Lazy Sundays are the best.

As I've mentioned here before, I have a very large problem with sleeping. I've gone from not sleeping at all, to sleeping barely, to sleeping badly, back to not at all and back to badly once again.

I'm plagued by bad sleep. I toss and turn, I sleepwalk, I talk, I yell. Mornings are worse, because once I'm asleep it's so hard to wake up.




I've been trying to increase my amount of sleep because I feel like it's negatively affecting my health. I've been taking Melatonin every night, and it's helping.

So understand my amazement when I woke up naturally at 11:30 a.m. It was wonderful.

Ryan made steel cut oats with cinnamon and agave nectar, and then I headed to dance class.

I love sunday afternoon belly dance classes. I've been taking a fan veil choreography class that is almost over. I'm crazy excited to perform it soon, I've never been so invested in a choreography.

Afterwards I swung by a tea party before heading to the dinner shift at work. While it rained shortly after these photos were taking (and my phone died so I missed taking photos of Olive and Kaley who came later) it was great for the hour I was there.




My updated 21 Before 21 List.
1.) Become ATS General Skills Certified in Vancouver, BC.
2.) Stay in the Hostel in the Forest in Brunswick, GA.
3.) Have an article published in the Gainesville Sun.
4.) Take the Ballet I leisure course.
5.) Become scuba certified. 
6.) Go hunting. 
7.) Spontaneously travel somewhere by plane.
8.) Take pole dancing lessons.
9.) Stay for a weekend at a fancy bed and breakfast.
10.) Learn how to keep bees. 
11.) Climb real rocks. 
12.) Stay in the Everglades hostel.
13.) Visit the Florida Keys. 
14.) Run a marathon. 
15.) ?
16.) ?
17.) ?
18.) ?
19.) ?
20.) ?
21.) ?

I'm sitting in Cymplify writing next week's blog post for The Alligator, and I got distracted and wrote a second post for today. In my defense, the Links I Like post was supposed to be out yesterday...


I came across a blog called The Happily Ever After Project today. It's a wonderful little blog by a lovely woman named Celine about living for yourself, and making your happily ever after yourself. However, the blog that inspired The Happily Ever After Project is the one that hit me.

The blog The 30 Before 30 Project ended in 2011 and Celine has since moved on to her new blog. However, reading through the archives of this original has been substantially inspirational.

When you enter The 30 Before 30 Project the right sidebar will direct you to a post called Come Along for the Ride. It explains that the project came from Celine approaching 30 years old, and realizing she'd set aside all amazing the things she had planned to do for another time. It hit her one day "like a piece of concrete jutting out of a sidewalk".

That line hit me like a piece of concrete.

I'm almost 20 years old. It's terrifying me substantially, and I'm not really sure why. I've gone through a lot of changes in the past year: I transfered schools, I'm working more jobs than I ever thought I could handle, I'm in a serious relationship, I rarely see my house...the list goes on. I'm prone to frequent panic attacks since a traumatic incident last March left me with PTSD. For the past week I've been having these strange attacks where suddenly I'm distraught and afraid, all because I realize that I'm nineteen, and it feels like I was ten just yesterday.

I'm overwhelmed with the feeling that I have the life skills of a child, and I'm thrown into the adult world. I'm making meal plans, I'm working, I talk to my parents more on the phone then I do in real life, I miss my childhood friends.  I feel like the main character in 13 Going on 30. I just want to go back to eating dinosaur-egg oatmeal and watching PBS before going to school. I want summers to be for friends and summer camp, not for class and work. I cried after watching Avenue Q at the Hippodrome Theatre last night because I am so afraid of life after college.

It usually takes me falling asleep to end these panics, and then I'm back to normal. I'm me. I'm planning my trip to Vancouver in August, I'm excited to make steak stir-fry for dinner tonight. I'm planning my next blog post for The Alligator.

After reading Come Along for the Ride, I realized this is all probably because I'm approaching the milestone of turning 20. I'm scared because I feel like I've let so much time slip through my fingers.

So I'm taking control.

I originally wanted to make a big 25 Before 25 list to start when I turn 20 years old. However, I'm ambitious; I want to do more than that. I LOVE to-do lists, I usually make one for every season. So on top my my usual seasonal to-do lists, I'm writing a 21 Before 21 list. 

Here what I have so far, want to suggest anything?

1.) Become ATS General Skills Certified in Vancouver, BC.
2.) Stay in the Hostel in the Forest in Brunswick, GA.
3.) Have an article published in the Gainesville Sun.
4.) Take the Ballet I leisure course.
5.) Become scuba certified. 
6.) Go hunting. 
7.) Spontaneously travel somewhere by plane.
8.) Take pole dancing lessons.
9.) Stay for a weekend at a fancy bed and breakfast.
10.) Learn how to keep bees. 
11.) ?
12.) ?
13.) ?
14.) ?
15.) ?
16.) ?
17.) ?
18.) ?
19.) ?
20.) ?
21.) ?

1.) A little while back I heard this story on NPR about a new book about Robert "Believe It or Not!" Ripley. While I've yet to read the book, it's on my list. Take a listen to the interview.

2.) This story from the Digital Journal is about a woman who can see 99 million more colors than others. I was attracted to this story because my mother claims to see many more shades than the average person. How amazing is it that there are people who are experiencing a completely different reality that we can't comprehend.

3.) My parents fit the hippy bill, at least they were when they were younger. This list of 29 Signs You Were Raised By Hippies confirms this belief. The closest ones to my childhood: #16. "God= Jerry Garcia", and #22 "When your friends came over, they asked, “What’s that smell?”".
I know the words to too many Grateful Dead songs because they were my lullabies.
My house always smells like Nag Champa. I caught myself buying Nag Champa the other day. I guess #28 is true too: "But ultimately you’ve realized you are too much like them".
Yeah I'm just like them.

4.) "10 Easy Ways to De-Stress" from the UF Counseling and Wellness Center. This came out around finals time last semester, and I find it pretty helpful. That's saying something, because I'm usually an anxious mess.

5.) My brother was in a band called "3rd Stone" for six years, and over those years I travelled to my fair share of music festivals. This list is a fantastic representation of worst people at music festivals. I love #5 "The old guy who looks kind of lost", that guy is at every jam band festival just wandering aimlessly. I swear, I feel like i've even seen that specific old guy in the photo in the article.

6.) This American Life did a two part episode (part one and part two) on Harper High School in Chicago. One of the students from the episode, Deonte, stood out because he essentially had to barricade himself in his house for all of high school to avoid gang activity. Well, he and one other student from Harper earned Gates Millenium Scholarships.

7.) Simply 10 Ridiculously Cute Pet Costumes! I absolutely love the slow moving UFO; tortoises rock.

8.) I love NPR. No really, I think I have a crush on a public news entity. This chart is a guide to all the running gags from Arrested Development, including all the new ones from Season 4. I seem to be part of the majority with my love of the new season, which became available on Netflix on May 26. While I was a late-comer to the series (I've been working through it over the last few months) and didn't finish until a few days after the new season came out, I'm absolutely thrilled. On that topic; what a season finale!

9.) Sometimes when I can't sleep I think I should probably get up and work on something, because if James Franco can forgo sleep to be his supervillan self, then I should be able to. This article from HelloGiggles explains why I'm terrified of James Franco to a T. The man has way more passions than me, and he's successful at ALL OF THEM. I struggle with 13 credit hours a semester, he can manage 62 and graduate with a 3.5 GPA.
I wish I was James Franco.

10.) I was turned on to Gizoogle when I saw it on the blog Cupcakes and Cashmere. It's basically ghetto Google, and I had way too much fun with it.

Here's my Twitter Gizoogle style


What do you think of the links this time? Comment, shoot me some suggestions, tell me your favorites.

Chao!

I'm back. It's been a little while, but I'm finally writing a post I've been meaning to write since last Tuesday.

I think I was encouraged to finally get these photos out, touch-up, and finally write this piece because I received my first email from a reader recently, and it stuck with me.

I wonder if any of you are actually real, or if all of my statistics are just robots. I'm not sure. Before today, I'd never heard from everyone.

That's alright. When I read blogs I very rarely comment. The people I admire the most have no idea that I exist.

I'm an avid reader of "The Wilder Coast" and "Cupcakes and Cashmere" but Melina and Emily have no idea I'm reading their blogs everyday.

Melina doesn't know that she's the one to inspire me to get outside and adventure again.
Emily doesn't know that I've modeled some features of this blog after her's.

They have no clue that they've deeply inspired me.

I like that, in a way.

However, I do sort of want to know if you're out there.

What is happening in your life? What adventures have you been on? Are you happy?

One thing I've always had trouble with, is understanding that people have very different stories and struggles. I want to hear about them.

Well anyway. Here are some photos of from Memorial Day Weekend.

So I've been spending the morning alternating between being productive (homework) and putting together a "Links I Like" post. I finally saw this video, and thought I could not do it justice by just putting it in a pile of other links.

I started blogging for my student newspaper last week. It happened pretty quickly. I got an email on the college listserve recruiting bloggers for the summer, and immediately sent in my resume. Within a couple hours I had gotten a response.

I will be writing primarily for the blog "The Ville", an advice blog from locals to new students. As of now, as to the best of my knowledge, I'm the only one writing for the blog.

While it was a couple weeks before I started writing, last Saturday I submitted my first two stories. They were both posted on the website on Thursday.

The Ville: The guide to locally owned restaurants: Part 1
Albums and Actors: Tony Stark returns; Iron Man 3 brings the heat 

For this coming Wednesday, my Ville post is the part 1 of a guide to farmers markets. Here are some of the photos I took for the post. I was proud of them, so I thought I'd share. Enjoy.

I've been away for too long.

I'm back in school as of this week. This semester I'm taking Multimedia Writing and Precalculus with Trigonometry. Maybe I'll learn how to write and how to do simple math.

Just maybe.

I got off of work early, while I was pretty busy at the beginning of the shift, things slowed down and I went home. I have been thinking for months about a pitch I've wanted to send to This American Life, and I finally jumped on it today.

This evening my mother approached me about a radio project she wanted my help on. I'm a journalism student, not a telecommunications student, so my experience is all writing. However, I consider myself fairly tech savvy, and I would hope my countless hours spent editing video over the years would help me in learning to edit audio.

While this story I plan to do with my mother is not the one I pitched today, it is what got me in the radio mindset.

I pitched a story about this man:


Mike Tsalickis, also known as Jungle Mike, was an exotic animal trader who grew up with my grandfather in Tarpon Springs Florida.


Tsalickis opened the Tarpon Springs Zoo as an Eagle Scout project when he was scoutleader as a teenager. After joining the Army, he travelled the world collecting specimens for the zoo. Eventually he settled in Leticia, Colombia. He put the town literally on the back, building its airstrip.