Good Morning.

The morning is an odd mistress. She's lovely when the sun rises and serene as we trudge through whatever kind of weather we're experiencing at the moment, and she disregards our bitching like any boss would.

Why exactly I'm ranting like a feminist rapper, I can't answer. The reason I can't answer is cause I don't fucking know. Lay off. Its 7 am and I'm 18.

The point of this blog post as less about being hostile and more learning to love the morning, however.

This is my second cup of coffee, and the caffeine is barely beginning to rile my system, but in this strange, half-lucid state I've figured out something vitally important to a high number of the adult population: mornings don't suck. We suck.

The morning don't give a shit if you woke up at five today, or of daylight savings fucked you up. What I'd the morning but the earth turning, giving the illusion the sun rose?

Breakfast? Showers? Changing clothes? Leaving your warm and fluffy bed?

The last part is the hardest and I promise the morning won't bite after you've done it. We've just gotta stop complaining about the morning for the morning to run smoothly.

Today will be fine.

Promise.

With love,
Nick Strange.

People are Strange

The second day of remedial math during my stay in Community College this semester was a day that I missed. Stomach pains screwed me over. Badly.

And unfortunately, because of that pain, I missed a very important conflict: an elderly woman (the lines on her face suggested eighties) got into a fight with a younger woman over who would sit in the front seat.

Hilariously enough, the elderly woman did the same on the next class meeting with another woman in class in the first row. A whole new row was made to accommodate the senior citizen student.

Because of that first encounter, most people began to shrug her off as senile and ridiculous, laughing at her out calls, belittling her involvement, and downright questioning her participation in the classroom.

Until she started solving advanced logarithms in her head without need of a calculator.

We later found out she was taking classes like anatomy and chemistry along with our humble elementary algebra class.

And, strangely enough, this woman did not make a large uproar or ruckus for this gift she managed to learn. In fact, plenty still laugh off her knowledge and their lack of knowledge in that subject.

It's all in a community college: people consumed with their lives-- unintentional bitches trying to get ahead, wishy-washy geniuses dodging the bullets of adulthood, mobster administrators and the plethora of masterful, mindful teachers. 32 people attend this math class and all 32 of them see different things in it.

It sometimes feels like a good TV show.

And here I am, engrossed and fascinating and beginning to understand ideas outside of my own, really, for the first time.

And like my friends always seem to prove to me in our conversations, people and relationships are fragmented and imperfect; they are real and powerful. They mirror the bonds between atoms which make everything we know exists.

Today, I feel like I've grown.

With Love
Nikola Strange

How do you Come to Terms with Yourself?

Peter Capaldi's final remarks in his "letter to my younger self" in the website the Big Issue came to mind: "The biggest issue for my younger self will be dealing with himself."

I instantly tried to find some sort of connection to me, while simultaneously feeling a bit sad for the man and appreciating how everything turned out, realizing (slightly relieved) his young adult years are not to be mine.

Looking back at that reaction now, I can acknowledge I'm a bit self-centered, but it only makes sense: I haven't changed out of these PJs or really left my room in well over 24 hours and I've had three years of college-level metacognition beaten into my head--two of which were done during the super-impressionable high school years.

And when one grows tired of TV shows and books and big world crises, it is only natural to turn to oneself.

I mean, why not think of yourself? We're all stuck with ourselves, aren't we? We experience the universe and process all of creation as ourselves. And on an atomic level we will never really touch anything or anyone: our experience of stuff right down to color is ours alone, and no amount of loved ones will keep us from the clouded thoughts in our own heads.

I've come to think that inside ourselves, there are actually two: the ideal you, and the actual you.

As crazy as it could sound, just roll with it.

There's first, the ideal version: a product of your upbringing and exposure to societal expectations you've processed and selected for yourself. In short, the ideal you is who you want to be.

"No brainer!", right?

There's an entire industry around self-help and grabbing life by the horns and becoming the best "you" you can be!

But the real scary part happens when you realize you can't change everything.

Sure, you can make yourself drink more water, or lose the baby weight, or get back to what you once were or who you want to be. . . .but you can't change your nature.

Everyone has their flaws--grooves and crevices others fit into to fill your days up with happiness. We are, if anything, social creatures.

However, accepting those flaws is hard.

Even harder is letting go of the vices which say certain things are flaws!

Because we all want to be ideal and sometimes you just can't be.

There is an unspoken word inside of you, deep in your core and that is who you are. And that word is not changing. Not for an ideal.

And you've got to learn to live with yourself.

Enjoying your Stay.

Often times I'll find myself daydreaming about being 20 or 21 with a job and a small place somewhere. Enough to live and have some nice clothing and maybe even some fancy possessions if I save enough money.

Then I get back to life and realize I'm still 18 and on vacation after one semester of college.

That I still live with my parents and eat the food my mom cooks and have my meals played at restaurants and I go back to daydreaming with some level of illogical shame.

"Meh" both of my parents went when I mentioned this once. "You're the last one we got [in the nest]!"

"If I can't treat you, then who else?"

The sentiment is sweet. And I'll always appreciate it.

But time's a-tickin' and I'll have to occupy myself with other things as well.

I can't wait for the break to be over. I miss college! Where's the challenge?! Where's the pressures of being on your own?! Where's the life-destroying sword of Damocles?! I miss that demented game of minesweeper which came with the instilled mentality of the college shift: everything in life was at stake every time I did an art project, or wrote an essay, or took a math test!

I genuinely miss being at my wit's end all the time!

Now that there's no work to be done and no new news from my school. . . .I'm not sure what to do.

"Enjoy your stay." I tell myself. But what kind of stay is this? Nirvana isn't for me anymore, I don't think.

I'm not cut out for babysitting.

If my schedule doesn't work out I'll get a job! If it does work out, I'll stress out over that.

But right now, at this very instant?.

At least Sherlock season 3 is on.

N.S.

This Must be it, Welcome to the New Year.

New Years resolutions are the odd things we never actually finish (or sometimes even start) despite hoping and dreaming our own character will fundamentally change enough to make us do so.

They're all remnants of the child inside who wanted to party like the kids in the High School films we used to watch: we all wanted to live in the world of Mean Girls or Clueless and hoped someday something would whisk us off into that marry life.

Today, the wish of living in such a way is best (or was best) described in the phrase "#yoloSwag.

So how many of us actually made resolutions this year?

How many of us wish?

I do.

I want to read more, and think less, and have lots of adventures. I want to love myself and others more, and I want to be understood.

I want to find the TARDIS and run away, too.

I want to be okay.

My resolutions are way too abstract to be accomplished, but hey! Who cares. It's time to absorb the dreamy, glossy atmosphere or a brand new year!

2014. Here I go.

Stardust

If I could trade my art and writing skills for physical strength and a strong understanding on math, I would become an astronaut.

It seems better to just be in the void of space and learn about the stars instead of staying on this little marble.

If I seem disillusioned to you, it's because it feels like a better outcome than just being angry, even if in anger I can still feel the potential for home and change.

Or maybe I'm confusing anger for passion.

Instead of becoming passionate about the world against all odds, I'm just becoming sad.

Which is even more depressing, since I cant help but view those who don't care as bad people.

"But why would you view them as bad people?!" No one said I chose to. I'm a human being with a very narrow and linear thought process--anything highly against my ideals is viewed as "less worthy" or "bad".

If I seem nutty to you, it's because I am. We all are. Take solace in the fact you're not alone in this madness.

And because I become angry at those less compassionate than I-- because I valued that passion that came with compassion for so long--I became a nuisance.

Do I care less now? No. I'm just tired of no one understanding or being as upset?

Should this have passed years ago with me integrating into society with everyone else? Why is compassion and thinking things can and should change seen as childish, anyhow?

I can tell you now what I'm passionate about isn't a coincidence. And that it really does effect a ton if people--namely me, and everyone I've ever cared for. I'm a female minority in a state with no voting power! I focused on making myself educated because I deemed myself unlovable as a baby!* What else did anyone expect me to do?!

Maybe someday the people I live with will understand, or I'll move in with people who do.

Who knows. I'm only 18.

With love
Nick Strange.
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*what I decided the first time in picked up a Harry Potter book (elementary school; six or seven years old) is a telling sign of what we teach young girls and what my personality is: I was not barbie. I wasn't going to be popular or beautiful or loved by boys, so I decided I wanted to smart and powerful instead. I wanted to command boys and demand things from them like a boss.

And I decided I'd focus on good stuff, too.

Tonight

Tonight, my best friend turned 18.

She's the second youngest of our group of friends, and tonight she joined the ranks of the legal adults!

Only, of course, we're not actually adults. Not in behavior, anyway. Not in maturity.

We ran to one another as though it had been a million years, spoke loudly and chortled in our laughter.

Essentially, we were the annoying kids at the back of the restaurant (I am deeply ashamed).

Somewhere between catching up and emotional Disney sing-alongs, the funeral I had just went to the week before came to mind:

I saw my cousins for the first time since I was born--all fine men and women between 25-35, perpetually frozen as scrappy teenagers in the stories I heard from my parents.

Despite trying to stay on my best behavior and converse like a grown-up, they were very understanding of my childish Facebook name, slouched posture, and goofy grins.

One cousin even reminded me of all the times her and my older sister drove around for food and to check out boys! I'm not sure how she felt about my going to cons, but she didn't judge.

Juxtaposing those girl my cousin spoke of--the ones who waisted gas on "mensada y media"--to the girls and boys at the restaurant tonight, I couldn't help but laugh to myself.

Both sets were barely gaining the ability to think complexly, and we believed ourselves so mature but a year ago!

Half-serious, we joked about our de-maturing before a wiser, more honest friend laughed out "No, we just pretended to be more mature!"

When asking my mom about how normal that was, she just shook her head, saying this was the most mature thing in the world. That we're growing up just fine.

Maybe letting go is first step to really growing up.