Things I Wish I Could Have Told My Fifteen Year Old Self

I've been scanning all my letters, class notes, photos, yearbooks, and mementos lately. A lot of it is kind of unpleasant to go through, and I'll be glad when I only have a computer file of it, not a physical page I stumble upon every now and again. (Why keep these things, or bother to digitize them? I feel a compulsive need to scan everything before I recycle it. It's part of my process, do what I can't do and let it go)

But there are good things too, sweet things that remind me of good friends and fond memories. Looking back, there are some things I wish I'd worked harder at, but there are a lot more things I wish I'd been able to say, "Fuck it, I'm going to have fun". If I could give myself the gift of hindsight, beforehand, I'd go back to my fifteen year old self. I was old enough then to get the advice I list here, had been in high school long enough to have established good work habits, but was young enough to avoid a lot of the mistakes I've made. I'm beginning to understand that everyone has regrets, but the key is to not hate yourself for having them. Some things still sting to think about, some make me want to bury my head in the sand, and others I can laugh at. Still, if I could go back, this is the advice I'd give myself.

• Don't save so much stuff. It will only weigh you down.
• Serving people who don't respect you isn't service, it's just abuse.
• Depression is going to hit you, and it's going to hit you hard.
• See a sympathetic dermatologist about your acne. It's worth the cost, because a good dermatologist will figure out what's going on in one or two visits, and you will feel so much better about yourself when you have that under control. On the other hand, having acne for years and years will teach you a lot of lessons about self-perception and confidence.
• Look up minimalism, environmentalism, and good writing. These things will be very important to you in a few years, and you're going to wish you had known about them sooner.
• Your family will be much less frustrating when you don't live with them. You will even miss them, and look forward to visiting, until you stay somewhere together for a week. Then you'll want your independence back.
• Greek yogurt is more delicious than you think.
• Don't stay in Utah, it's a trap, at least for you.
• Approach college like you did  high school, at least in terms of how hard you work, and how scared you are of getting a low GPA.
• When you start finding out about media (movies, TV, magazines, music, the internet, etc. and all of it), it's going to blow your mind.
• Your awkwardness will fade, and your confidence will grow. One day you won't worry about being weird in public, and it will be an incredible relief.
• Until you have a full-time career, be incredibly frugal. You can stretch a little money a long way, but only if you know it has to last.
• That milk-chugging contest? Don't do it.

Honestly, I've enjoyed my life as it is, but I would only relive my past to avoid making the mistakes I did. Of course, then I would have made different mistakes, and I would have a whole different set of advice to give myself.  So what about you, if you could, what would you tell your fifteen-year-old self?

For Your Happiness

I think we could all use a daily dose of something that makes us smile. Today's dose is of George Clooney. No, I don't blindly chase stars, or keep up on celebrity news, but I stumbled on a Clooney interview (found in the January 2012 issue of Esquire) that made me laugh, and followed a link to a Clooney commercial that made me smile. That smile prompted me to share, because, for me at least, smiles are in short supply right now.

Here is the quote from the interview:

"I keep thinking: Now that every single human being on earth has a camera phone, where are all those UFO pictures? Remember you used to see those pictures. Some guy just happened to have a Polaroid when the UFOs appeared? Either it was all bullshit, or my theory is that the martians have decided, "Don't go down there, man. All those fuckers have cameras now."

And here is a fun little commercial he did. Don't worry about him being a sell-out, he used the money to finance a project to keep war criminals in check.



Also, the commercial has a good point. I'd be a lot less unhappy right now if I had some savings. Or woke up married to George Clooney.

Sorry for my Absence, I've been Depressed and Pining

For those of you who follow me religiously (and there are so many of you), you've likely noticed my long absence from the blogosphere. I wish I could say this due to some awesome occurrence, like being called suddenly to be a secret agent in Russia, jetting off on a whim to the Amazon jungle, or even  just fending off a localized zombie apocalypse; but sadly, it was due to none of these things. I was just depressed.

I hate that I wrote "just depressed", which implies that depression is not a serious mental illness affecting hundreds of thousands of people across the country, and which dramatically impedes productivity, engagement in the world, and overall happiness. If I had my way, everyone would get a yearly physical check-up with their doctor, mental check-up with their shrink, and "good-job-for-making-it-to-work" meeting with their boss. Also, you're apparently supposed to visit the dentist every six months, which I didn't know about until two days ago when fiance informed me of the fact. I thought I was doing good to floss once a week and get my teeth cleaned every two years. But regardless of what tooth-care regimen I'm on, mental illness, even "just depression", is a problem which is not acknowledged, recognized, or dealt with by a lot of people, and I wish that would change. So I revise my statement; I was depressed, and it totally sucked.

Now that I'm feeling better and out and about, I can tell you about one awesome thing I discovered during my days of pitiful interactment with the world: Pinterest. Pinterest is a site where you can visually collect and organize all those inspiring pictures, nifty projects, and funny things you find while browsing the interwebs. You can even upload things from your own computer, which I fully intend to do one day, but haven't yet because I haven't made anything pretty enough to put on display. Sometimes I put on my eyeliner really well, but that's not what I'm aiming for in terms of pin-worthy material.

Anywho, if you'd like to check out Pinterest, I suggest you start here, on my very own board of Heart-Breakingly Adorable Dogs. Then start searching for other things you like (food porn, compost pictures, creepy craft projects), and get ready to waste a whole lot of time. I've found I need to set an alarm when going on Pinterest, otherwise I pass out at the computer after nine hours of pining. If Pinterest isn't your thing, that's okay too, I still can't figure out what the appeal of Twitter is, and it honestly makes me depressed that someone is making millions of dollars off of copying Facebook's status button and making a whole site dedicated to single-sentence posts. Not depressed enough to never leave my bed again. Just depressed enough to eat a few extra cookies tonight.