Sunday, December 19, 2010

Christmas

Every year I spend a great time preparing myself for Christmas. For a few more recent years that meant budgeting my money and finding a way NOT to spend all my money on my family. I always end up thinking, "Oh no! I only got them one present when I got the rest of my family two!!" So I end up spending even more money to get him/her a second one... maybe even a third. But it works out in the end and Ive never felt like I gave a bad gift, which is quite an achievement.

I put up decorations and wear scarves even in warmer weather. If there is snow, I play in it. Snow men to snow forts to snow angles, if it snows than I will definitely be out in it. Christmas radio is on from dusk till dawn, and when it isn't, even in my sleep, I sing carols.

Last Christmas was interesting. Being away from my family for the entire year was difficult, but being away for Christmas (and thus my birthday) I felt strangely detached from them, which is something I have never felt before.

This year, oddly enough, the feeling of detachment continues. The feeling that I am some distant and almost forgotten part of my families festivities just wont go away. Not to say they are lacking in anything. This year there are more decorations in every room than there have ever been in our house. I put up lights and beads and ornaments until my fingers felt numb. I have had one of the best snow fights I have ever had and I sing a wider array of songs than what I am used to.

But, the strange feeling of Christmas (and thus my birthday) ... being eons away wont go away.

I wonder why.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Lost

Its funny how often I lose my way.

... Its even funnier how rarely I find my way back.

I feel like I get lost on this side track, off the main trail... only to get distracted by the next one, and after a while it turns into this labyrinth. Unable to find my way back I start wrestling my way through the underbrush. Finding myself surrounded by nothingness, wild wilderness, no way to turn, no way to go back, I sit... and wait.

Not sure what Im waiting for. Im not even certain anything will ever turn up, but I wait. and Wait.

Maybe eventually Ill get the courage to look for that trail again, but whose to say once I find it, I wont get sidetracked... again.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Remembered

I was doing a lot of remembering today, talking to some friends about school (while I was in Germany) all the outrageous phone calls Id make on a daily basis, but I remembered something that I never thought about before.

At a party my host family went to there was this family with a girl about seven years old and they came over and introduced themselves and the little girl said "Hallo."

I responded with, "Hi!"

After a little conversation I remember hearing the little girl ask what "Hi" meant and her mother explaining that I was American and it means hello in America.

Id love to meat that little girl again. Id love to go back.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Procrastination

Something that I have never been able to conquer, and something I find extremely important for my thinking process, provides the most amount of stress in my life, and will probably end up biting me in the butt more often than not is...

I am a procrastinator.

I have been since I was young and my mother would tell me to clean my room and several hours latter, after shoving most of it under my bed, tricking my younger/older sister to clean the worst part of it, playing with my cat, sneaking outside, riding my bike, getting called back in, eating dinner, and finally getting scolded by my mother for not finishing, Id eventually get done.

Of course, months latter my mother, on a grand cleaning spree would discover my secret stash under my bed, and that disaster would take days for me to get finished.

Its a process, and something that Ive discovered helps me create some of my best work, and some of the greatest disasters anyone has ever had the luck of stumbling upon. Middle school vocabulary tests were probably the lowest point for me, but now that I have the fortune of pursuing higher education, it only effects me in certain assignments, essays.

Now, I hope my teachers will NEVER find this, because every essay Ive ever done I might have spent... two to four hours on. Writing is truly the bane of my existence and I loath it as much as I can enjoy anything else, but a few days before its due Ill start scheduling in my mind the work I need to get done... and maybe 24 hours before its due Ill get started on it.

Of course, this is something my parents absolutely cant stand, something my friends sigh at, and something that causes me way too much stress.

I have no problem studying for tests or practicing some vocabulary or planning ahead for a project (important ones :P ) but writing always causes this issue for me.

Now instead of games Ill find things to do like... watch TV, or surf the internet. I find those extremely diverting, but now, a day and a half before I have my essay due, I'm sitting in front of the computer with no ideas for it, migraine headache, and finally getting started on, what is probably, one of the most daunting essays I have ever written.

Wish me luck.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Bookstore

Ive made a routine.

Every time I start itching for a piece of literary awesomeness to chew on, I start to ask to go to the bookstore. Not as badly as I used to when I was younger and all that mattered to me was ink and paper, the words of a greater mind on a flat surface, waiting for my touch to turn the page. No, when I was younger Id flee to the car after school and beg with all faculties given to me by God to be taken to the bookstore. Now its a gentle nudge in my parents back, starting a week before I HAVE to go to the bookstore.

Like always, they say no. As a child it was a word that destroyed my world, to be told the bookstore would have to wait until the next time Mom needed to go shopping, or Dad had a few minutes to go and get an expensive coffee. Now I weather it, asking everyday, until it leads to the inevitable, me asking several times a day, even several times a minute. My parents, in the end, will give me a time and date they might take me and when that time appears I press until, RESULTS!!

Im in the bookstore.

Getting there is only half the problem. The moment I step through those doors a whole wonder of knowledge reels my mind and confuses my fingertips. Where to go? What to see? Now I have a job and money, trying not to buy EVERY book that fits my fancy and my shelf, despite the fact it may have to squeeze between a few old favorites, is extremely difficult.

But, back to the main event, where to start? On my left a whole array of children's books, favorites from childhood to the new series Ive had my eye on for a while. My right, an array of mysteries and romances and sci-fi, endless possibilities of enticing characters and nights awake with the reading lamp on hoping my mother wont wake. In front, a devastating display of all the classics Ive been meaning to read for ages and still find entirely desirable, despite their daunting appearances. And yet further still, in the bowels of the bookstore, loom the favorites of old and long forgotten, books on best sellers lists, books recently published and extremely clever, so many others longing to be read, so many plots and characters to fill the world twice over.

This is my true dilemma. Despite all my efforts I have never been able to read through the library or even a shelf of the library. If I were to spend all my time reading, a wish from childhood, or my life in a bookstore, or all my time in the library, without sleep or nourishment, I would still never satisfy my need for a good book.

My friends used to find me strange, my brother, a great fan of music and video games, even stranger, but I am who I am, and a book will always feel better in my hands than on a shelf.

Future family, I give you this warning: To find out who Hannah truly is and who she wants to be, take her to a bookstore... or better yet, keep her away from them at all costs, because the moment you take her there is the moment you lose her.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

For the Love of Germany

Work. An excellent place with lots of unpleasant people. The people I work with are kind and interesting and honestly some of the best I know, but...

When I talk about my life, any part of it, I always feel like I'm being challenged on all sides as to what and how and why I live my life my way.

Unpleasant things do get brought up and tempers lost... mainly mine, but in the end work is work and Ill continue to work until they stop paying.

One instance sticks to my mind. And at the moment I wont forget it. Maybe further detail is needed for others to understand, but it boils down to this: the experiences Ive had do not need to be challenged. I don't need your constant opinion on why I should or shouldn't think my life a certain way. Ive done quite well on my own and just because you're a year older than I am and think yourself so high above me doesn't mean you're free to express your opinions on my clothes, my hair, my opinions, or my life.

I am much obliged.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Hamlet, inspired

To be or not to be. That is a question.

A question to live... or not to live. For me it inst necessarily death, but to live as I am. Apathetic and unseeing, never changing, never exploring, never asking and never knowing.

These people around me look but they don't see the real me. Trying "to be." They live and walk and breath, but they don't live how I want to live. Its more like swimming down a narrow stream than in the deep, vast ocean.

I need that ocean. I'm tired of this stream. Maybe its stupid to say, but I want "to be."

Sunday, September 26, 2010

STUPID

I did a stupid thing today.

I went through the pictures of all you guys, from the year. my year.

Its weird to think of but Ive been home for... three months now.

And looking at all the pictures of all you guys didn't help me out.

I wish anne louise had left hers up. Hers were the best. The best of the best.

I miss the people. Not really the places as much, but the people I talked to and got to know. As hard as it was, its easier than now.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Strong Breeze

During the seasons of Spring, Summer, Fall.... and most of Winter my family has their windows open.

Maybe it has something to do with how much better the air feels outside than inside. The gentle breezes throughout the warm months and icy, strong sweeps in the winter ones. When their closed it feels like we've been cut off from a part of the world.

The noises and smells aren't always amazing. Sometimes the sounds of life coming from the general direction of the back yard (a small business) drive me insane. The constant chattering from those ladies sucking on cigarettes tends to make the hair on my neck stand up and the one gentleman who never seems to stop whistling off key... he can just go.

But... when we close the windows and tuck ourselves away in our pleasant little house their sounds disappear.

Ive been wondering if maybe, just as much as we hear them, they hear us. If the fights and laughter and singing my family tends to, floats over to them on occasion or maybe constantly. I think of all the times I sing in the shower or yell at my brother and ... maybe they do hear us just as much as I hear them. It doesnt really emberase me, but it makes me start liking them a little more. It does, in a kind of way, tie our lives together, and maybe I should start enjoying that little old man who just cant whistle.
Hey! I decided my first attempt at a blog was so ... pitiful Id try a new one!

This is Hannah in college. Hannah exploring the new freedoms of adulthood. haha

On that note.

I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place.
Even your emotions had an echo
In so much space

And when you're out there
Without care,
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough
I just knew too much

Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Possibly [radio version]
probably [album version]

And I hope that you are having the time of your life
But think twice, that's my only advice

Come on now, who do you, who do you, who do you, who do you think you are,
Ha ha ha bless your soul
You really think you're in control

Well, I think you're crazy
I think you're crazy
I think you're crazy
Just like me

My heroes had the heart to lose their lives out on a limb
And all I remember is thinking, I want to be like them
Ever since I was little, ever since I was little it looked like fun
And it's no coincidence I've come
And I can die when I'm done

Maybe I'm crazy
Maybe you're crazy
Maybe we're crazy
Probably

Gnarls Barkley - Crazy