how to fertilize a soul

i've decided to make a recipe on how to grow an exuberant soul. i feel as if my growth has been lacking a little bit lately, the activities i have been involving myself in have been slightly soul-sucking.

1. know your soul: or i guess i should say continually strive to get to know yourself because as i mentioned in my previous post, life is constantly changing, therefore so is your soul.

2. treat your soul with kindness: the best advice i ever heard is to treat yourself like you would a child--precious, because it is, be on your own team

3. treat other souls with kindness: kind of self-explanatory

4. engulf your passions: as long as it is good, it will bring you happiness (of course this does not include such things that would book a ticket into prison and/or some other kind of involuntary confinement)

5.  love: whatever--people, animals, books, poetry, music, dance, art, science, grey's anatomy, whatever

obviously i don't know everything, i'm only 23. but life is meant to be beautiful, even with the unfortunate mets of grief. as with most recipes, adjust to fit your taste. suggestions welcome.

"whatever is good for the soul, do that." --anon

cheers.

life is in session

life changes really fast. especially when you don't want it to. you know that quote, i don't know who it's by, but it says something like, "isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different?"

i feel like life for my family has flipped a 180 four times over. not that it's a bad thing, it's just a thing. like lots of other things are just things. and that's the way it is and always will be. but change is a strange thing. it just happens and then suddenly you realize what all is happening and you begin to see that this is your life and everyday will be different and because of that, you are different, and the world is different, which means the people around you are different, or at least the way you see them because you have changed. and your life. and i think it's important to embrace change if that change is a good thing. but isn't it crazy how if you hit pause for just a moment, and look back one year ago, you see such an evolution. sometimes i try and put myself back a year ago to see if i ever would have predicted where i would be now, and i don't think i could have. i knew my life would be different, but not in this way. which makes me think, where will i be one year from now? or two? or ten or thirty-five and onto fifty? and where will the world be? and my family? and my dear little dog taking up half of my bed whilst snoring and twitching. but then you must hit play again; for life waits for no one. oh what a difference a year makes.

my baby sister is a senior in high school. my sister just older than that left for college, in hawaii. rough life. my sister just younger than me passed her one year wedding anniversary and has a runty dog that runs sideways, and my older sister has been married three years and has a rockstar husband. i am still floating in this vortex of life still deciding which new place to stop and settle for awhile. i don't know when all this happened.  

this post should probably be a new years post but why wait? "LIFE IS IN SESSION!" (bless if you know what that's from). besides, like mentioned in previous posts, i am a large percentage abnormal, so why wait for december 31 or january 1 when you can post here and now on september 22 at 1 something in the morning? plus, if i waited until the end of the year, think of all those months of waited anticipation for such nonsensicality (word?) when i could post this now and gift many more absurd and useless brain waves to the internet that enter my head beginning september 22 at 2 something in the morning. it's a public service, really.

so although i have no idea where me or my family will be one year from today, i have some hopes. i hope each day i will be a little more brave, a little more kind, a little less selfish. i hope my family, through all our difficulties, will cling to each other, i hope the world has a little more happiness.

so embrace change, because exciting things are happening. 

borderless

i've posted this before and took it down. but up she goes again. i'm not sure why.


i've been thinking.

i've been coming to a crossroads in my life in whether or not i should choose the smoothest course, steady as the beating drum. thankfully, i don't have to make a decision on marrying kocoum because let's be real, i can't be expected to make all these kinds of decisions at once cause, you know, i mean, that would be too much.

how do you know? how do you ever really know to-be-sure-without-a-doubt-100%-full-on-positive what you should do with your life, in the case that one decision is not better than the other? if multiple things are all good, which do you pick? i know it requires a lot of prayer and faith, but it has been made known to me that you never really know what is right, until you make a decision.

i decided not to take the smoothest course. i decided to see what the dream giver has for me and i am taking the road less traveled by. and i am choosing everything. i cannot possibly comprehend what 'everything' is but maybe it's just an infinite.

for seventeen years of my life i was a ballerina. and oh i love(d) it so. every moment of every day was consumed by the thought of ballet and performing (except for during calculus because i don't have einstein's brain capacity, although we do share the same birthday. so that's information). and what a dream it was when that passion became my career. i consider myself extremely lucky and fortunate to have been able to do what i love for a living. and during college? seriously lucky. but it came to a point when i thought about who i was, i only knew myself as a dancer. i only fit into that tiny category in this big big world and i couldn't bear the thought of one day dying and never knowing the other sides of me.

so i made a choice to no longer stay where i was at. and it was the hardest thing i've ever done. i began to see myself as one of those number paintings, you know, where each section has a number and that number goes with a certain color. i was a giant painting where only the red had been filled in. i am a dancer, and i always will be. i am going to keep dancing, but not at the expense of not filling in other colors.

so what are the other colors?

buckle up, here's where my brain is going to get a bit crazy. so... everybody grows up imagining what they're going to be when they "grow up." whatever that is. people spend years training to be one thing, such as i did. world class chefs, doctors, painters, architects, dancers, musicians, actors, lawyers and generally, for the remainder of their life, they are known as such. everybody finds their way into a category in this world but what i don't understand is why we define ourselves by such.

it's like the world is a control freak. the world is obsessed with being organized and even those of us who don't think we are organized, are, because we try so hard to get into our desired category that gives us that sense of homeostasis. and i'm not just talking about professions, we classify ourselves according to a zillion different things like personality types or looks or whatever. and really what's the point? so we can look at the world and give ourselves a giant thumbs up saying, "congratulations! you're all sorted!"

?

i mean, i understand that it's nice to know where you fit so you can find people with whom you relate, but other than that, it just seems like a way to compare ourselves to other people.

what if i don't want to be known as one thing? what if i want to be a doctor who knows how to dance and acts on the side, can play the cello and my sisters' weddings, writes books on the weekends, spends every other month traveling the world, and devotes an entire day once per week to binge watching grey's anatomy without being hygienically acceptable? and what if i find that i love training horses or grooming dogs or gardening or baking or i am unexpectedly good, or more likely terrible, at talking to complete strangers and i never know? i want to be multiple things, and good at those things. i don't want to be sucky in a jillion things; i want to work hard and constantly be improving on whatever i decide to do. if i am any of the things listed above, i want to be the best in it as i can be.

but then i think, why does the world need to know everything about me? shouldn't it be enough to wholly know myself? it should be, so maybe it's ok if the world only knows one side of me, because at least i know more? if there is more.

i don't want to be one thing in this world. and if i have to be classified, i want it to be within myself so that i may know everything about me and who i am. i don't want to fit into one idealized category. unclassifiable. i want to keep that part of me that i know so well alive and close to my heart, but it's time i get to know the other areas as becomingly as i know the dancer side.

so i guess, get ready, self.

streNG(k)TH

people often talk about being strong in difficult situations. they say, "i can't believe how strong you are" or "i could never do what you do" or that popular quote all over pinterest that says "you never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have." what does that even mean? what is strong? i don't think that there has ever been a tough time that i have gone through where i have felt like, yeah i am so strong right now! it's more like scraping just to get through and survive.

the other day when i was at the gym, there was a man there running around the track. this man was an amputee, with only one leg. as he was running, i could hear him grunting and moaning in what sounded like agony. i'm sure he was in pain, running hurts enough as it is, and he was doing it with a prosthetic. yet he kept going. i watched him go around and around and he just wouldn't quit. he sat down a few times to rest and then got right back up and it blew my mind. i kind of got emotional watching him because his tenacity was unrelenting, my heart ached for him and the pain he must have been feeling. obviously it was his choice to keep going, but i don't know if it was because he thought he was "strong."

i think everybody has strength they cannot see themselves. it's kinda like when you look at yourself in the mirror and you can't really even see your features anymore because you've looked at them a zillion times over. but they are there and they are unique and other people who are not you, can see every single one of them. they admire what we ourselves can't see anymore. maybe the reason we can't see our own strength is because we need other people. it makes sense doesn't it? if we could do everything on our own, why have families and friends? that would be a sucky life. so maybe the people that are in our lives are there because they have the ability to see what we can't see in our own reflections, and because they are there, we get through it.

and i think when other people see our strength, is often when we feel our weakest. have you ever looked back at an experience that was horrible to go through and marvel that you even got through it? like how on earth was i able to muster up all that strength to endure that? and then you look at someone going through their trial and are in awe because they don't stop. we can see them but we can't see ourselves. it's so frustrating that we can't see it because it really is a less-than-desirable feeling to feel like you're lacking and forty-seven steps behind.

human instinct is to survive, but we don't give ourselves enough credit for having the guts and perseverance it takes to do that. we are experts at pointing out how inadequate we are and fail to recognize the capability and strength.

you know, i don't think it's exactly a "good" thing to feel weak sometimes, but i do think in many ways it is a lot more beneficial than feeling strong all the time. it makes you grow in three dimensions rather than two. so maybe that's the point.

 

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um

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the abyss

huffpost.com

so, this post might be kind of deep.  but as i said before, i'm different and think about strange things at strange times. sometimes i feel like i have so much to say that words are spilling out of my brain uncontrollably. like drool..... when you're sleeping. my blog is probably starting to look like a john green shrine but what else is about it?? so this quote got me thinking, which is probably the point of strings of words such as this. i'm not hurting right now but i, along with everyone else that has and will ever live, have felt pain.

i'm not sure i even want to write about this because i don't want to seem disappointed in my life or anything, but if this quote is trying to say anything, it's that pain is real and there is no point of trying to make it go away or pretend like it never happened. it did, so let's move on.

about three years ago, i broke. i felt like everything had cracked and that one more poke would make me shatter completely. my body was literally shaking and i couldn't breathe and i felt like my mind couldn't comprehend what was going on. for weeks, my mind couldn't focus on anything except what had happened. i was angry and confused and hurt and to be honest, felt completely ridiculous for feeling that way. why was i letting one thing affect me so profoundly? so i faked like i was fine, but i was not at all fine. unless you use the italian job's definition (Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional). so there i was, going about my daily business, trying not to think, pretending it didn't matter, but thinking about it even more since i was trying not to think. which is insane because if something is taking that big of a percentage of your brain power, IT OBVIOUSLY MATTERS. it took me a long time to move past it, almost a year i think. but even now when i look back on that, i feel a little silly because that part in my life doesn't have any value to me in the sense that it has the power to hurt me again. which doesn't mean that wasn't real and that it didn't matter. it was very real and that time matters to me immensely because it forced me to become more. it forced me to glue together all those cracked pieces and i'm not talking about the cheap elmer's glue that doesn't really work so well. i'm talking like e6000 tough or jet glue that you use to make those pointe shoes hard as a rock, for at least a few more rehearsals, tough. now i'm no hulk but i think i am pretty darn strong (in the metaphorical way of course, i haven't exercised in some time so i'm afraid all my muscles have gone a bit soft). stronger than i was before, and i feel like i learned loads of valuable lessons that i couldn't have gained any other way.

basically, i believe that we are not given trials that we can't handle. God knows us and our potential and He helps us get through whatever comes our way, even when it seems insane and unbearable. it hurts and that sucks but pain is real and the only way we can learn from it, is to accept it, feel it, and let ourselves grow from it. and if i look at it that way, i'll be "on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend."

see what i did there?
r.i.p. gus

weird

sometimes i think i am a really weird person. like i'll be doing something or say something and be completely weirded out. i think about all these weird things and i have all these weird things that i do but then i think, i can't possibly be the only one like this? or maybe i am. whatever. but weird is phenomenal. weird is being so comfortable with yourself that you break out of society's comfort zone. so why wouldn't i want to be strange? weird people are the ones that experience great things because they aren't as afraid. so by all means, BRING ON THE WEIRDNESS. actually don't. because i think that the real definition of "weird" is to work so hard to make other people think that you aren't weird. and in that sense, i do not want to be weird. i just want to be myself, but a larger, more full version. one that is oozing out of every pore with life. i want to be obese in myself. how's that for imagery?

when i was little, i had a show that i would put on for my family. the "mr. weirdo show." it started out with trying to make a paper doll and my pen wouldn't work or something so i got really frustrated and just scribbled all over to make the ink come. that resulted in some kind of creature with one small ear and one big ear with all sorts of random pen marks made of hot pink cardstock paper and given the name, mr. weirdo. also, the scissors i used to cut him out were a bit dull so he never had a smooth figure. not that anybody has a smooth figure in real life anyway. so, i used to put on a play with him, my stuffed bunny (creatively named Bunny) and whatever other animals and dolls we had around the house. they were fantastic shows, probably brought down the house. may have been a little odd, but who cares?


be you, be true.

pc slowrobot.com

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p.c. unknown

journal entry

this is a written-out thought-process post.

an essay.

which is what blogging really is if you take a second and think about it. a collection of FREELY WILLINGLY written essays done at such times as this (this being ten o'clock on a sunday evening) without the panic of a due date in the coming morning. unless you get paid to blog. which i don't. but some people do. and that is an odd thing to me. people get paid to write little essays or journal entries about their life and the topics are totally no-brainer because your life is something you don't have to research or cite your sources on.

hopefully.

just relived moments of your life, displayed in a lovely-written way posted on the WWW for any jack and jill to see. it is an odd occupation. some people are great at it and lucky to have it be their job. i myself love a good blog read. because if you really do think about it, we are curious beings and we LOVE to know about other people's lives. why else would there be so many celebrity gossip tv shows and magazines out there? sure, most of them are a waste of time and no one really cares if this celebrity went to this beach and wore this outfit (heaven forbid) more than once.

but it sucks us in.

and IF YOU REALLY THINK ABOUT IT, aren't tv shows/movies/books the exact same thing? perhaps the characters are fictitious but we read and watch because we want to know about these other lives. i have this theory that people have this yearning to live as many lives as possible. i do anyway. my dream is to live a hundred different lives and remember everything about each one. it is far less embarrassing to get caught up in fiction stories than real people. you can't be considered a stalker if the person doesn't really exist. it's like a loophole in life. a way of living x number of lives in the time limit of one life. pretty brilliant.

which leads to the start of this whole collision of thoughts. i just read a book, which zillions of other people have read, i'm sure. paper towns. john green. and i just can't stop thinking about it. so really, i just am writing so i can keep thinking without just sitting and staring. but i think i figured out why people love his writing so much. when i was buying the book, the cashier and i were talking about how much we loved his work, and in paraphrase she said to me, he makes you feel things you don't want to feel. that's how you know you haven't wasted your time, when you've felt something you didn't think you would.

how true is that? we hate and love to feel things. we hate to feel devastation and heartache and loss but we choose to read, watch and honestly experience it. we love happiness and love and peace, and again choose to experience it. we are so complicated.

so paper towns. i'm not going to be THAT PERSON that spoils the book in the rare chance that this blog entry comes up when "paper towns" is googled. i made this blog for a school assignment and even when i google my name, it doesn't come up. the only ariel wright that the internet knows is a track runner at brown university, who as much as i wish it was, is not me. so i estimate the probability of google finding this is 0.07%. i will say that the book did not end how i thought it would, which is real life. life is never what you think it is going to be and thank heaven for that. what a far less interesting life that would be. what i got out of the book is that the end is not what really matters, but how you get there and everything you learn along the way. i mean, isn't that God's plan? to come to earth and learn and experience and grow and of course we want to end up back with Him, that is so important, but we are here to succeed, make mistakes and be brave enough to just have faith and live. and i think even if someone isn't religious, they feel the same way. anyway, i felt as if this book is kind of where i'm at right now. there is a quote in there that i love saying, "it's so hard to leave, until you leave. then its the easiest [*] thing in the world." i think that can relate to a lot of things, not just physically packing up and moving someplace else, but moving on in a different direction in your life. and it's terrifying to do it. recently i have left a few things in my life and it was the hardest, most freeing thing i have ever done. but now my life is open to endless possibilities. ADVENTURE IS OUT THERE!

*side note, paper towns is being made into a move coming out in 2015, so if any casting director happens to come upon this post, take note that i would love to be a part of it. (re-insert section containing probability of this post showing up at all)

my thoughts are getting all frayed out again. i should change the name of this blog from "bits of this and that" to "bits of unresolved and irrelevant thoughts"

read the book. there are crass moments, but it is very thought provoking.

tschüss!

kidisms

i teach the ctr4 class in my ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. it is my most favorite calling. i love sharing time and singing time and head-shoulders-knees-and toes to get wiggles out, but most of all i love the cute things they say every week. i also teach little kids at jacqueline's school of ballet, and even though we don't have singing time while doing ballet, they still say the darndest things. here are some:


"i just like my brothers and sisters but i hate to play with them." (starts crying)

me: "h, will you come hold this picture for me?"
h: "no i don't like to help anyone."
me: gives picture to someone else to hold.
h: (starts crying) "i never get a turn to hold the picture."

"hey [h], my mom said we can't wrestle in church today."

 (looking at a closed door on the other side of the room) "teacher, is that where they keep the chickens?"

s: "do you have a husband?"
me: "no."
s: "why not?"
me: "because i haven't met the right person yet."
s: "all you have to do is go pick someone."
-_-

r: "do you have a boyfriend yet?"
me: "nope, not yet."
r: "like seriously? even i have a boyfriend." (age 9)

"teacher, are you 100?"

l stars crying. s sees l crying. s and l are best friends. s starts crying because l is. now everyone cries because everyone else is crying.

me: "we have to hold our rotators reeeeally tight so they can get strong, so i want you to pretend you have a diamond in between your bum cheeks. don't drop it or it will break. ok?"
k: "like a diamond in the rough?"
me: "yes, exactly"
k: "how about we hold aladdin in our bum cheeks instead?"

(during sharing time) "teacher, look at my spiderman underwear!"

(during a barre exercise) "we are farmers, bum ba dum bum bum bum bum!..... i'm so beautiful."

hmm.

serendipity

have you ever felt like everything is about to change? that sounds so cliche... but i feel like i am waiting for a serendipitous moment to happen and i have no idea when or what that moment will be. it's quite a frightening feeling, but at the same time so incredibly exciting. my whole life has consisted of the same things, which is perfectly fine. it was a beautiful steady rhythm that i loved but now it's as if that rhythm has been jostled and i'm wide awake...i'm falling from cloud nine do do do do do do.......i don't really know that song tbh.

...ok

i finally graduated! maybe that's why i feel this way. during commencement i cried like a baby on the inside but not on the outside because my mom has a tele-photo lens and the last thing i wanted to remember about that day is how swollen my eyes look, especially when my mascara has run down making me look like i had just gotten in some daunting fight in the school lunchroom. no. that's not what i want to remember. i want to remember how my dress had no pockets so the only places i could keep my phone was awkwardly in my bra, making it look rather oddly shaped, or tucked up in my gown sleeve which i didn't like either. aaaand that's just some information.

in all seriousness. since graduation, i feel like tris, from divergent, right after she jumped off the building into that great big hole of unknowness (?). and it's unnerving. i would feel a lot better if i knew there was something as great as Tobias down there. fingers crossed. thanks in advance for your prayers. i have a few ideas of where i'm hoping i'll end up but i don't want to jinx it by saying anything until i've landed, or at least gotten a more clear vision

in other words, this post was kind of a waste.

a few thoughts on dreams...

even years are my favorite years. every time they come around, i, along with however many billion of people are on the earth, get to see a bit of history being made and we witness people achieving miracles. the whole world coming together, even though it is just for a couple of weeks, for games.

i think i have become an olympic junkie.

all i want to do these days is be at home and watch, even the sports that i have no idea what in the world is going on, like biathlon. i think that is what it is called? the one with the skiing and the rifles? i went to the olympics back in 2002 when they were in salt lake city and that was the event i saw, except i was far more interested in taking photos of the olympic signs than actually watching what was happening. anyway...

my point is, watching all of these athletes that have sacrificed their entire lives for a chance of achieving their dreams is incredible. it's inspiring. and i want that. not an olympic gold because obviously that will never happen (although i do daydream about being an ice skater every once in a while). but i crave that moment where i know that everything i have done in my life up until now, has been worth the time spent. now i sound like i feel as if my whole life has been a waste, which I DO NOT believe. it's just that, if i could inspire someone as those athletes have inspired me, how incredible would that be? just a moment of making someone else want to do more and be a bit better, i think the whole world could use more of that, even on the odd years.

ballet has been my life since i was six years old. i believe it is one of the most beautiful art forms on this entire planet, there is nothing else like it. i dreamed of dancing on a huge stage in new york dancing with american ballet theater doing my dream role of juliet. that hasn't happened. i dance with a small professional company, on a pretty good sized stage, having never danced the role of juliet, but i realize it has been exactly what i needed. dreams change.

i am graduating within the next couple of months, and i swear it will be one of the best days of my life. but i have been blessed enough to get a degree while dancing with a professional company. getting through my degree has been a long road, but rewarding at the same time. it has taken me an extra four semesters to graduate with my bachelors of fine arts in ballet for various reasons. at first i was upset about this. i didn't want to spend forever in school, especially when people i started the degree with were able to graduate on time. i wanted to just be done with it and start living my life, whatever that meant. i didn't know, i still don't. but i know i want it to be something inspiring.

in these extra semesters, i have forced myself to take classes that interest me, but are outside of my comfort zone. i have come to the realization that my life is up to me and my biggest fear is not living it to the fullest. i started taking some acting classes, and have fallen in love with it. i love that terrifying feeling of performing a monologue or scene in front of a class of students who have done this for most of their lives. i would love to continue it and be in films and explore the way other people feel through different ways in pathways other than through dance.  dance is still a huge part of my life, and i am nowhere near being done with it, but performing emotions in a foreign way that i have never done before excites me. it's an art form that i have never experienced, but have at the same time. elements such as emotion and playing different characters on stage are the same, but having to use my voice? that's unexplored territory.

have you ever looked at all the people around you and wondered what their life is like? what experiences they have been through, what their dreams are? maybe not. i do though.  i want to live a hundred lives and experience everything. i want to know all i can in this terribly short life. i want to travel. i want to learn to play the cello. i want to dance and choreograph and act in movies. i want to read. i want to learn languages. i want to try something i've never done before. i never want to stop growing. i want to feel this excitement that happens on the even years, every year, every day.

i don't exactly know what i am trying to say, but i doubt anyone will be reading this anyway, except for me, and it makes sense in my head... so if there is anyone out there reading this, take from it what you will.