Chin Up, Beautiful

I was looking through my journal, as I sometimes do, and I came across a nice passage:

"If I've learned anything this past year, it's that time goes by slowly, but yet again all too quickly. You never know who you're going to meet, or what will happen tomorrow. So chin up, beautiful. It's going to be a good day."

At the end of January 2012, one of my best friends insisted I keep a journal that only spoke of positive things. The journal started with this rule:

Don't write anything negative in here.

This is all about love and personal growth and getting back up.

Fill it with beautiful images, reaffirming thoughts and quotes.

Write in it every day and each day write something you're grateful for.

It was the first time I kept a journal with the intention of staying positive, and it's the only journal I've made it past the halfway point with. See, I used to write only negative things, or things that bugged me, and eventually, you just get tired of all the negativity. Since I started this journal, I've felt myself not only being more positive, but also being more self-confident and more able to see the good in everyone and be happy when others are happy.

If I feel myself going negative, I open the journal. If I can't write, I read. It's filled with color and glitter and smiley faces. It's my happy place. Well, that and a little ruler I have that has dancing penguins on it. 

The thing is, I didn't realize until today just how much of an effect this journal has had on the way I choose to live my life. It was a simple suggestion from a friend, and I owe a lot to her. So, as of today, I'm accepting donations to help me move to Chicago (just kidding on that donations bit...). I love Orlando, but I want a change, and I want to be closer to my best friend, Carly. I can't move until after my lease is up, and I have no idea what direction my career will be heading... but I need a goal and a dream, and that's Chicago right now.

So, for now, chin up, beautiful, it's going to be a beautiful day.

The Facebook Hills of Beans

Most people have songs randomly stuck in my head. While that happens often for me, I also get random movie quotes stuck in there as well. Today, while cleaning my apartment, the same quote from Casablanca kept popping up:

"I'm not at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

So, I stuck the movie in the player and spent the afternoon humming As Time Goes By.

This past week I deactivated my facebook for the first time since I created it back in high school. I removed it from my phone, from my Kindle, and from anywhere else that might tempt me to reactivate. It felt good not to be so connected. Even reactivating it, I'm keeping it off my phone. 

Now, there were certainly some drawbacks. I realized after I deactivated that it was my only connection to some friends living abroad that I still need to message back. Breaks at work were spent staring idly at my phone instead of scrolling through facebook updates. 

What I enjoyed, however, was that I couldn't share my random thoughts with everyone as freely. As you see, I didn't update my blog at all last week either. It all comes back to this quote: "[my] problems... don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." We spend so much time checking who's in what relationship, what pictures were posted, what everyone thought of this week's Bachelorette... sometimes I think we forget that there are more important things, or become too absorbed in distracting ourselves. 

I'll still argue that facebook can be a great communication tool. I, myself, have used it to broadcast poor road conditions or solicit prayers for causes. Let's not forget, it's a great way to keep in touch with lost friends. 

So, I reactivated, with the intention of perhaps not taking over the news feed with my own little hill of beans. Facebook, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.