Hindsight is 20/20

A look back at how my 2011 went. I know everybody who has a blog is probably doing one of these, so I won't feel bad if you think "not another one" and skip right on to the next one.

I have this unfortunate habit of thinking in terms of school years, or sometimes how old I am at the time. And since neither the first day of school, nor my birthday, happen on December 31/January 1 (although my friend's birthday does) it's sometimes a bit hard for be to think back on a year in terms of the calendar year. But you ARE my favorite reader (don't tell the other's, they'll get jealous) so I'll try just for you ;)

January:
It started out at a new years eve party and we turned on the Glee soundtrack to bug my brother. So the first 30 minutes of 2011 were amazingly awesome. But it ended in the crazy hospital for a week, so who knows where this is headed.

February:

It's shorter than the other months. I've always wondered if this gave it a complex. I got a new roommate from BYU-H. She turned out to be amazing and took pictures of everything :)

March:

This month always gets lost in a blur of midterms and depression, so I bought a ukulele to help me make it through the winter.

April:

I was introduced to Doctor Who so catching up on that kinda of took over my world. Life has never been the same and I am not complaining one bit :D

May:

I started my blog! I realize I don't write as much as I would like, but it's good to know that I'm getting my voice out there somehow. I also accidentally came out to most of my family via this blog, but they have been so amazing, so it's all good.

June:

I rekindled an old childhood friendship via Facebook that has turned out to be nothing but amazing (I love you!) and I made it through my first semester teaching statistics. I've never stayed in Utah past April before, so it was an adventure. I was drained by the end, but it was worth it.

July:

First year that aerial fireworks were allowed in Provo, so of course people in my apartment complex were shooting them off well into the night. This wasn't so bad except the swamp cooler pulled in the smoky air from outside and the fire alarm kept going off all night long. I slept through it all though.

August:

I somehow officially inherited USGA.

September:

School started again, and I was quite optimistic, given the awesomeness of the previous school year. Unfortunately my roommates saw to it that life would be quite miserable.

October:

The beginning of this month is kind of a blur...but I do remember that I cut the head off a jello bear for my birthday and I dyed my hair blue. Also my friends and I were Amy Pond, River Song, and The Doctor for Halloween :)

November:

Circling the Wagons in SLC --> lots of new friends. So many late night parties with my friends. Passing out fliers and getting in trouble. Spent Thanksgiving with the extended family here in Utah, and got to eat real food.

December:

As a reward for not dying by now I went home to visit my family. I also finally read "The Hunger Games".

Overall it was a good year. It had some really rough patches, but I'm still alive, and kickin'.

2012...prepare to get your ass kicked.

~Bridey J

I Dreamed a Dream

True story from high school:

"Hey Kaity, you took AP Psych. Wanna analyze my dream?"

"Sure, what's it about?"

"Well it's about this giant carnivorous marshmallow and it was trying to eat me..."

"Well according to my textbook it's probably about your sexual frustration."

"Well, that's awkward..."

"Yeah..."

Lately I've been obsessed with dream analysis. The events in dreams are generally outside the control of the dreamer, unless you beat the system and realize you're dreaming before you wake up, but even then control is very limited. Many studies have concluded that most people believe that their dreams will reveal the meaningful hidden truths of their lives. This causes them to act irrationally about dreams. They try to put together unrelated information so the outcome will convey some important meaning. Before I make it sound like I'm calling dreams nonsense, let me say that most of these same studies also showed that we are irrational about our dreams the same way we are irrational in our day to day decisions. We just want to make them important.

In our seemingly never ending search for meaning, people will turn to dreams for answers and explanations. Many believe their dreams are predicting future events. Much of this is accomplished by only remembering the times it worked out and not the many times it doesn't. It is easy to take a distorted memory and retrospectively fit it into a life experience. Recalling dreams is extremely unreliable anyway, even if you're not trying to prove your own supposed premonitions. Most things only come back to you when randomly triggered by some visual or audio cue. This is where Déjà vu seems to come into things.

Some may try to keep a dream journal, (I am right now) writing in it the moment you wake up, but even this may not be perfect recall. An average 95% of your dream will never be remembered, no matter how hard you try. Even the memories we have of our waking life are constantly being changed in our minds every time you recall them. Our brains are not good at storing accurate memories, only narrative ones. So every time you run through the story in your head you're rewriting it as you go and things tend to change from one time to the next. If this is how our conscious mind works, I can only imagine how the the unconscious brain reacts when it's in the middle of a REM high and all of the junk floating around in your head is unleashed while the short-term-to-long-term-memory-converting chemicals in the brain are suppressed and then it is ripped from all of this in an instant by an annoyingly loud alarm clock. I'm not quite sure how accurate what gets written down can be. I'm imagining an anti gravity chamber with millions of blobs of different colored paint floating about...and then someone turns the gravity back on and all the paints falls strait down. I feel like being asked to remember a dream is like you're being asked to reconstruct

this --> by looking at this -->

As illustrated by the short anecdote at the beginning of this blog, we are often taught that to interpret dreams we have to understand the symbolism behind certain objects or happenings in them. I once heard if you dream of loosing your hair or teeth it actually means you're thinking of your own death. Or you could take the less gruesome, but equally creepy, approach of saying it's all about sex. This all comes back to my first point, that we are trying to make our dreams important. We are trying to find meaning beyond ourselves. It doesn't matter what it might mean to someone else. It matters what you feel and what you think of when you had the dream. The only important symbols are the ones that mean something to you. (It doesn't matter that Karen Gillan has been in my dreams, but it might matter that I'm quite in love with Amy Pond...)

A friend of mine has been helping me work through my dream journal and figuring out what it all means. I don't think it's gonna tell me any deep answers of the universe or anything. It's not like I live with a giant crack in my wall or something (if you get that, gold star). But what we've found is that the brain keeps working while you're sleeping. The dream is the brain's way of thinking and working through things while the rest of you is out of the way. While the events in the dreams have all been different, the overall theme of the dreams have in fact revealed some stuff about what my subconscious mind has been thinking about the things that occur in my waking life. The thoughts and stresses of life that I often put out of my mind, or on the back burner, resurface again through my dreams. By understanding what's truly plaguing my mind I can face it, and deal with it, and understand myself better.

I've had this recurring dream since I was ten years old. It's gotten to the point where my mind immediately knows I'm not in Kansas anymore and I can control everything I do. It's quite simple really...

I'm suddenly standing outside my house, the one I lived in when I was ten. I know that I need to find my bike, so I run up to the porch. I can choose to ride around the corner or down the street, but I can't choose both. I know it's a dream and that I'll wake up soon, so I need to move fast. I need to find her, my friend I left behind. I need to reach her before I wake up...

...but I always wake up. Many times I won't do anything for a long time, because I'm sick of being tricked. But when I don't wake up and I'm still just standing there, it almost feels so real I've been convinced I was really there and started to cry...so I try it again and wake up right as I get to her house. I sometimes think if I ever really go back to visit it might take me a while to truly believe I'm there. The strange thing is, she and I finally got back in touch (thank you facebook)...and suddenly the dream I had almost every week for thirteen years stopped. I haven't had it since. And when I see her again (hopefully soon) it really will be a dream come true :D

Now if only this would happen for the dreams where I'm Superman...

~Bridey J

Standing for Something

A few weeks back I was a part of a group of students that put together a small flier that we past out on campus in response to something that was posted in the school paper. I don't want to go into all of it, because that's not what this is about.

I was passing out fliers on the south side of campus when some guy pulled up on to the sidewalk with his car and started yelling at us to move. I went up to him, not wanting to yell or argue, but to just stand up for what I was doing. In our short conversation I asked if he knew what we were doing, and why he cared so much about it to demand that it stop. He was yelling about property lines and calling the cops. When he realized his yelling was getting nowhere he said "You know, there are better things to do with your life".

You know...at that moment, I'm not sure there was. I was speaking up instead of being silent. I was leading, and doing instead of just sitting by. I was standing for something I really believe in. Simple, but real. And that made it the best thing I could have been doing with my life.

I'm not saying this to give you ideas of rallying the troops and going out and stickin' it to the Man. I'm trying to say stand up for what you believe in. Not always in such a literal sense of the word standing, and not strictly in a religious sense either. If you believe in art, share it. If you believe in words, speak them and let them be heard. If you believe in love, live it and feel it. If you believe that pajama's were invented to be worn until noon and cereal is a perfectly good midnight meal, then don't you dare let anyone tell you otherwise. I guess what I'm trying to say is do something about the things you have passion for. Stand up, and be true to you. Live it with all of your guts. That's the best way I know how to live live.

~Bridey J

Thoughts From My Head

Today, this blog comes to you in 3 parts...

PART 1: Jobs I think would be hard:

• Ventriloquist in Antarctica: The one time it's not cool to be able to see your own breath.
  
• Making the Chinese version of Scrabble: I'm not even sure how that would work.
• Being Lady Gaga's tailor: I'm not sure how hard it is to sew meat together but...
• Streetwalker in Venice, Italy: I'm picturing needing snorkel and water-wings...so sexy.
  

PART 2: Real make or break moments:

• If I'm dancing in the kitchen and singing out of key you would join me and not make me stop to put on pants first.
• You understand that cold pizza IS an acceptable breakfast food.
  
• I have an obsession with Superman...deal with it.

PART 3: Things I don't understand

• When waiters tell you "If you need anything tonight, my name is So-and-So"...what is their name if I don't need anything?
• Sunflower seeds that have no shell are said to be "shelled", while seeds with the shells still on are called "unshelled".
• Fantasy Football.
  

Thanks for reading :D

~Bridey J