Postcard, Love, & Self-reflection

I love snail mail, and it shows with the amount of cards/letters/packages that I take time to handwrite and ship out to friends. But what's even better than making and sending out snail mail is receiving it! I got a postcard from Paris from my beloved best friend and it made my day. I love reading the personalized messages that take more effort to write out with pens than just typing on a keyboard. This is not to be interpreted that I dislike emails and other forms of faster communication, but something about knowing another person took time out of their busy day to hand-write a card JUST for you makes me smile (and feel important). So, thanks TRACY!!

Besides snail mail, I love LOVE. Not the sexual definition of love, but "true wov", erh, love (yes, I was watching Princess Bride recently). I love the different stages of relationships and falling in love. I love hearing of the pursuits and the triumphs, as well as the pitfalls that offer lessons to be applied to life in general. I love hearing about the romance of others, to the kindness both parties offer each other. I love hearing about romantic firsts and the stories of unique and special engagements. I love wedding ceremonies and hearing the promises that are made for a marriage. Basically, I just love LOVE. Where is all of this coming from?

1.) I love Jeremy. I surprised myself yet again when I re-realized how much I truly love him. And I always wonder if it's possible for people who have been dating for over 5 years to still discover new things about their partners that they love, and if they're able to still continue to fall in love with each other instead of out of love. Well, I think it's possible. It's always a positive when you sit back to contemplate your loving relationship and acknowledge that you're more in love with your significant other now than you were at the first "I love yous". (Sorry for my vomit-inducing lovey doveyness...)

2.) I love my best friends (and friends). As cliche as it may sound, without them I would not be where I am and who I am today. They give me strength and encouragement and offer me comfort when I need it the most. Distance and money are always factors that may divide and separate friends, but love and the true appreciation and caring for one another is what keeps friends close.

3.) I love my parents. Offering me intellectual, physical and emotional support throughout my life is not an easy task. No one is perfect, but they're pretty close to it. Not to mention, have always taught me to try seeing the good in everyone I meet even if I've already seen the worst.

Self-reflection is something I've had a love/hate relationship with. I've gone through times when I refused to look inwards to find solutions/causations of problems, and times where I've ignored outside influences and instead focused on myself to make choices. I think self-reflection is something that everyone should do at some point in their lives, and my courses have already made me begin increasing my self-awareness. So, I apologize in advanced if a lot of my future (and recent) entries have been somewhat self-reflective.. I'll try to keep most of them fun and light-hearted :)

Red pen nerd

Now that I've been to the first class for all three of my courses, I can write more about my graduate student experience.

I think I tend to over-worry, over-stress and over-analyze everything in my life, which sometimes leads to, for lack of better creative terms, "system overload". I like to keep track of everything that needs to be done, and have always been like this with my list making and planner keeping. So I decided to keep my academic life organized by marking important deadlines on a calendar. Well, after doing that for all of my classes last night, I had a small panic attack. The workload starts off fairly light with only 3 -5 deadlines for September, leading into about 8 or so for October and then exploding into 3 - 5 things due per week for November. My red pen that I was using to mark these deadlines seems to have died after being abused to mark down November deadlines. I think next semester I should use blue or purple pen instead since these colors are less associated with stress/danger and more associated with happiness/serenity.

I've decided to dive straight into these courses though and have been doing a decent job on keeping up with the readings (about 2 - 3 chapters per class per week, which are not marked with the red pen on my calendar) and have already written 2 pages of the 3 - 5 page paper due for next Tuesday's class. I've spent at least 2 hours a day reading and studying as well.

I need to remember to just breathe and relax sometimes;That I have ample amounts of time to complete the readings and get the papers and projects done. It's hard to remember that with all this red pen intimidating me though...