like these when I could use some people giving me the "When I was your age..." speech.

Winning plan

So for some reason I qualified for regional debate competition (!) and I think it was due to my master preparation skills.

The night before competition my parents let me have the house to myself. I was able to compose myself my doing numerous speaking drills while watching C-SPAN.

Oh those sexy democrats!

My original plan was to alternate between different speaking drills and work on word economy, but after about 30 minutes of practice I was done. I realized that I was psyching myself out and setting myself up for failure if I continued to read anything else debate related, so you know what I did?

I had myself a little Boondock Saints marathon in which I watched the first and second movies until I passed out from sheer exhaustion.

The guns, the violence, the lovely irish accents! In all I think I got about 3-4 hours of sleep before I had to head out to competition.

3rd place! I feel like the Johnny Weir of debate! Not really! I don't want to end up placing 6th at regionals like he did at the Olympics.

Anyways, regional competition is the 24th and I plan on doing the exact same thing I did for district. For some reason everyone thinks that I'm stressing out about having to compete, but if only they knew the way I got ready.....

Practice does not make me perfect, it just stresses me out.

I spy

I spy with my little eye someone who hasn't blogged in a while!

Due to the stress from my crappy Chemistry grade (it's a classwide epidemic for anyone who has this teacher) and Julius Caesar, the Grapes of Wrath, and many other things I've just been unable to write.

I'll log onto facebook, pull out homework to start working and forget that I'm online. People think I'm ignoring them when I'm not. Ok, I'm ignoring most of them, but ssshhh don't tell them.

Also debate district competition is coming up and right now I feel like the Johnny Weir of debate. I caught on fast, but due to lack of competition and practice (gee thanks coach!) I haven't debated in about a month so I'm not exactly an underdog, but I am at a disadvantage.

My rivals are well practiced and have a feel of all the different arguments and strategies that are going to be used, whereas I'm just going in blind hoping that what I have prepared will be good enough to get me by. Right now I'll just do what I can to prepare.

aaaaand I just checked facebook and lost my train of thought.

Oh well I'll get back to it later.

New Orleans

Just FYI I'll be in New Orleans throughout spring break!

I most likely won't be able to post, so don't think I'm dead!

Don't wait

I firmly believe that if you like some one, and they aren't in a relationship, YOU should make a move.

Because if you don't I can almost guarantee that the person you like will not stay on the single market for long.

SDLKFJDLJFLSDKJLKDF

And if you don't like that person, don't send mixed signals. It's not cool.

I dream of Ben Stein and relationships

I had this dream the other night that sort of took me by surprise.

It was Ben Stein, a popular economist, going over Relationship Economics with me.

It was surreal.

There were charts, numbers, graphs, and what-not out the wazoo!

I remember one distinct part of the dream when he was speaking:

".... now let us examine your prime love interest. According to the statistics you're doing quite well. Your chinese zodiac sign is the rooster, and your prime love interest's sign is the snake. This area of compatibility is quite high, however he is also a Cancer whereas you are a Sagittarius. This is bound to cause trouble, therefore I would advise you to look at this chart here. See, it says that your highest match would be with someone who was born in the year of the snake and is also a Libra. Yes. Good match."

I still have no idea why Ben Stein was giving me relationship advice in my dream, but I was so curious that I looked up the best compatibility for Rooster/Sagittarius and guess what? It was Snake/Libra. Go figure.

6-9-9

Slowly but surely my life is being invaded by people who do not need to invade it.

My mother is going to "surprise" me.

Her surprises always suck because the type of stuff she thinks could be a surprise is actually NEED TO KNOW stuff.

For instance my aunt Addie, who I haven't seen since I was seven is moving from the Philippines to America.

She wanted this to be a surprise for me, however she failed to remember that I'm friends with my aunt on Facebook, and right now her statuses consist of "OMG I'm going to the states soon!"

My mom still has yet to realize this. Fail.

But back to the point. I hate my mom's surprises.

Surprise! Here's this party I threw you, and I invited all of my friends that you don't really talk to!

Surprise! I'm going to have stomach surgery!

Surprise! Here's all this old stuff that I don't want anymore so I'm going to give it to you for your birthday!

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!

I'M SICK OF SURPRISES. I wish my mom would just tell me stuff straight up instead of waiting till the last minute when it's too late to say anything.

Ugh. I'm so glad that I don't live with her because I'm thoroughly convinced it would be 3479283 times worse.

I need a sugardaddy

Letterman here I come!

I just realized that because of all the "elite" high school activities I'm in my parents are going to be broke soon after we buy all of my high school memorabilia.

No kidding.

Letterman : almost $200
Class ring for next year: $90 - $150
Class shirts, hoodies, pictures: $300- $500
Class activities, prom, graduation fees, etc.: around $3,000

Holy baby Jesus. My parents are not made of money, and Sonic unfortunately only pays $4.00 and hour to 16 year olds.

I've applied to 3 jobs so far with no luck. In my town there are currently about 45 managerial positions open, however no one in their right mind is going to hire a teenager to be a manager of anything. Also, job wise, there are only 7 jobs that I am actually eligible for.

I applied to be a flower arranger at Michaels..... aaaaand they laughed and told me that they're looking for people with "experience".

HELLO. Paging common-sense. How am I to ever gain experience if no one will hire me? Sadly, Toys R Us is only looking to hire bike assemblers, and I'm afraid that if I took that job there would be an influx of kids with broken limbs.

Hot Topic finally got a permanent set of employees... all over the age of 21! Maybe now I'll get decent customer service in there. My friend Ashley promised to sneak me an application for ULTA, but until then I will remain on the hunt.

I feel guilty for having to make my parents carry the full weight of my high school fees. I'm not an only child, in fact, I'm the first of four.

Oh well. I'm going to stay on the job hunt. Maybe JC Penny is hiring?

And the award for sucking goes to.....!

50% of the songs on the Almost Alice album!

Granted, I have listened to the majority of the songs on there via not so legal means, but that's beside the point.

I'm going to buy the Motion City Soundtrack one, maybe a few of the other ones, but most definitely not the entire album.

Tim Burton, What were you thinking?

Oh wait, I know..... MONEY.

Peanut butter is hard to brush off

Brushing stuff off, getting over things quickly, and being "tough" has always been relatively easy for me.

Sometimes I can get upset over the littlest things, but my anger fizzles pretty quickly and before I know it I'm no longer angry.

I'm not saying that I forget why I was angry, I'm just too lazy to keep my anger burning.

Most people realize that I usually don't take things too personally, but sometimes brushing stuff off, and joking about things isn't always as easy for me as it used to be.

It takes a lot of effort on my part to not visibly be offended or be hurt by some of the things people say. In high school there are so many people who talk behind your back and say vicious, untrue things that can be either taken seriously, or in a joking matter.

Most of the time I joke about things that are said and come up with something witty in return, but as of late it's become increasingly difficult to nonchalantly brush off insults and personal jabs.

Some things cross the line, and I genuinely wonder if some people are either oblivious to the things they say, or just really that vindictive.

Sometimes people make me want to apply for online college courses :/