Selflessness is a Mistake

Sometimes you hurt more people by being selfless than by being selfish.

This thought came to me today. It’s hard to do what you think is right when it hurts yourself… and a lot of other people in the process. I’ve come to realize that this summer I became a much better person and this is because… I am a little more selfish. Funny. I had never thought that actually caring about myself could make so many people happy.

Because when you let someone take advantage of you, you’re really hurting all of the people that really care about you.

I make people smile all the time now.

On Friday someone said to me, “Every time I see you, I smile. You’ve made my day twice today…”

It makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I’m doing what I’m actually meant to do. Because my job is to make people happy.

I am the Seventeenth Star, after all.

So in the words of Dia Frampton “Make a resume… all the things that make up who you are.”

So make a list of all the reasons why it’s okay for you to be a little selfish.

Why you should love you.

Why other people should love you.

(Link To Dia's Blog!)

Here’s the beginnings of my list:

• I love to make people smile.
• I have pretty good grammar.
• I’m a decent writer.
• I have good taste in music.
• I have a lot of friends.
• I am eccentric.
• I write this to try and make my reader’s happy, to make me happy. I am being selflessly selfish and THAT makes me awesome.

Make your list! Love thyself! But don’t forget your friends and family, too. Hehe.

 

Until we meet again under the blue moon,

Alyce

As The World Spins

This title is funny to me because I'm sick.
Every time I stand up, everything spins.

I finally got bored of just lying in bed and decided to try some writing. I have to write something for my school's literary magazine because I'm on the staff so I figured that I could write something pretty good while I'm still delirious. By the way... I'm the prose editor of the school's lit mag. I was super excited when I found out. I think that I was the only person who celebrated when they found out what job they got. Everyone else was very quiet, but I forced my friend Ethan to celebrate with me in the back of the classroom. He was really too distracted by this contest thing that he was working on to really care, but I still enjoyed my little party.

Anyway, so after I write this I'll try to write something for the magazine... I'm not really sure what I'll write at this point, but that's why I'm typing this blog. To get the juices flowing.

But it's sort of hard to think when I'm this hungry...

I have photoshop and a new laptop. This means that I can once again pick up photography. I couldn't really before because my computer had far too much stuff on it so it wouldn't let me edit photos... But now that I have the laptop and PhotoShop CS4... Muahahaha. I'm excited. I wanted to go downtown this weekend to take pictures. We'll see how that works out.

Can I just express how awesome this year has been? I mean my senior year, not exactly 2010... Well, 2010 has been better, too. I love all of my classes, my friends, I'm even happy with my family. It's been decided that Junior year just suuuucks. Everyone I talked to hated their Junior year of high school. Except for my mom, she enjoyed all of high school.

My ipod has pretty much officially died. I can listen to it at night and early in the morning, but by lunch time when I go to the grocery store to get chicken, it freezes and stops working. I restart it and it still helps nothing. This makes me very sad considering that my computer just bit the dust and now my ipod has. My mom is letting me use my dad's, though. I was really getting sick of listening to the Veronica Mars soundtrack... It's the only CD that I keep in my car and I refuse to listen to the radio.

Something else random... I was on the cover of the last issue of our school's newspaper and this time I have an article on the inside... I'm not even on staff. Haha. I had no idea that I was going to be in the newspaper. It's an article on itunes, digital music, and the death of CDs. I wrote it for my Government class as a letter to the editor of the Salt Lake Tribune... Next thing I knew, it was in our school's newspaper. Too bad they spelled my name wrong. :P

I don't know if I've ever talked about Christina before, but we were best friends through elementary school and through Middle School. She went to a private school in eighth grade and... I sort of lost her. Not just her, but her family too. Her little brothers and sisters were a lot like my own siblings. And after she went to that other school, she made a few bad decisions and I didn't see much of any of them...
I saw her a few times...
In and out of rehab...
With this boyfriend, with that one...
She even went to my high school for awhile...
Which was hard for me...
I cried a lot.

She was always worth so much more than she made herself out to be.
I surround myself with talented people because I am not talented.
I'm just good at being a friend, I suppose.
And writing. I guess that I'm good at writing.

Christy finally moved back with her family recently. I saw her for the first time in a good while yesterday and... It was very nice. It like like elementary school all over again. I had my best friend back, even her family. I visited her family and they all seemed really happy to see me... I was really happy to see her brothers and sisters. They've grown. It was weird. I'm happy that they all remembered me. Jacob still hadn't changed. Zach was taller, but he was just the same too. Misty is... making things hard on herself, but she seems to be fine. Courtney is just as I remembered her, but she was wearing much less purple. And Brandy was as quiet as ever, but still as sweet.
Her parents were the same too. Her dad was on the computer playing some game. He was always a computer wiz. And her mom was watching some millionaire version of the bachelor. Which made me laugh. It was nice to see everything functioning... It was a little quiet now that the kids are older, but nothing had really changed that much.
I was happy that I cried on the way home.
I had my best friend back.

Of course, I still have Rachel and Lulu. They're my best friends too. I hope that maybe the four of us can all do stuff together.

I finished Mass Effect 2. I kept everyone alive. I am awesome. And so is the game.

I really think that that's all... I went to see a Sundance movie... Homewrecker. It was really funny. I liked it.
I also saw Sherlock Holmes. Awesome.

Heheh.

Until we meet again under the blue moon,
Alyce


Oh, and. The Stars. On my birthday. It was one of the best days ever. My friend Kelsey had a bunch of people sign their names on little colored paper stars and she put them in an envelope and that said, "Alyce's Constellation" on it... When she handed it to me in front of my theatre class, I just about cried. I felt myself tearing up and had to try REALLY hard not to cry. Best birthday present I've ever gotten.

So thank you everyone. Thank you.

Especially Kelsey. :P

The Hunger Games

Have you ever realized while reading a book that this author must have been watching your nightmares?

Yesterday in my sixth period my adolescent literature teacher lent me the book The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I started to read it during class and was immediately enthralled. I was attached to that book for the rest of the day and from the minute I got home until eleven that night, I devoured the novel. I finally had to go to bed at one point, but finished the last three pages in my AP French class this morning.

It was incredible. I don't think that I've ever cried so much while reading a book, and I read a lot of books.

It was like someone took all of my worst fears. The nightmares that I've been having over and over again and written them down beautifully into a novel. It was almost therapeutic for me, reading it. I feel utterly calm now. I even had the same nightmare again, but instead of being completely terrible... There was laughter. Nice laughter. Even my best friend's sock monkey was in the dream. It was on the verge of a dream. I miss those. Not that I've ever had many of them.

I suggest that you read it. It's written in first person present tense which reminds me of one of my favorite novels A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray.

I wanted to get the sequel today, but my teacher didn't have it. "Tomorrow," she said, "Tomorrow morning." I find myself itching to read book two. She says that the second is even better... I find that hard to believe.

So read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and let me know what you think. I've been dying to talk to someone about it.

Until we meet again under the blue moon,
Alyce

Birthday II

I totally fogot to mention that my friends are going to all wear stars on my birthday. I'm excited.

It's symbolic. A metaphor?

My life is a constellation. My friends, family, memories, experiences... They make up the constellation. They're the stars.

Not to mention that I just like stars.

So for anyone who cares or for anybody that just wants to feel connected to someone else. Wear stars on monday. Or draw a star on your hand. Tape or pin one to your shirt.
And when people ask you why...
Tell them that you're part of a constellation.
Tell them that you're a star. That you bring light to somebodies life.
Whether it be mine, or a friend's, or a sibling's, a parent's, a lover's... It doesn't matter. The fact is that somewhere out there you make SOMEONE happy.
And because of that, you are connected to that person.
And they're connected to someone else.
And somehow... You are connected to me.

So when people give you a strange look, or maybe they'll smile.
Just remember that you're a part of something. You're connected.

Anyway. That's pretty much it.

If someone that I don't know or don't see during my day wears stars... Send me a picture. :)

Until we meet again under the blue moon,
Alyce :)

Birthday

My birthday is on Monday. February 1st. It's sort of crazy, thinking about it.

In six days I cannot legally beat someone up.
Is it bad of me to want to hit someone? I've just never really hit a person... Excuse me for wanting to experience things!
Haha, anyway. I just thought that I should give my seven followers a quick update. I promise to write something more meaningful in the near future, it's just late right now and I need food.

I saw the Princess and the Frog today. Loved it. If you like Disney movies you should see it.
I'm working on writing a song. We'll see how this'll work out. The lyrics are nearing their end, but I'm waiting to post them here for when they're mostly perfect.
I've joined a band. Kind of. Me, Lulu, and Nova. It's pretty awesome. We'll either call ourselves Blue Alien Syndrome or Project Ink. I like Project Ink more, easier for people who don't know BAS to relate to, but we'll see if I'm out voted or if we come up with something new.

"Why does poetry does pour out of you?"
Nova asked me this question today.
The Answer: It doesn't. Sometimes when it's late and I'm struggling to sleep... My mind won't shut off. Phrases run through my mind, so I save them on a note on my phone and come back to them later. Short phrases, sometimes they don't make sense. But I have to read them over and over again until a tiny bit more comes to me. It takes me hours to come up with anything... Well, anything worthwhile. And I don't have many poems...

Guitar is going alright, still trying to teach myself due to some problems that I have with my teacher. (The guy is going to be gone for four weeks. @.@)

Until we meet again under the blue moon,
Alyce
SeventeenthStar

Where are you Christmas?

Christmas is this week, but it just doesn't feel like Christmas to me.
The tree is up, decorated... But I didn't decorate it. There's snow, even if there's not much right now... We're having our family party on Christmas Eve with my mother's side of the family, as of right now we have no idea what our plans are for Christmas day...

I can't remember the last time I played in the snow. Maybe when my niece Bentley comes home it'll snow and I can take her our in the yard to play. Maybe then it would feel more like Christmas.

I'm back to wishing that I was a kid again. My mother keeps telling me, "It's just not the same, with you and your brother grown up..." I think that I might even miss my parent's excitement more than my own.

So here I am, typing this blog, listening to Christmas songs hoping for the little feeling that always came with Christmas. It's been a few years since I've had that feeling. I think that it's normal to miss it.

I got a guitar for Christmas... On the first of this month. She's a blue Ibanez Acoustic-Electric and I named her Rosemary, Rosie for short. I've taught myself a few chords and I can play the first ten notes of Greensleeves, which I think is pretty awesome. I can also play the beginning of Meg & Dia's Setting Up Sunday. I'm hoping to learn Greensleeves by Christmas, and Meg & Dia's Nineteen Stars by our school's talent show. Rachel said that if I could learn Nineteen Stars in time, she would sing for me. It'd be awesome. Lauren has promised to help me learn it. I love my friends. :)

I joined the MaD boards. It's been... an experience. I'm hoping that the boardies there will like me. It seems to take a lot for them to like newbies, but I'm not really new to the whole loving Meg & Dia thing... So hopefully they will accept me.

It just dawned on me that it's nine o'clock and I haven't eaten a meal today, only snacks. That means that I need to go feed, but I don't really want to go into the kitchen.

Ah, well. I have an idea:

Christmas? Come home. Let's be friends.

Until we meet again under the blue moon,
Alyce aka SeventeenthStar

Listening To:
Where Are You Christmas? by Faith Hill

Almost There

My birthday is February 1st.
This raises a lot of worry in my tiny heart... I mean, I'm seventeen now so that means that in about two months I will be eighteen. Crazy, huh? When you're young you can never imagine yourself being that old... Well, at least I couldn't. And it's not even... very old. At all. If eighteen is considered old I'm going to hit somebody.
Ah, well. So I thought long and hard about it and... Even for as young as I am, I've had a pretty full, happy life. I've almost done everything that I've wanted to do...
Besides a few things that I'm not quite old enough for yet-- Have a child, travel somewhere on my own, finish (and publish) a novel... Things like that that I've always wanted to do.

I've started learning the guitar. I'm far from good at this point, but I really enjoy practicing and teaching myself new chords and things like that. I think that it's good for myself to motivate myself like that. My summer was awesome because it was full of the motivation to actually do something and it's a time that I wouldn't take back for anything.

Busy is good, and I have been pretty busy. I'm always happier when there's a lot going on, I suppose that it makes me feel more like I'm not just wasting time or something like that...

So maybe I'm okay with turning eighteen. It's really not that bad. I think that I'm just afraid of being labeled as an adult, when... I admit, I am not quite ready to be an adult... despite my desire to live alone. Part of me can't wait, while another part is screaming for time to just freeze.
But, of course, it can't freeze until Becca comes home from Hawaii for Christmas... With her here, time is welcomed to freeze, otherwise I'm going to ask it to wait.

Now I'm mostly rambling. I tend to do that... quite often. Haha.

So I think about what I want my life to be, what I know that I can achieve, and while some of it is far from my reach at this point, I'm closer than I thought. I've done so much and I'm willing to do so much more, and I'm on the right track.

I seriously need to change these colors again. I just can't choose one that I REALLY like. Haha.

Ah, well then...

Until we meet again under the blue moon,
Alyce