Courage!

This semester I have been trying to be more bold in living my life! I started pretty small: being more honest, not being afraid to ask questions at my new job, and finding inspiration to be courageous in everyday things.

Then I got a little bigger, and decided that when the Avett Brothers come to do a show in Lincoln in April, I'm going to try to get the article that the Daily Nebraskan will do so I can interview them (even though phone interviews scare me, and phone interviews with fantastic musicians scare me even more).

And then I got even bigger by turning in my study abroad papers even though three of my closest friends would be studying abroad the semester after I do, meaning I wouldn't see them for an entire year. It's kind of intimidating, and it's a lot scary, but I'm excited for what the rest of the year holds!

Here's some of the latest inspiration I've acquired: 

In case you can't read it: "Today is never too late to be brand new."

"Sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage, and I promise you: something great will come out of it." 

Rachel and I posted this quote on the chalkboard we pasted to our door. It's supposed to remind us to do great things!

If the President of the United States (who is pretty much my hero) can stand up in front of the world and sing an Al Greene song at the podium, I think I can muster up a little courage to do the boring, every day things. 

Hope everyone is having a great week! 

A.

My Dear Acquaintance

New Year's is my favorite time of year. As cheesy as it sounds, I like the idea of starting over as soon as the clock chimes midnight, and I love the idea of New Years Resolutions. I make them every year, and while oftentimes I lose track of them after February, there have been a few important ones that I've kept the whole year and into the rest of my life. I don't do New Year's Resolutions like everyone else, though (because I'm a hipster, duh). My resolutions are never "I'm going to lose 10 pounds by Memorial Day" or "I'm going to stop drinking caffeine." My resolutions usually have something to do with expanding my creative base, or updating the way that I view the world, or ceasing to be so afraid all the time.

This year, I have four resolutions: 

1. Cross off four things from The Bucket List

2. Finish editing one of the last two National Novel Writing Month novels I've done. 

3. Keep a book of one wonderful thing happened each day (with a physical reminder) - something to be thankful for. 

4. Keep a 2012 box (This is something I did this year, too. I have a green 'photo box' that I bought from Target at the beginning of the year, and as the year has gone on, I've filled it with ticket stubs and letters and physical reminders of things that have been wonderful in my life. And now I can go back and look through that box and see how my life progressed). 

I'm hoping to cross of some of my Bucket List items while I'm abroad in the fall - I have plans to travel to Florence, Rome, and Venice while I'm in Italy, but I'm also hoping I can visit Greece and Austria, too. I am so excited for my study abroad trip, and I just hope that it works out as I intend for it to work. 

This year I'm also hoping to re-evaluate some of the relationships in my life. While this semester, I felt like I really needed to hold on to a lot of my high school friends, I am starting to wonder whether or not this is the time to start letting them go. We've become very different people, and we've started to want very different things. I'm not saying I want to abandon them entirely - I'm just saying maybe it's time to ease up a bit on the friendships I used to have, and start to look forward. 

Finally, this year I'm hoping to become better friends with the people I've been seeing during Friendsgiving and Friendsmas. I've known most of these guys since high school, but I wasn't friends with most of them, and we definitely weren't close. But now I've started attending these events, and getting to know them better and I think the relationships and friendships they have to offer could be really beneficial. From what I've seen, their friendships are based completely on selflessness and mutual respect. They support one another entirely in their respective endeavors, and they respect the talents each of them owns for themselves. They tease each other and they wrestle each other and they're clearly grateful for one another - to be invited to join in with that group is sort of a small honor. They make me want to better my own friendships and find people who want that kind of friendship with me. The atmosphere they create is very open and very loving. There was never I time I felt like they weren't trying to make me feel more welcome. So if I can be a part of that for even a moment...I'll take it!

I hope your New Year's is wonderful and full of new resolutions and new ideas. Now is the time to re-invent the pieces of our lives that are messy. I plan to embrace it 100%. 

Happy New Year!