Turn around

"You don't have to take the broken road. You can turn around and come back home."

I've had the mentality that because I have started acting a certain way in a situation or relationship, I have to keep acting that way. I'm a writer, and I've drilled character consistency into my writing so hard that I've ended up drilling it into myself. Yet that's not how we're meant to be as humans, is it? We're meant to change, to grow. I embrace that growth if it's going to Mass more often or praying more regularly, but when it comes to living every day and changing how I act in relationships, I'm scared to change.

Honestly, will they think I'm weird if I pull back when I realize I've been flirting too much? When I've been grumpy? I get mired in my own muck and unconsciously tell myself that it's too bad for me to feel that way because once I've begun treating someone a certain way, I can't change.

Why should that stop me from changing anyways if it's RIGHT? It shouldn't. In theory, I'm willing to try this change, but in practice, I feel so weak.

Politicians probably feel like this a lot. When they make a mistake, it's held over them for their entire career, even if it happened decades ago. How is that fair? Humans are meant to change! Regardless of my hold-up with it, change for the better is to be encouraged, and it is definitely not impossible! If people don't believe that, people will never change for the better because they'll believe they can't.

You don't have to be stuck in a rut. You can turn around. You can change. And one of the ways that you can help others and yourself to do it too is to believe that you and they can.

-Tina

I Am A Dreamer

I spoke to the manager of a Panera Bread about my application for a job there today. Relatively normal? Yes. Normal for me? No. I've never talked to a manager before or followed up a job opportunity seriously. It was kind of scary. Thinking of working there this summer is even more scary, but I want to do it.

The reason that I want to do it is because I want to embrace life and live it to the full. I am so bad at that from day to day. See, I've got these big dreams-- really huge dreams, actually, but I don't really do much with them. I do school, go on the computer, but I do not motivate myself to go above and beyond and seize the day. I want to be a screenwriter, but when do I write screenplays? Not so much.

This should change.

Seizing the day is not living in the normal. It's living for God and fulfilling your duties in life to the fullest, and appreciate everything you've got and every opportunity you've got when it's there by taking it. That's not to say to overwork yourself, but I'm more in danger of underworking myself, of not realizing my potential. Of not realizing my dreams.

There's another connection to my post title that I found this week, and I'd like to share it with you. It's a poem.

Dreamers
by Siegfried Sassoon

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.

-------

It's a really sad poem. It is. It makes me cry. But it throws things in perspective. Soldiers dream of doing normal things, and you better believe that if they had the chance to be home instead of on the front lines in that horror, they would live their days to the full. I want to do that, to live like everything is precious.

I want to do more than just dream. I want to act.

-Tina