The past few weekends I've gone home and I've made an effort to do something with as many of my friends as I had time to. It has been the most amazing experience for me. I realize now how much I've taken these friends for granted. Stacey, who inadvertantly teaches me something important every time I'm with her and makes me want to be better; Natalie, has been one of the only constants in my life and has patiently listened to me whine and ramble more than almost anyone else; Megan, who has seen me in some of my worst moods and is still my friend :P, and who will do the embarrassing, random, immature things with me without making me feel like a freak; Britney, who I realize I in fact never knew very well, but who I still consider as one of my best friends because she puts up with my nerdiness without flinching; Sarah, who even though she is much younger than me has always been an example for me through her smile and her friendliness. There are a lot of others, but these are the ones that I have been around the most and who make me the happiest to be around. There are of course my brother and my sister. Adam became my best friend after he got back from his mission, when I was actually old enough to provide him with semi-interesting conversation :P He is just as much of a nerd as me, and is the best brother I can imagine. I don't think I could have a better relationship with him and I'm very grateful for him every day of my life. I'm going to be sad when either of us gets married and moves out for good. Hopefully we'll be close our whole lives so that we can get together and be freaks. Ashley is my big sister, even though sometimes it doesn't feel that way ;P I know that I've never treated her how I should, and I always regret that. One of my biggest hopes is that I'll be able to become greater friends with her and be closer to her in the future. She influenced me a lot when I was younger, and now it's my turn to do the same. I hope that she knows how much I love her, even if I act embarrassed or condescending. That's what sisters are for, right....?
My friends are such great examples of how I should be, and I aspire to be like them more now than ever. I always kind of depended on myself for everything, but now I realize how important it is to depend on strong friends. I used to think I knew everything. Now I know that I'm ridiculous, but it's still shocking to me how backwards everything got after high school. So many people changed because they no longer had to hold onto the expectations that they had with their friends, who they saw every day. It's a lot easier to drop the ball when you don't have the expectations of others to live up to and learn from. Although I'm not saying that we should be influenced by how others think we should be, but I'm meaning that it's a lot easier to do things that would have been unacceptable just a year ago knowing that I won't have to face anyone and feel guilty. Like watching rated R movies. That is a big one for me. Not that I've gone crazy and started watching them, but it would be so easy to rationalize if I did. I've been having a really hard time not getting caught in that. In high school, when asked if I would watch a bad movie or if I would be the example and walk out, I would've said, walk out! Of course! But now that I'm somewhere where watching rated R movies is a common thing, it's a lot harder to hold to my standards. I guess that's one of the problems of growing up in such a strongly LDS community. I've been taking for granted the people around me.
I've recently also been having a problem with what I call "life boredom." My brother called it the "post-mission depression." The problem is that I have nothing major to work for right now. Sure, I'm going to college and I'm working for a degree, and I plan to get married in a few years, but those are both such long term things. I have nothing immediate to look forward to and to keep me motivated. I've graduated from high school, I've gotten my license, I've moved out, all that jazz. I've decided that I should set some short term goals to keep myself busy. One of those goals is to do more things with my friends. Like I said before, I never really did things with people during high school (Clayton being the major exception to this whole thing). I was asked to do things a lot, and I pretty much always said, no thank you :D People stopped inviting me because they knew I would say no. Irrationally, this made me kind of sad. It's what I would have done in their place, and why keep bothering to ask me if they know I'm just gonna struggle to come up with a lame reason why I don't want to? I realized that I have to start saying YES if I want to stay good friends with people. Hence the busy weekends I've been having lately. It's a little belated, but I'm having a lot of fun. I should try being social more often! Hahaha
Everybody's talking about their New Year's resolutions lately, and that's something that I've never been into much. I decided that in place of that I would do the list of things I want to do sometime in my life, and then just start working on that. That will help with my life boredom too, hopefully :P It should be fun! I'm trying to get as many people as I can to make their own, because I think it's more fun to work on them with other people. Like a couple of my friends have never had an all-nighter! That's just sad, and I would be more than willing to do something random like go glow-stick someone's yard in the middle of the night and then stay up watching movies and making mutant cookies all night with them! That would take care of something on both of our lists! I'm really excited to start working on mine, as weird as that is. I feel like I'm getting more and more immature as the days go on....it's fun! ;)
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